U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton held up the nomination as ambassador to the Bahamas of a woman he believed to be perfectly admirable.
He was mad, as usual. It was over something the woman had absolutely nothing to do with.
Then the woman died after more than 800 days of having her nomination held up, first by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and then, since last fall, by Cotton.
She lives, though, as a symbol of Washington’s silly — no, vile — partisan game-playing.
Put her down as collateral damage. Put down relevance and decency and fairness as collateral victims along with her.
Cotton was irate this time over news in September that Secret Service agents had gained access to, and leaked, unflattering information about a Republican congressman. The information was that the chairman of the House committee overseeing the Secret Service, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, had once applied for a position with the Secret Service and been turned down.
Cotton said it just awful that the Secret Service would turn on a member of Congress by invading his privacy and leaking secrets about him.
Cotton first put a hold on President Barack Obama’s ambassadorial nominees to Sweden and Norway as well as the Bahamas. But then he lifted his hold on the Sweden and Norway nominations. That left hanging the Bahamas nominee, Cassandra Butts, a Harvard classmate and friend of Obama who learned only recently that she had leukemia, and soon died, at 50.
Columnist Frank Bruni in The New York Times assailed Cotton in this matter Monday. He reported that Butts had gone to see Cotton about her delay and that Cotton had told her he knew she was a close friend of Obama and that he wanted to inflict pain on the president for the slow-moving investigation toward punitive action against the Secret Service agents.
Bruni reported that Cotton’s office did not dispute Butts’ account.
I asked for confirmation of that, and Caroline Rabbitt, communications director for Cotton, responded as follows in an email:
“We didn’t contest the version [Bruni] presented to me initially via email, but I dispute his characterization in the actual piece that Tom chose this nominee to ‘inflict pain.’ In reality, he chose three of President Obama’s political appointees as opposed to career foreign service officers or employees …
“DHS [Homeland Security] announced discipline last week of Secret Service agents and consideration was being given to lifting the hold on Cassandra Butts’ nomination, but our office was informed of her death shortly after receiving the news about DHS.
“Additionally, when DHS made partial progress in imposing discipline on lower level officials, Tom lifted his holds on the two other nominees and gave a floor speech supporting the nominees on the floor of the Senate. I know he would have done the same thing for Cassandra Butts once that hold was lifted.
“I also want to make sure it’s clear that Tom was not the sole hold on her nomination. Holds are not always public, but I do know Senator Cruz had a blanket hold on all state department nominees at one point. I am not sure when he might have lifted his specific hold on Cassandra Butts, but I believe there was a time when he had a hold on her as well.
“Her confirmation hearing was in May of 2014, but Tom didn’t place a hold on her until October of 2015, so something else was also delaying her confirmation.
“Finally, I would note that DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson called Tom in February to discuss the hold and promised him the latest round of discipline would be announced in ‘a few weeks.’ Yet it took nearly four months before they announced anything.
“Senator Cotton had a great deal of respect for Ms. Butts and her career and his deepest sympathies are with her family and friends as they mourn her loss.”
Got all that?
You can and will make your own judgments about it, as I now will, as follows:
Cotton was mad at the Secret Service, and then the Obama administration, because heads didn’t roll as quickly as he thought they should. So he held up three totally unrelated ambassadorial nominations, and then lifted two of them, but kept the one against Butts, for whom he had the highest regard. And he was getting ready to say nice things about her as soon as the hold got lifted, which, as his own hold, was solely within his discretion to lift at any time. He was not trying to inflict pain on the president. He was just trying to … well, throw a hissy fit and take out his anger on a woman he thought was great, but who, sadly, died before he could get around to stopping his spectacularly unfair treatment of her.
To conclude with proper context and perspective: A generally lauded woman named Cassandra Butts, whose life was cut short, should have spent some her last days as ambassador to the Bahamas. But she was denied that courtesy by Arkansas voters when they elected Cotton to the U.S. Senate, which has rules giving entirely too much power to mistakes voters make in individual states.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.