Senate Going Euro With Gonzales No Confidence Vote

May 21, 2007 — -- If Senate Democrats carry through with their vow for a "no-confidence" vote over embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, they will be charting new territory in American politics.

Many Democratic and six Republican senators have called for the attorney general to resign, or for the president to fire him. But the two men have ignored those calls.

Frustrated over the apparent political firing of U.S. attorneys, among other things, Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California announced last week that they would seek to hold a no-confidence vote about Gonzales on the floor of the Senate.

"Whether it's Guantanamo Bay or U.S. attorneys or the NSA or saying 'I don't recall' over again in testimony, I don't think the Americans are well-served" with Gonzales at the Justice Department, said Feinstein last week.

But if the no-confidence vote registers the frustration of Democrats and some Republicans that President Bush has not gotten rid of Gonzales, it's a novel way to make themselves heard.

The U.S. Senate has never held a no-confidence vote before. Or at least not one they could find at the Senate Historian's office. At the moment, the Democrats aren't entirely sure what to make of the historical precedent.

"A lot of things have happened in 200 plus years of congressional history," said Senate historian Richard Baker. At Baker's office in the U.S. Capitol, they search through old newspapers online and internal records to try to find another instance of a no-confidence vote. But so far, they are stumped.

No-confidence votes, after all, are a European convention -- in countries on the Continent and in the United Kingdom, governments are usually controlled by the political party (or coalition of parties) and headed by the prime minister. In those states, a no-confidence vote is used by the out-of-power party to demand a new election. A successful no-confidence vote means it's time for a new prime minister.

But here in the United Sates, where those clever framers separated power between the generally elected executive and the locally elected legislature, there hasn't been a need for no-confidence votes. The Senate already has the power to assert itself over the executive branch because it has the discretion to appropriate the funds that the president uses to run the government and it also has the power to OK (or not) the president's nominations (Gonzales was confirmed by a Senate vote of 60-36 in 2005).