It is taking longer than ever to confirm the U.S. president's nominee for a position.
As The Times reported last month, hundreds of Biden nominees remain stuck in the Senate “because of partisan dysfunction or personal pique.” During his first year in office, only 41 percent of Mr. Biden’s nominees cleared the Senate, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. This compares with 57 percent of Mr. Trump’s first-year nominees, 69 percent of President Barack Obama’s and 75 percent of George W. Bush’s. The average time for confirmation of Mr. Biden’s picks was 103 days — longer than any of the previous six administrations.
“You’re seeing a broken system breaking down even further,” the partnership’s chief executive, Max Stier, told The Times. “We need a political Geneva Convention, to distinguish between legitimate partisan differences and the destruction of our core government infrastructure.”
Note: The reference to "any of the previous six administrations" doesn't suggest that things were much worse in the Carter administration. Rather, it is that the Partnership for Public Service apparently only surveyed data going back to Reagan so, here, we aren't given any information about what happened earlier.
Source: "When Did Republicans Turn Into a Bunch of Snowflakes?", Michelle Cottle, New York Times, Feb. 8, 2022. (Incidentally, the article does not directly address the question that the headline-writer gave it. The part that I quoted more accurately represents the article's theme.)
Image source: "aitoff" on Pixabay.
