WASHINGTON — For all the drama generated every four years by cabinet appointments, it is exceedingly rare for a nominee to be defeated by a vote in the Senate.

The only time a nominee of a new president was rejected by a Senate vote occurred in 1989, when George HW Bush nominated John Tower, a former senator from Texas, to be his secretary of defense.

Tower was invalidated by stories of his excessive drinking and what press reports at the time called “womanizing” and which the Pentagon documented at the time as putting “special attention on the secretaries” as arms negotiators in Geneva.

Tower was the subject of an FBI investigation into drinking and sexual harassment, part of a security clearance. Contrast that situation with Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Gaetz was once the subject of a federal sex-trafficking investigation by the Justice Department — the same agency Trump wants him to lead. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and maintains his innocence. But the FBI files, which have never been released, appear likely to come up at his confirmation hearing.

Perhaps Trump’s nomination of Gaetz will test the year-long streak of no Cabinet nominee being rejected by the Senate. Former housemates have said Gaetz bragged about sex with an underage girl. Moreover, he has earned the enmity of some of his Republican colleagues, although Trump’s influence could overcome all that.

SEE ALSO | Trump transition: Speaker Mike Johnson urges House Ethics Committee not to release Matt Gaetz report

Or maybe it will be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic Trump is tapping to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has a history of drug use, although it is rarely mentioned these days.

Instead of facing the humiliation of a rejection vote in the Senate, government nominees are more often withdrawn when it becomes clear that they cannot be confirmed. Every new president since Bill Clinton has withdrawn at least one of his first nominees. Clinton’s first nominee for attorney general, Zoe Baird, withdrew her nomination after admitting she hired undocumented immigrants to watch her child.

Here’s a look at the government confirmation process, why it exists, where it’s gone wrong, and how Trump wants to find a way around it.

What is the cabinet?

Presidents run the federal government with the help of a group of close advisers and the heads of federal agencies such as the Department of Justice and the Pentagon. Some members of the cabinet, such as the vice president and the White House chief of staff, do not need Senate approval. But most of them do.

Some roles, such as US ambassador to the UN or CIA director, have been at the government level in some administrations but not all. The current government, under President Joe Biden, has 26 members.

Why does the Senate get to say who works for the President?

Article II is the part of the Constitution that deals with the executive branch. Section II makes clear that while the president is the executive, he appoints certain positions specified in the Constitution and others established by law with the “advice and consent” of senators. If the Senate is in recess, the president can make temporary appointments.

This is what it says in the constitution:

How many people does the president nominate in total?

Very! The Partnership for Public Service tracks about 1,200 positions, most of them well below the cabinet level, that require Senate approval — though the president probably doesn’t have a personal role in most of them. They are handled by his staff or the newly confirmed agency heads.

Some posts can go an entire presidency without a nominee. The process has also become much slower in recent years.

How does the nomination and confirmation process work?

In modern times, a president-elect nominates his picks for top officials ASAP after winning the election. Planning should preferably begin before election day.

Senate oversight committees may conduct confirmation hearings before Inauguration Day on January 20. They can refer nominees to the full Senate or quick votes when the new president is sworn in. But things often take much longer.

How long does a nomination take?

Longer than it used to be. Even after Democratic senators pushed through changes to the rules in 2013 to remove the filibuster from confirmation of administration officials, the two parties have grown more at odds over the process.

When the elder Bush took office in January 1989, senators had already confirmed seven of his 15 nominees, according to the Partnership for Public Service. When Trump began his first term, he had two confirmations out of 26 nominees. When Biden took office in 2021, he had confirmation for 36 nominees. The slowness continues.

The three presidents before Trump’s first term all had more than 200 nominees confirmed after 200 days in office. Trump had 119 and Biden had 118 confirmed nominees at that point, although Trump had nominated far fewer people than other presidents.

Is there a way around the nomination process?

Sort of. There’s that mention in the Constitution of recess appointments — something Trump has said he wants to use.

While his fellow Republicans who will control the Senate in January have not rejected the idea, leaders like Sen. John Thune clearly don’t want to give away their power over oversight. Additionally, recess meetings only last until the end of the next Senate session, usually around the calendar year.

Trump, frustrated with the process in his first term, appointed several people to be “acting” heads of agencies, but they can only serve in that capacity for a few months, according to law. There are also limits on who can become acting secretary.

Why don’t all presidents use time periods?

Presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Clinton, and both Bushes used recess appointments, though usually for positions below the cabinet level. Only three cabinet secretaries have been appointed during a recess since 1900, according to the Senate Historical Office. The most recent was Mickey Kantor, who briefly served as Clinton’s Commerce Secretary.

When Barack Obama used travel appointments to make the National Labor Relations Board work, he was sued. The US Supreme Court ruled that it takes at least a 10-day break to warrant a stay.

So that was the end of the breaks?

So far, yes. Senators have simply stopped taking long breaks. The last 10-day recess they adjourned was in 2016, according to records kept by the Senate Historical Office. Instead, they will take short breaks, and a single senator may enter the chamber every few days for a “pro forma” session during which no business is normally conducted.

Could Senate Republicans just take a break and let Trump name a cabinet?

Technically, yes.

While Democrats can no longer predict gubernatorial nominees, they can slow down the process. It’s possible that Republicans could decide to adjourn for a long break, but that would be an incredible sacrifice by GOP leaders. It would certainly be subject to a lawsuit, and there is some evidence that a conservative Supreme Court would be leery of an attempt to stuff Trump’s cabinet into a manufactured recess.

Is there a loophole?

There is another clause in the constitution that some Trump allies are eyeing. The House and Senate are each given the power to adjourn, but for anything longer than three days they need the approval of each chamber. If the House and Senate cannot agree, the Constitution says this about the President:

So if Senate Republicans don’t want to give up their power, it’s technically possible that House Speaker Mike Johnson could get the House to pass an adjournment resolution that the Senate wouldn’t agree to. Trump can then adjourn the Senate for 10 days to go through a cabinet.

Let’s explore it. Johnson will have a very narrow majority. He would need every House Republican to join him in a quest to declare parliamentary war on a Republican-controlled Senate. Seems extremely unlikely to happen. But who knows.

The president has never in the history of the United States attempted to adjourn the House and Senate with this authority. The Senate Historical Office said it was not aware of serious discussion of this particular clause in the Constitution since the 1930s.

Conservative legal expert Edward Whelan writes about this idea in The Washington Post and encourages Johnson to shoot it down.

Who was the first government nominee to be rejected?

The first cabinet officer to be rejected was Roger B. Taney, whom then-President Andrew Jackson wanted as Treasury Secretary in 1834 to take charge of the Second Bank of the United States, the forerunner of the Federal Reserve. (Trump, incidentally, would like to exercise more power over the Federal Reserve today.)

Senators rejected Taney even after he served in the post temporarily, according to an account from the Senate Historical Office.

The Senate rejected Taney when Jackson put him forward for a Supreme Court nomination. Jackson then nominated Taney again, but this time as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Taney was finally confirmed and swore in as chief justice Jackson’s handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren, whom, coincidentally, the Senate had rejected as Jackson’s ambassador to England.

Taney, a lifetime Supreme Court appointee, was ultimately an epic historical villain. He wrote the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that black Americans could never be citizens.

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