Chuck Schumer: “I was listening to our majority leader's words on consultation and the process thus far. I will make a couple of points.…”

“I was listening to our majority leader's words on consultation and the process thus far. I will make a couple of points. The first is that we are off to a good start. I certainly agree with the majority leader. The phone calls that have been made and this morning's meeting with Senators Frist, Reid, Specter, and Leahy are a good first start. That is how it should be. But simply phone calls or meetings, if they are devoid of substance, are not going to lead to real consultation. I certainly agree with the majority leader's point. The Senate is not a conominee. It is the President who has to do the nominating. The way consultation has successfully worked in the past is for the President to quietly, privately, offer some of the names he is considering to those on both sides of the aisle and get opinions about those names: How would this one fare? How would that one fare? Would this one cause a fight? How about that one? It is not that we would be conominators at all. Consultation is that. The President is the nominator, and a good consultation means that nominator discusses who he is thinking of nominating, takes the temperature, if you will, of the Senate, particularly of the other party, to see if a consensus nominee could come about. Thus far, neither the President nor any of the people working for him--I had one call with Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff--has offered a single name. From what I understand this morning, the President did not offer a single name.…”