the most important words of our Constitution are the first three, ``We the People.'' This describes the entire purpose of our Constitution, which is to create a government responsive to the people and to produce laws that reflect the will of the people. It requires a close adherence to the vision embodied in the Constitution, including the advice and consent vision in the Constitution. We know that the Founders of our country struggled with how to appoint people to high positions in the executive branch and in our courts. It was Alexander Hamilton who laid out the deliberations. He said: If a body or an assembly has that power, there will be a lot of horse trading back and forth, and we will not get the best people suited to the positions in the executive branch and in the courts. So the responsibility should rest with one person. That is how the nominating power came to be vested with the President. The Founders also discussed the fact that a single person can go off track. The President might have favoritism toward people from his or her home State. The President might favor people who, in turn, had done favors for him or her and so forth. They said that the way to avoid this is to have the Senate be a check upon the President, and that ``would tend to greatly prevent the appointment of unfit characters.'' That is how Alexander Hamilton summed it up.…
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