TSA Nomination Two-Step

I feel like the troubled nomination of Transportation Security Administration director Errol Southers has come to represent some of the grand problems with the nominations process in the first place. First, there's the problem of vetting. You want to make sure someone a) has no blemishes on their record and b) isn't concealing any blemishes on their record that you weren't able to find, because nobody loves surprises. Second, you want nominations to be made promptly and to move along as smoothly and as quickly as prudent. Othewise, you'll face a crisis in a leaderless agency, and you'll be forced to rush along a nomination that may not actually be ready to survive scrutiny.

In a way, it seems like due diligence and all due speed are fundamentally incompatible, and I don't think the problem is entirely in the Senate, though the procedural issues surely are significant. Is the solution larger, more aggressive transition teams? Possibly. But two and a half months isn't much time, no matter how many people you have working assessing agencies and candidates to run them, to gather information, synthesize it, and draw good conclusions. Maybe it's time to move the presidential transition back to March.