The Less Senate Involvement the Better
Subbing for Ezra, Jonathan Bernstein and Dylan Matthews both have excellent posts on improving the Senate confirmation problems. I see a lot of Jonathan’s points, but I think Dylan is more correct here; the answer is to drastically reduce the number of positions that require Senate confirmation. In theory, the idea is that confirmation gives Congress an extra check on the executive, as well as prevents unqualified cronies from gaining key jobs, but in practice I don’t see any evidence it actually does that. The Senate confirmed Brownie, after all. And in that vein, having a lot of positions requiring confirmation makes it more likely that the Senate will miss something. Reducing the number of appointments the Senate has to monitor will get those positions more scrutiny. As it is, the process is just becoming a tool for the opposition to cause headaches for the President by preventing them from fully staffing their administration, as well as more business to use to grind legislative business to a halt.
And, of course, there’s the other lesson Brownie left for future Presidents; having a competent administration is in your political best interests. If that fails to compel a PResident to appont qualified underlings, I don’t have faith in the Senate to stop them. And that’s to say nothing of the general idea that giving one branch veto power over the staffing decisions of another is rather non-co-equal.