Trump's DNI pick clears key hurdle, reviving path for nation's top anti-terror surveillance program

A 9-8 committee vote isn't exactly a landslide, and nobody should pretend it is. But it's a vote, which is more than this nomination had a few weeks ago, and it puts Jay Clayton one step closer to running the nation's intelligence apparatus at a moment when the surveillance tools meant to stop the next attack have been sitting in legal and political limbo. That limbo has a cost. Every month these authorities stay tangled up in Washington gridlock is a month analysts are working with one hand tied behind their back.

What's notable here isn't really Clayton himself, it's the fact that a straight party-line squeaker is what it now takes to move a national security nominee through committee. Intelligence oversight used to have some bipartisan muscle memory to it, even when the underlying programs were controversial. Now it's trench warfare on every single pick, regardless of qualifications, because confirming a Trump nominee has become its own kind of litmus test. That's not a healthy place for the committee that's supposed to be the adult in the room on this stuff.

The bigger fight is obviously coming to the floor, and it will be uglier than 9-8. Expect the usual noise about surveillance overreach, most of it recycled from arguments that have been made about every DNI nominee since the position existed. Some of those concerns are legitimate and deserve a real hearing, not a talking point. But if the end result of months of delay is simply reviving a program that's supposed to be tracking actual terror threats, that's the whole point of having the office in the first place.

Whatever senators think of Clayton personally, the country doesn't benefit from an empty chair at the top of the intelligence community while threats don't take a recess. A vacancy isn't neutral, it's a decision too. The Senate should get this resolved, one way or another, instead of letting it drag into another news cycle.