Imagine you're getting an executive promotion. There's no chance you won't get it -- you're eminently qualified, the only serious candidate, and the CEO himself offered you the spot. Hell, you've even got them painting your name on the door already. The only thing left is the formality of meeting with the board of directors, who already know you very well. After all, you've been working with them for years in your current position.

When you sit down with the directors, however, they take a different tack from the expected formal question-and-answer about your qualifications and ideas on how to handle the problems you will face. One by one, they lecture you, berate you, and make personal attacks against you. They impugn your honor and honesty, deride your abilities, and sarcastically address you in overly-familiar terms. They attack and undermine the CEO, criticising his job performance and decision-making abilities as well as yours, hypocritically using perfect 20-20 hindsight to lay undeserved blame on both of you for not avoiding unforeseeable problems that none of them foresaw either. They even accuse you of being involved in criminal activities and conspiracies. Instead of the hour or so such a formality would normally take at most, this grilling goes on for hour after hour after hour, all staged to undermine your credibility with the stockholders. And the worst part is that there's still no chance you won't get the job, even after this pointless free-for-all verbal butchery. Would you be shocked at this behavior? Stunned? Would you even want to work with people who behaved like this?

Watching the so-called "confirmation hearings" for Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales confirmed only one thing -- that I will probably never hold a political position. Even if President Bush personally called to offer me a cabinet post, I would have to turn him down. I can imagine the conversation going something like this:

BUSH: I called to offer you a post on my cabinet.
ME: I'm flattered, Your Presidentness, but I'm going to have to refuse. I'd never make it through the confirmation hearings -- I'd end up with my fingers wrapped around the throat of at least one Senator.
BUSH: Well, in that case, ya want TWO cabinet posts?

The members of each committee, under the guise of asking questions, used the time to make long-winded speeches. They attacked both Gonzales and Rice while sniping at President Bush from behind cover. They bullied, bloviated and bellyached by turns, competing for media attention. Is that what we pay them for -- abusing public servants while pontificating from a personal soapbox for the benefit of the cameras? Barbara Boxer (D-CA) repeatedly accused Rice and the President of lying. Condi put Boxer in her place in no uncertain terms. "Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you very much," Rice said calmly. Joe Biden (D-DE) snarled at Gonzales, "We're looking for candor, old buddy." John Kerry (D-loser) droned on and on about how he would have been a better President, done everything differently, and it all would have worked out somehow. I'm not sure he ever actually asked a question. He seems to think he's still on the campaign trail. All the questioners on both committees seemed intent on undermining pubic support for the war in Iraq as much as possible. They accused Gonzales of being responsible for the crimes committed by a few soldiers at Abu Ghraib, just as they've tried to link everyone in the administration from the President to the White House gardener, with the same lack of reason. They repeatedly asked Rice when we're leaving the country, like annoying children on a trip asking, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" while the car is still in the driveway. They seemed not to realise that she has been the National Security Advisor for the last four years, not the Secretary of Defense or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Biden, however, seemed to think it was a good opportunity to attack Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was not present. "Whatever you do," he warned Rice,"don't listen to Rumsfeld. He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about." No information is available on how many military victories Biden has won; Rumsfeld has presided over the fall of Afghanistan and Iraq with fewer American casualties than some training exercises.

Instead of asking pertinent, pointed questions that would have told us how Gonzales and Rice will deal with the problems we face now, and will likely encounter in the future, the interrogators wasted our time and tax dollars with irrelevant bluster. They could have asked Gonzales serious questions like, "As Attorney General, how do you plan to deal with the fact that more illegal immigrants are being detained at the borders than the processing centers can hold?" Instead, the closest anyone came was Arlen Specter (R?-PA), who expressed concern that illegal aliens were detained right after 9/11 without any proof that they were terrorists. "And immediately after 9/11, as the inspector general's report showed, some 702 aliens were detained without any showing of cause: concern that they might be terrorists, but no real evidence or indications that they were terrorists," Specter complained. I'll never understand why the non-existent legal "rights" of non-citizen criminals outweighs the national security of Americans to some people. They could have asked Condoleezza Rice about her views on the alliance between North Korea, Russia and China, and whether it poses a threat to us. (Hint: yes!) Instead, they chose to score points with the Bush-haters, whiners, and malcontents... in other words, the Liberal base of the Democratic party.

Perhaps some rules should be put in place that would require questions to be relevant to the matter at hand. That will probably never happen, however, as Senators relish their brief moments in the spotlight all too much. Relevant questions would be boring; the media survives on confrontation... and politicians live for the opportunity to score "face time" and a sound byte on their local news.