President Barack Obama has failed to deliver on so many campaign promises that some Democrats wonder why they should bother voting for him in 2012. The best argument for re-electing Obama is the impact a Republican president could have on the justice system.

I just learned that Obama is already letting Republicans select some of his U.S. attorney nominees. In fact, Republicans recommended five of the six new U.S. attorneys the Senate confirmed yesterday.

Traditionally, presidents nominate U.S. attorneys recommended by senators from the president’s party. For instance, Senator Chuck Grassley recommended George W. Bush’s U.S. appointees for the northern and southern districts of Iowa. By the same token, Senator Tom Harkin recommended the two U.S. attorneys Obama nominated to serve Iowa in 2009.

Sometimes neither senator from a state belongs to the president’s party. In that event, “the administration usually looks to its party’s House members for recommendations,” Channing Turner wrote on the Main Justice blog in July.

However, Obama took a different path. He nominated four U.S. attorneys for Texas in June, all people whom Republican Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn had suggested:

Although the White House assured the state’s Democrats that they would be consulted on judicial selections, the executive branch also has worked with the GOP senators, who have the constitutional authority to block nominations.

“The administration has disregarded its previous agreement and our hope for more change in the Texas justice system after decades of total Republican domination,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin.

Rep. Charlie Gonzalez says White House delays were “totally and completely unnecessary.”

Pitman was not one of several candidates that were put forward in the Western District by lawmakers from San Antonio or Austin.

One of those candidates, San Antonio lawyer Mike McCrum, withdrew his name from consideration last year after the process dragged on without an official White House nomination.

Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, said White House delays in the nomination process were “totally and completely unnecessary.”

A similar story played out when Obama chose a U.S. attorney for Utah whom Republican Senator Orrin Hatch had recommended. The Texas and Utah nominees were five of the six U.S. attorneys confirmed yesterday.

Perhaps Obama is trying to please Senate Republicans in order to speed up the pace of judicial confirmations. More than two and a half years into Obama’s presidency, there are “about 90 vacant federal judgeships,” and “about 55 judicial nominees pending before the Senate.” We’ll find out over the next year whether Republicans allow more judicial nominees to be confirmed. My hunch is that saddling Texas and Utah with conservative U.S. attorneys will turn out to be yet another example of Obama making concessions to Republicans without securing anything concrete in return.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.