[FONT="]Only twice since World War II has a nominee been actually rejected by the full Senate: Lewis Strauss, who was turned down as Dwight Eisenhower’s Commerce Secretary in 1959; and John Tower, defeated by 53 votes to 47 as George HW Bush’s first Pentagon choice in 1989 (the job eventually went to Dick Cheney).
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[FONT="]Normally, when a nomination has become controversial, things aren’t allowed to go that far. In the past 30 years, more than a dozen Cabinet nominees have failed to be confirmed – but with the exception of Tower, because they’ve pulled out of their own volition, usually because of failure to pay some past taxes (either on their own account, for a household employee, or for some other usually pretty minor financial irregularity).
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[FONT="]Bill Clinton lost a couple of Attorney General nominees (Zoe Baird and Kimba Woods) that way, because it emerged they had employed illegal immigrants as nannies for their children. Later, another to fall by the wayside was Tom Daschle, who took himself out of consideration as Barack Obama’s first nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services in 2009, because of various unpaid back taxes. Daschle had the votes, but declared he didn’t want to be a “distraction” to the new president’s agenda.[/FONT]