Another justified complaint about the pace of Obama judicial nominations

At Slate, Doug Kendall has this new commentary, headlined "Fill the Bench Now: Now is the time for Obama to move on judicial nominations," which take President Obama to task for the slow pace of his judicial nominations. Here are excerpts:

By February 2002, President George W. Bush had nominated 89 judges to the lower federal courts. This week, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy prodded President Obama, who has nominated just 42 federal judges to date, to "get up names as quickly as possible."  President Obama promised to make this "a priority."  He'd better.

There are currently 102 vacancies on the federal bench. Of these, 31 constitute "judicial emergencies"— vacancies that have severely threatened a court's ability to handle its workload. Before the end of the year, there will be dozens of additional openings on the lower courts (20 have already been announced) and, in all likelihood, one and perhaps even two Supreme Court vacancies to fill....

Obama has a difficult road ahead partly because of his failure to act swiftly on nominations during his first year in office.  In 2009, Obama nominated 33 judges to the district and circuit courts, and the Senate confirmed 12.  These numbers are, in a word, pathetic.  New obstructionist tactics by Senate Republicans are partially to blame.  But Obama deserves some blame, too; the paucity of nominees made it hard to scream too loudly about the lack of confirmations....

All told, a shaky first-year performance.  Now is the time to turn things around.  Quickly.  The Clinton administration also started slowly on judicial nominations, facing tough politics on confirmation in 1994.  Clinton picked up the pace of nominations, confirmed 98 lower court judges and a Supreme Court justice, and cut by two-thirds the number of vacancies that amounted to judicial emergencies. This is the model.

The White House has made changes in its judicial nominations team, starting at the top with the installation of a new White House counsel, Bob Bauer. Bauer will oversee and coordinate judicial nominations in an administration that has more assembled expertise on judicial nomination and confirmation issues than any in history.  His job is to marshal this talent efficiently and to keep the nomination train running on time, which apparently proved impossible once his predecessor Gregory Craig started to lose his grip on the White House counsel job.

Some related new and old posts:

•  "One Year: Where Are the Judges?"
• The growing (and justified) complaints about Obama's approach to judicial nominations
• Should President Obama be praised or assailed for his approach to judicial nominations so far?
• Seeking thoughts on a "professional judiciary" for sentencing law
• "Obama moving slowly on judges"
• Should President Obama practice ageism when making judicial nominations?
• Noticing the biggest bias in the federal judiciary
• Why federal sentencing reformers must focus on the USSC and lower courts
• Judging, politics, sentencing and elections
• A modest(?) proposal for filling the bench from the ivory tower
• Urging President-elect Obama to elevate district judges to the circuit courts
• A partially justified(?) celebration of "Diversity on the federal bench"