Congressional Republicans are furious over President Barack Obama's recent slate of recess appointments, but one in particular chafes. Senator John McCain called the appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board “clear payback by the administration to organized labor.”

McCain said that the administration had showed “little respect for the time honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress.” Several of the Arizona senator's Republican colleagues, and conservatives outside of Congress, dropped the qualifier. They view the Becker appointment, which will run now until the end of 2011, as an successful end run around Congress.

Their “end run” charge applies not just in the appointment itself, though that was bad enough in the eyes of most Republicans. Democrats tried to break the GOP filibuster over Becker's nomination and failed. They marshaled only 52 of the needed 60 votes. Obama then waited until Congress went out of session for Easter recess and installed Becker anyway.

The Becker appointment was immensely popular with labor unions but left everybody else groaning. Put away for a second the question of whether it is wise to appoint a man who was a lawyer both for the AFL-CIO and the SEIU (and ACORN, incidentally) to the body that oversees unionization elections, as hard as that may be. Perhaps some Solomonic barrister exists out there who can issue fair decisions. John Adams, American revolutionary in good standing, represented the British soldiers who perpetrated the Boston massacre and got them off.

The really damning thing is Becker's own words. In speeches, op-eds, and law review articles, Becker has sketched out a radical vision of how the U.S. government's regulatory apparatus could be used to impose organized labor's desired reforms if Congress fails to legislate those changes into law. Think of him as a one man card check bill, because that's what he will be pressing for on the NLRB. Thanks to Obama's appointment, the Senate won't even get a vote on that. Thus the understandable Republican outrage.

Democrats have a two word, family friendly answer to those Republican cries: John Bolton. President George W. Bush used his power of recess appointment in 2006 to install the bombastic Bolton as a permanent representative to the United Nations over a Democratic filibuster. If Becker is bad, Democrats are asking, then what about Bolton?

Here's the score: Republicans are right about this. And so are the Democrats.

The problem, really, is recess appointments. It's popular to decry provisions of the Constitution as hopelessly outmoded but in the case of recess appointment, it really is true. The framers of our national charter gave the president the power to make recess appointments because of dire necessity only.

It was a less connected and less well provisioned age. There was no fixed capital and Congress was in session but a fraction of the year. The body assembled infrequently because its citizen-legislator members had to travel great distances, often by horseback, to attend.

The newly independent nation balanced along the edge of the unforgiving knife of European power politics. Diplomatic posts were far more important then, and  had to be filled quickly. It could take months to get a new ambassador to some foreign court or palace where he would use his considerable powers of persuasion to curry favor and avoid war. It was in the nation's best interest to give the president the power to appoint new representatives of the U.S. government when Congress was not in session.

None of those justifications remain true today. We have a professional legislature and relatively easy travel. The information revolution, two world wars, and a twilight struggle against world Communism have improved America's standing in the world and made our ambassadors far less important. We can wait until congress is in session to send a representative to South Africa, Panama, Japan, or New Zealand.

However, the power of recess appointment remains. Presidents have decided to use it to skirt the Congressional power of “advice and consent,” with disastrous, undemocratic results. It would take a constitutional amendment to change that, but it would probably be worth it.