Something remarkable happened to John Ryder on Thursday. He got a vote in the Senate.

Getting confirmed by the Senate for a part-time board position on the Tennessee Valley Authority—a minor corporate agency based in Knoxville that only holds four public sessions a year—didn’t use to be remarkable. It should have been even less so for Mr. Ryder, an accomplished Memphis lawyer whose nomination was uncontroversial. Yet Mr. Ryder waited 388 days for a vote—some 100 days longer than it takes a new human being to come into the...