I only have one question about two state senators filing a lawsuit over the appointment of Zoie Saunders as interim education secretary after her nomination for the permanent job was rejected by the Senate.

Why only two senators?

Well, I do have another question: What must Saunders be thinking? If I were to guess, it’d be something along the lines of “How did I get myself into this?”

She quit a job she’d barely started in an area that had been her home for years and moved her family a thousand miles north, just to be used as a political shield by the Scott administration and see her reputation dragged over the coals. And this legal challenge could prevent her from serving at all.

My sympathy is limited because she’s a grown-up who made her own choices and she freely accepted a job that she’s unqualified for, but there is a human being in the middle of this uncomfortable mess.

Now, back to the first question: Why did only two senators sign onto the lawsuit?

I mean, her appointment as interim — made immediately following the Senate’s 19-9 vote against her nomination — was a slap in the face of the chamber’s “advise and consent” role. They advised, they clearly did not consent, and Gov. Phil Scott went right ahead and did what he wanted, advise and consent be damned.

So again: Why weren’t there 19 plaintiffs on this lawsuit?

I can’t speak for the Silent Seventeen, nor are they speaking for themselves, but I suspect it has something to do with not wanting to rock the boat. The Senate is cautious and deferential by nature. It doesn’t respond well to events that threaten the established order.

But still. You’d think an institution that thinks as highly of itself as the Senate does would be all in on defending its Constitutional authority.

Instead, it was left to firebrand Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky and the retiring Sen. Dick McCormack (who may feel a bit liberated now that he’s got one foot out the door) to take action that should have been pursued by a Senate leadership that seemed fine with accepting Saunders’ installation even though two-thirds of its number didn’t think she was fit for the job.

I mean, imagine what a Republican U.S. Senate would do if President Biden nominated Hillary Clinton for the Supreme Court, the Senate rejected the choice, and he just put her on the Court anyway.

It’s not a precise parallel, I know, but it’s not that far off either.

Now we’ll see what the courts do. The letter of the law seems clear, but has been ignored in the past — as in 1994, when the Senate rejected Howard Dean’s appointments to what was then the Environmental Board and Dean appointed them anyway. Doing the same with a cabinet secretary is a more serious matter, but* courts — well, most courts — don’t like to mess with established practice if they can help it. Especially since a decision in favor of the plaintiffs would likely involve ordering Saunders’ removal, quite the drastic step.

*Correction: After the Senate rejected the appointments, Dean resubmitted them, but they were again rejected and Dean eventually made other nominations.

Meanwhile, Scott dismisses the suit as a deliberate distraction from the override of his veto on the yield bill, as if there’s no principle at stake. (Vyhovsky, who has advocated a lawsuit for weeks, says she and McCormack waited to file until adjournment on the advice of their lawyers.) And the governor has held open the option of naming Saunders as permanent education secretary following adjournment. Which he could do, but it would further inflame his shattered relations with the Legislature and raise the stakes on the lawsuit.

Does Scott want to steer us into a constitutional showdown for Zoie Saunders’ sake? Is he really that convinced about her qualifications, which seem to be mainly of the intangible variety? Or is he more intent on a little dick-swinging — showing the Legislature who’s boss, and using Saunders as a pawn in the game?

Governor Nice Guy strikes again.