By peg mcentee

| Tribune Columnist

Freshman Sen. Mike Lee, meet Barack Obama, president of the United States.

Irked that Obama actually appointed Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Lee has promised to oppose every one of the president’s choices for open judicial and federal positions.

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Obama barked back on Saturday: "One senator gumming up the works for the whole country is certainly not what our Founding Fathers envisioned."

But Lee, a self-described constitutionalist and tea party star, went even further, saying he is "duty-bound" to oppose any of Obama’s other nominations, including that of David Nuffer as a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for Utah.

Only last month, Lee said he was frustrated that the Senate hadn’t yet confirmed Nuffer to the perilously short-handed federal bench here. Now, in a fit of pique, he wants yet more delays, not just in his home state but across the country.

Maybe he’s still peeved that the Federal Election Commission last month nixed his plan for his own super PAC that could accept unlimited money. Or that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke systematically debunked Lee’s assertion that the Fed had failed to adequately control inflation, unemployment and health care costs.

It must be frustrating for a guy who touts himself as an expert on the U.S. Constitution to be stymied by a president who, as a lawyer, scholar and politician, knows a thing or two about this nation’s founding document.

Even senior Sen. Orrin Hatch declined to go along with Lee’s plan to block every nominee.

The whole episode got me curious about what kind of legislation Lee is pushing. He wants a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, and also the sale of "disposal" federal lands in the West.

He also ran a bill that would cede 31 acres of national forest lands in Box Elder County to Mantua, a town of about 770 people. (In another Lee bill, Alta would get a paltry 2 acres of forest land.)

You’d have thought that the enormous responsibility of sitting in the world’s greatest deliberative body would be humbling.

Not, apparently, for Lee, who issued a grandiose statement over the weekend about Cordray’s appointment. He called on "All Americans — Republicans, Democrats, Independents — who care about our nation, to stand with me in defense of this blatant and egregious encroachment of our basic constitutional liberties."

The 2016 elections will come fast. Lee would do well to drop the bombast and get serious about governance that would actually matter to every Utahn — you know, the people he represents.

Peg McEntee is a news columnist. Reach her at pegmcentee@sltrib.com, facebook.com/pegmcentee and Twitter, @pegmcentee.