When we’re choosing a leader for the nation’s central banking system, one of the important things to consider is whether Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has heard enough testimony about the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Allow me to explain.

President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the next head of the Federal Reserve Board is Janet Yellen. The Senate banking committee is grilling her Thursday, and there should be a lot of questions about unemployment and inflation.

However, that could all wind up being beside the point. Graham says he is going to place a “hold” on Yellen and all other pending nominations because he doesn’t believe Congress has had a chance to interview enough people who were present in the Benghazi compound when four Americans were tragically killed.

“Where are the Benghazi survivors? I’m going to block every appointment in the U.S. Senate until they are made available to Congress,” he twittered recently.

So much for Janet Yellen. Also the president’s nominee to be head of homeland security. God help the guy who’s up for the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and has been cooling his heels since last December.

After a while, this sort of thing can weigh down a presidency. For instance, as you’ve listened with mounting frustration to the rollout of HealthCare.gov, did you ever wonder why Obama is keeping Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, on the job? Try to imagine what would happen if she left. How much chance do you think the president would have of ever getting a replacement? I am thinking slightly worse than the odds on the White House being attacked by giant killer zucchini.

We all know how easy it is to tie up the Senate. But it’s particularly fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way, when you see somebody do it because he’s ticked off over a totally unrelated matter. (This is an excellent opportunity to recall the time that then-Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky held up the confirmation of a nominee to be deputy trade representative because he was irked about Canada’s ban on candy-flavored cigarettes.)

The “hold” is not to be confused with the filibuster; well, actually, go right ahead and confuse them. The end result is pretty much the same. The Senate stops dead in its tracks for an endless spree of wrangling about the rules. The majority leader has to find 60 votes to get it moving again.

We can probably presume that Harry Reid will pull out all the stops for Yellen, and he will probably, eventually, be successful. Even though Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, in concert with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, is also planning to put a hold on the nomination until the Senate agrees to take up a bill calling for audits of the Federal Reserve.

And then it’s time for holiday vacations.

But about Lindsey Graham. While congressional committees have questioned tons of people about Benghazi, he says he needs to hear from five survivors of the attack. The State Department doesn’t want to provide them because they might wind up being witnesses in criminal trials if the perpetrators are ever caught.

The five were already questioned by an independent review commissioned by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That panel found that officials such as U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice were wrong when they theorized the attack might have grown out of a protest against a crude movie making fun of Muhammad. The review also found that security at the compound was inadequate. The assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security resigned.

But Graham is not at all satisfied. As he told Candy Crowley on CNN, he needs to find out if the survivors think the protest theory was wrong. Also, if he ever gets the chance, he will ask them, “Was there inadequate security, in your mind?”

The senator was further enraged by the State Department’s stonewalling after “60 Minutes” interviewed “Morgan Jones,” who was in Benghazi on the night of the attack, and told a dramatic story about how he warned people of the danger but nobody listened. His righteous wrath was not shaken in the least when Morgan’s story turned out to be entirely made up. Perhaps Graham was recalling the immortal words of Mia Farrow in an old Woody Allen movie: “He’s fictional, but you can’t have everything.”

The one thing that doesn’t seem to be on Graham’s list of questions that needs answering is whether we should have used military force to topple Moammar Gadhafi in the first place. Even if it seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe we ought to reflect. After all, Libya’s not looking like the happy ending we might have hoped for. The president never did get consent from Congress, and there were critics at the time. Who Lindsey Graham said “should sort of shut up.”

Whoops.

GAIL COLLINS writes for The New York Times News Service.

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