The following editorial appears on Bloomberg View.

Why is Chuck Schumer doing Donald Trump a favor? The Senate minority leader’s delaying tactics for the president’s nominees are not only uncalled for, but they also distract from the White House’s historic ineptitude at filling the senior ranks of government.

So far, the Trump administration has made 163 fewer nominations than former President Barack Obama at the same point, and 124 fewer than George W. Bush. Moreover, many of Trump’s picks have been slowed by incomplete paperwork and ethics declarations, and at least seven have withdrawn, either under pressure from media scrutiny or for personal reasons.

That’s nothing to be proud of. Neither are the Democrats’ tactics — insisting on clock-killing cloture votes, for example, or not showing up for committee sessions. These maneuvers seem especially egregious since the Democrats often end up voting for those in question. Trump’s nominees are waiting longer for confirmation (43 days, versus 35 days under Obama and 24 under Bush), and the backlog of those awaiting confirmation is growing.

Yes, it’s hard to muster much sympathy for complaints on this score from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who subjected a prospective attorney general to the longest confirmation wait for any Cabinet nominee and outright refused to hold hearings for a highly qualified Supreme Court candidate. Moreover, Schumer justified these maneuvers as payback for the Republicans’ unwillingness to hold public hearings on their health bill.

In this case, however, turnabout isn’t fair play — at least not for the American public. Government doesn’t work when nobody’s home, and a president’s nominees deserve the consideration of timely hearings and up-or-down votes.

Over the last several decades, the U.S. has headed in the wrong direction on both counts. The Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other financial regulatory agencies, for instance, have become pockmarked by vacancies that take longer and longer to fill, hurting their effectiveness. An analysis of the time it takes to confirm “uncontroversial” circuit court nominees is even more telling: It went from a median of 44 days under President Ronald Reagan to 218 days under Obama.

Reversing that corrosive trend will be hard. Speedier and better-vetted nominations from the Trump administration would help. So would an end to Schumer’s obstructionism. In politics as in life, two wrongs don’t make a right.