Daily Ramblings:
The Hangin' Judge Came In Unnoticed ...07/20/2005 10:21:14 pm
Good thinking, Ann (Coulter: Souter In Roberts Clothing). Convince the Left that we're scared John Roberts is just another liberal-elitist-in-waiting - that once on the court he'll see himself as the lord and benefactor of "every hung-up person in the whole wide universe" and will conjure up new fundamental rights to order and flush reason, logic and that yellowed piece of paper we call the U.S. Constitution right down the sewer (in other words continue business-as-usual at the U.S. Supreme Court). If enough conservatives say that's what they're afraid of, it should dampen whatever momentum the loony left - otherwise known as the Democratic Party, circa 2005 - is attempting to gather in opposing Judge Roberts.
Well, actually Ann's points are well taken. In essence, she's saying Republican Presidents don't have a great track record at nominating "stealth" candidates, and that people who've never expressed strong conservative opinions aren't crypto-conservatives - they're liberals, a lá David Souter and Anthony Kennedy. She believes we've reached the point where we should relish an all-out fight for an unabashedly conservative nominee. We have the House, the Senate and the Presidency, so, guess what: the American people are clearly on board with all this. Let's get the kind of judge the President was elected to nominate.
I sympathize with that mode of thinking and I'd be fully behind a Janice Rogers Brown (or how about a renominated Robert Bork?). However, I think Ann's pessmism is misplaced, albeit well earned.
I happen to to believe that when it came to picking a Supreme Court nominee, President Bush didn't have to weigh what he needed to do to "mollify his base," as some talking-head media observers theorized. On this issue, he is the base. He has been direct and unabashed about what kind of judge he would nominate, from the debates during the 2000 election onward. He has been waiting for the moment to be able to do exactly what he said he would do.
I certainly don't know John Roberts, and I won't pretend I've been able to figure him out in 24 hours of Googling. All over the media, right now, people are debating who he really is. Ted Kennedy was up bright and early asking, literally, "Whose side is he on?" (In that he put his finger right on the problem in that uncanny and unintentional way of his: the Supreme Court is now seen not as a place where brilliant legal minds uphold our consitution, but rather as a mud-wrestling tournament of naked partisans.)
People will be taking this comment by Roberts and that footnote and the other memo and extrapolating one way or another to discern his future decisions. It's safe to expect that he himself will give little away during the confirmation hearings about how he would vote on one issue or another, despite the best efforts of Senator Schumer et al.. So, not only do I not know John Roberts now - I don't expect to have 100% personal certainty about his disposition on the key issues before he is confirmed. However, what I do feel confident about is that Dubya watched the mistakes that his father made in this area, and indeed watched the mistakes that Ronald Reagan made, and has been personally determined not to make the same mistakes. He is determined to shift the balance of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the way that Reagan failed to do because of Democratic opposition and Republican weak knees, and in the way that his father failed to do because of (arguably) a lack of true ambition to do so - a fatal lack of that "vision thing."
Dubya doesn't lack that vision thing. He is certainly not immune to strategic compromises in order to defuse opposition and focus his capital on the things that matter most to him - see the Campaign Finance bill as one example, and a sickening one to be sure. But anyone who thinks that such compromises aren't made by every President - including the very best ones - hasn't read history and may be looking at politics more like religion than the very messy bloodsport it really is.
You have to know when to plant your flag and when to give up a hill in the interests of taking the mountain. In Dubya's case, it is clear to this observer that the Supreme Court is a mountain that matters. The culture of life - to take one example of an issue that the Supreme Court is crucial to - is not just something Bush speaks about to hear himself talk. It's in his veins and it's why he ran for President; on this issue he is the base.
Whether it came down to his personal interview with Roberts - and I think that it did - or the research that his most trusted people performed, I think that President Bush is convinced that John Roberts will be among those on the court who believe that the Constitution only protects us when we protect it; when we treat its words as meaning what they say, and when we regard its written articles as written law - and not as a canvas on which to paint our short-sighted whims and end up drawing nothing more than a map of our own destruction.
Call me naïve, but this was a fundamental reason why I supported Bush in 2000 - and, though there were certainly ample additional reasons to vote for him again in 2004, he had given me no reason doubt that he retained his core beliefs in this area. I'm far from thinking that I threw my vote away, just because Dubya has nominated someone that the Democrats will have trouble getting traction against.
The way I figure it, I'm finally getting what I voted for back in November of 2000 - and it feels pretty darned good.
Addendum 07/21/2005 08:54:25 am: Don't miss Iowahawk's essential call-to-arms: He Or She Is The Wrong Man Or Woman For The Court.
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