Lights, Camera, Nomination
High court theater provides suspense for by-the-script politics
The lead-in to George W. Bush's second selection for the Supreme Court fills more than air time and news holes. All the hype supplies some badly needed drama to a political process drained of suspense and surprise. The modern American political duopoly has settled into a pattern as shallow and as unsatisfying as a Sherwood Schwartz sitcom without the laugh track.
Supreme Court nominees, for an increasingly brief few moments, at least offer a jolt of the unfamiliar—like a Cop Rock or Fish Police—before things quickly slide back into their old set-piece positions in Washington. Still, however briefly, our current low-drama high court nomination process fills the same role that national party conventions once did—before they became deadly dull 50 hour infomercials for horrible presidential nominee products. Once upon a time, conventions titillated insiders with gossip and power brokering, eventually unveiling a new standard bearer to the world at large. The court nomination process does much the same today. Except, of course, the world that matters consists exclusively of the members of the Senate.
The backstage nomination machinations are similarly contrived for political effect, just like an old-timey nominating convention. For example, you cannot help but to believe that the sudden late boomlet for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was calculated to drive conservatives into a mad frenzy about his soft-on-abortion stances, thus making that group very relieved and grateful when he is not the President's ultimate selection.
Similarly, the sudden appearance of White House counsel Harriet Miers on various lists suggests a White House nod to factions who loathe the federal judiciary in general and would love nothing more than a non-judge justice on the highest court in the land. Still, a non-judge seems a mighty reach for Bush, putting Pepsi lawyer Larry Thompson in the thanks-for-playing column as well.
Miers does also add heft to the list of women being floated for the "woman slot," however. This is another important political consideration of the nomination process. Registered voters—in this case U.S. Senators—pay attention to this interest group stuff. Bush could not afford to go light on the ladies in the various short lists. Oh, and Thompson is black, just so you know.
Senators, though they are polled, briefed, and focus-grouped just like real members of an electorate, have they own political hides to worry about too. That has given rise to the spectacle of Democrats trying to gauge just how much they should vote against John Roberts so as to best position themselves for the fight over the next nominee. The early approach seemed to be one of accommodation: The goal was to present a loyal, reasonable opposition that largely supported the "mainstream" Roberts, but then was forced by sheer White House perfidy to rise up against the "batshit crazy" second nominee.
But that stance seems to have been abandoned as the reality of Bush's second choice drew near. Some 22 Democratic senators decided they'd be so incensed at Bush's second pick that they had to vote against that choice twice—once on Roberts' nomination and once again later for good measure.
Of course, the floor votes come after the Senate Judiciary Committee takes its turn at the televised portion of the process, during which a dozen moderators gang up on the candidate in the hopes that he or she will say something, anything interesting. With Democrats having failed to get anything at all useful from Roberts, the script for the next nominee will barely need doctoring from the White House. Everything Roberts said can be used again.
All Karl Rove has to do is tell Priscilla Owen or Janice Brown, or whomever else the superfluous Howard Dean has ruled out, to just play Dick Sargent to John Roberts' Dick York. Then America can settle in for some diverting, if familiar, entertainment.