Kerry and Kennedy misfire

[Tigermike 3,063]

Kerry and Kennedy misfire

By Scot Lehigh  |  September 23, 2005

HOW SHOULD Senate Democrats respond to the example Ted Kennedy and John Kerry set Wednesday in declaring their opposition to John Roberts in a one-two political punch?

By disregarding it.

Why? Well, first let's review the bidding. When Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement, Democrats warned President Bush not to nominate a conservative ideologue to replace her on the Supreme Court.

Bush responded by putting up a well-qualified jurist with widely recognized legal skills, someone the Senate unanimously confirmed to the US Court of Appeals in 2003. To rework Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s line about FDR, John Roberts has both a first-class intellect and a first-rate temperament.

Then, when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died, the president effectively lowered the ideological stakes by renominating Roberts for the chief justice's job, which means his confirmation would hardly change the court's makeup.

Roberts, as expected, played the Sphinx on many issues during his confirmation hearings. Still, he not only called Roe v. Wade ''settled as a precedent" and thus entitled to respect; he suggested that the subsequent decisions upholding Roe have precedential value as well. What's more, he said he sees an established right of privacy in the Constitution. That's further than some successful past nominees have gone.

Now, with all that as prologue, the party's liberal interest groups are urging Democrats to oppose Roberts in order to send a message to Bush not to make his next nominee to the court a conservative ideologue.

Ah, that political pretzel logic.

Still, on Wednesday morning, both Kennedy and Kerry took to the Senate floor to announce that they would be voting against Roberts, with Kerry appraising the coy jurist at such length that time's winged chariot eventually hurried near, forcing him to skip page upon page of his anti-Roberts reasoning. (The nation seems likely to survive.)

Both senators said that since they couldn't be sure about where Roberts will be on issues dear to them, they couldn't vote for him.

It's true that confirmation hearings are a guessing game and senators are often left to weigh broad statements and small clues rather than specific answers. But it is unrealistic for Democrats to expect that a Republican president would nominate a potential justice who would satisfy all their concerns; if he did so, his own conservative base would revolt.

Kennedy, a liberal icon, clearly feels burned in past efforts to cooperate with Bush and is prone to fear the worst. In 1990, for example, he fretted that ''literally millions of our fellow citizens" would be denied their rights if mild-mannered David Souter was confirmed. (Granted, that foreboding sometimes serves him well; witness Iraq.)

Kerry, meanwhile, still harbors presidential hopes and obviously doesn't want to run afoul of liberal activists by voting for Roberts.

So perhaps Wednesday's exercise was a symbolic imperative for both men.

Still, their Democratic colleagues would do better to look to the example of Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which yesterday voted 13 to 5 in favor of Roberts.

In his Wednesday speech, Leahy said that though the popular move for a Democrat was to oppose Roberts, he thinks that Roberts is not a conservative ideologue but rather the sort of cautious, principled, precedent-respecting conservative who merits support.

The evidence suggests he's right. And with Roberts replacing the arguably more conservative Rehnquist, this is not the real donnybrook over changing the court; thus it simply doesn't make sense to wage an intense battle over a qualified nominee who is within acceptable ideological bounds.

Further, the idea that running up a strong tally against Roberts will encourage the president to send up a more moderate nominee for the next seat -- or help in the fight if Bush's next nominee is an archconservative -- is the most fanciful kind of thinking.

If Democrats wage war over a qualified, measured conservative like him, it's just as likely to strengthen Republican resolve for a knock-down-drag-out for the kind of ultraconservative the right really want. Further, if Democrats raise a hyperbolic ruckus over Roberts, how can they expect the public to take them seriously when it really matters?

No, Democrats need to dismiss the clamor of the activists and recognize the obvious: Despite their fears, on this one, George W. Bush met them halfway.

Now they need to respond in kind.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.

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[WarTim 3,457]

It would be funny to have the President nominate Robert Bork for the vacancy.

THAT would be Must See TV!

[AURaptor 1,128]

It would be funny to have the President nominate Robert Bork for the vacancy.

THAT would be Must See TV!

183355[/snapback]

Want even better t.v. ? Bush to nominate John Ashcroft!

[DKW 86 7,450]

It would be funny to have the President nominate Robert Bork for the vacancy.

THAT would be Must See TV!

183355[/snapback]

Want even better t.v. ? Bush to nominate John Ashcroft!

183374[/snapback]

Now, even I dont like Ashcroft. The silly statue covering episode was too much for me. How freakin silly can you get?