ShareThisWith the expected departure in June of the most unlikely of Supreme Court justices in modern memory, the Senate is primed for one of those historic confirmation battles that have marred the process for more than four decades, ever since Associate Justice Abraham Fortas was denied elevation to the chief judgeship of the United States.
But whomever President Obama nominates to replace retiring Justice David Souter, the chances are good the nominee won't face what some others have. The numbers for Republicans just aren't there to prolong the confirmation and unless Obama picks a high-risk candidate from far out left field, the process should be comparatively easy. But that is said with the realization that in these crucial matters anything can come up.
The main reason President George H.W. Bush selected Souter back in 1990 had nothing to do with what he had done but with what he hadn't. He was, as one observer at the time remarked, a blank sheet of paper, so antiseptic that no debilitating germs, ideological or personal had attached themselves to him. An admitted social recluse who had served for a time on the New Hampshire Supreme Court and a couple of months as a federal appeals court jurist, he was the perfect candidate to avoid the battles that had become the Senate norm and often carried out in the living color of television.
Bush told his fellow Republicans that the Harvard-educated New Englander was truly a conservative despite the lack of evidence to back that up and the party's right-oriented base accepted the assurances only to become increasingly agitated as Souter became a solid member of the court's liberal bloc especially on social issues. It wasn't the first time the Senate had been ideologically hornswoggled. Liberals took it on the chin when they voted for President Kennedy's nominee, Byron White, on the premise he was one of them only to find out he was anything but.
The early betting on the next nominee has been pretty much limited to the choice being a woman because there is now only one on the court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she has been in a battle with cancer. That, of course, would reduce the field to a point of ridiculousness considering that it would cut out the entire male population no matter their race, creed or qualifications. It was just as silly as denying a seat to women before Ronald Reagan tipped his hat to Sandra Day O'Connor, who became one of the most respected associate justices of the 20th century.
One would hope that Obama would look beyond the recent practice of basing the choice on such narrow considerations as race, ethnicity or gender and just seek the person he believes is the most qualified to sit in judgment of the vital issues of the day, especially someone who has had to deal with life's many problems and understands them.
Souter certainly was not one of those. He has maintained a lifestyle that included only limited experience in the day-to-day problems that impact most Americans yet over which he was asked to pronounce ultimate resolution. He has no wife nor apparent love interest, no children, no home mortgage, no money problems, no next of kin to bug him -- only a weathered house in the woods where he can now commune with nature to his heart's content. There is nothing wrong with that except that such a sterile existence hardly prepares one for the nation's top court.
A senator once argued the case of a quite ordinary nominee who ultimately failed by noting that "mediocre" Americans needed representation on the Supreme Court, too. Actually, that is a quota policy that in the past has been too often the case. The president is expected to choose someone who matches his own philosophical leanings. Hopefully that person also will be the most qualified, woman or man. No one should care about much else.
Sadly, over the years some of the best candidates have been overlooked because of considerations that had nothing to do with excellence.
(E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan(at)aol.com.)
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