Ego vos elegi

Thoughts from a St. Louis seminarian

Thy Kingdom Come!

A Double Standard

While the nation waits with bated breath, President Bush continues to deliberate about his Supreme Court pick.  (As anyone can attest by reading the "Bench Memos" at National Review Online, the only thing that gets the blogosphere more excited than speculating on a Supreme Court justice is speculating on a papal conclave.  Too much excitement for one year!)  Most recently, it seems the President has had a breakfast meeting with Senate leaders from both parties in an effort to make the upcoming confirmation as smooth as possible.

I understand the President's reasoning, and the political capital to be gained by trying to appear bi-partisan, but it's utterly ridiculous that we are in this situation to begin with.  Could someone remind the Democrats that they lost the last election very thoroughly in both the executive and the legislative branches?  Usually when a party is elected into control of the government, it is expected that they will do what they were elected to do--which in this case includes appointing and confirming justices who share the president's judicial philosophy.  That the President feels he needs to reach out in this fashion--and that the Senate Democrats are practically demanding they should be allowed to preview any potential nominee--shows how thoroughly the Democratic minority has succeeded in convincing themselves that they have the right to handcuff the president in historically unprecedented fashion.  The judicial filibuster, which is still looming in the distance, is an utter novelty in Senate history, invented when President Bush began to appoint federal judges who shared the values of the very large portion of the American electorate which had voted for him as President. 

Things have not been thus in the past, regardless who was in the Oval Office.  Many Senate Republicans surely disagreed with President Clinton's judicial philosophy, yet his appointees made it through almost without controversy.  (If I'm wrong on this, I'd be glad to be corrected; I was young then, but I don't ever remember hearing any.)   When, in 1992, President Clinton was elected, along with a Democratic House and Senate, we didn't really hear the same calls for bipartisanship and consensus that we hear unceasingly from Democrats today.  The Republicans knew they were in the minority because they had lost, and they just dug in to fight (until they won a majority two years later).  But now, we're presented with constant calls for "consensus" which basically translates into the President giving up on his principles in a way that the Democrats would never dream of in his position. 

I apologize if this is souding like a partisan rant; one could say plenty of unpleasant things about Republicans too, and there is always enough dirt to go around.  But (as you may have guessed) the reason that I find the Democrats in the Senate (who I realize have different values than many of the rank and file of their party) so irritating at this juncture is that, as one can tell from the various emails John Kerry still sends out (the former candidate has set up a sort of "shadow presidency," to borrow a British phrase), this situation boils down to the fact that this President pretty clearly thinks Roe v. Wade is bad law, and is likely to appoint a justice who agrees.  And the fact that the President would dare to tamper with Roe makes him so "extreme" as to merit an entirely different treatment from what any president's nominations have ever received before.  I think it's safe to say that no president, Reagan included, ever incited as much virulent animosity on the left as President Bush, and while there are many reasons behind that (environmental issues, foreign policy, etc.), I can't help thinking that his opposition to abortion-on-demand is often the most deep-seated one.  With all his flaws, he's a man we should appreciate in some respects, and certainly be praying for very hard right now.   

posted by: mhouser at 13:16 | link | comments |

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