In the last month, there has been only one face of competence peeking from out of the mountain of failure that is the Bush Administration: a single man whose public mien, seriousness of purpose, easy manner, strongly-held values, experience and engagement with the people of United States are obvious.
That man is John Roberts.
Judge Roberts is a conservative Republican, a product of the Reagan years, a middle-aged white man in a blue suit who seemed at first glance to be a walking mannequin in the shop window of the tax-cutting, wealth-rewarding upper middle-class GOP. He is not a jurist that a Democratic president would send to the Senate for Chief Justice. Given his service and his own published views (thin as they are, scarcely increased under questioning by the Senate) he seems not to be a man after my own political heart.
And yet, I think he should be confirmed - and I would urge my own Senators Schumer and Clinton to pull the "aye" lever under their desks, mid-term politics be damned.
I give only three reasons (and quite sensibly, they're aimed at my fellow Democrats; I know you Repubs agree):
1. He will be confirmed. We lost the Presidential election. Public sentiment favors his confirmation. It is a useless battle in a time of national peril, in my view. Is this a feckless, cowardly argument? Perhaps. But sometimes expediency and practicality trump doctrine.
2. I do not believe he is an extremist, even given the scant knowledge we have. I think he is a mainstream conservative, similar in stripe to the mainstream liberalism of Ginsburg. I think he's a big government man at heart if not in rhetoric (like Reagan and Forty-One). The Bull Moose captures my sentiments:
John Roberts is no Bork, Thomas or Scalia. Roberts has shown that he is no originalist extremist. He is apparently respectful of precedent. He has a modestly expansionist view of the commerce clause - he does not view the welfare state as unconstitutional. And he acknowledges a right to privacy. In sum, Roberts is a conventional conservative not a right wing revolutionary jurist.
3. He is very obviously competent. This matters - a lot. At a time when the Federal government under this President has been shown as a sham, an endless morass of incompetence, political hackery, and downright corruption, the earnest, competent presentation by Judge Roberts under the Senate's gaze actually lifted this liberal Democrat's spirits - just a hair, perhaps; the thinnest light in the gathering gloom of national failure and disgrace. But a light nonetheless.
We are simply not going to get a better appointment from this President Bush (we may indeed get a far worse appointment shortly and if so, Democrats should oppose it vigorously). At worst, at rock bottom, in the slime of modern Court annals, he's Rehnquist. At his ambitious, progressive height (and I think there's hope), he's probably Warren.
Given the actuarial tables, we're likely to have the Roberts Court for several decades. That would not be my first choice, or even my second. Although his hearing didn't reveal much of his philosophic mind, it did reveal much about the man: he is competent. On this basis, he should be confirmed.
UPDATE: The Moderate Voice, hard-core critic of this administration, agrees, noting that Roberts "truly seems to be a conservative who thinks through issues rather than adheres to and follows a strict ideological line."
