Protecting Liberals from Themselves: Some Advice from a Friend Regarding the Roberts Supreme Court Nomination

by Larry DeWitt
September 1, 2005

 

The Republicans have been whipping the Democrats' butts now at the national level for a good 25 years or so, with only the Clinton years as partial respite, and this was a failed respite due to the moral failings of our standard-bearer. So the nation did not really shift back toward the liberal center even with the model of the Clinton presidency to inspire us, because Clinton himself ultimately let us down.

So Democrats continue to lose elections at the national level, and the prospects are that things are only going to get worse. There must be a reason for this. I have opined elsewhere on this site as to what I think those reasons are. To my bill of indictment, we now have to add one more cause-of-action. Some Democrats are so compulsively dumb they intend to slap themselves about the head and shoulders without mercy by opposing the nomination of Mr. Everyman, John Roberts, to be the Bush Administration's first nominee to the Supreme Court. Have these Democrats lost all contact with reality? So it would seem.

On August 30^th the leftish Alliance for Justice held a press conference to announce to a breathlessly awaiting world that, yes, after long and thoughtful consideration, they were coming out against the nomination of John Roberts. A 114-page report accompanied their announcement. The report is an exquisitely subtle document, that in its 114 pages manages to make an effective and convincing case that John Roberts is, horror of horrors, a conservative. Oh my, bring the children inside. Lock the doors and bolt the shutters. The Republican President has nominated a conservative to be on the Supreme Court. In its endless quest for Justice, the Alliance, with mock regret, announced they must oppose this nomination. Rushing to the microphones, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund leaped into the fray with its own 62-page report, and its own shocked announcement that conservatives, yes conservatives, were poised to ascend the steps of the Supreme Court. The Legal Defense Fund thus joined its indignant voice to the opposition to the Roberts nomination. Fear and trembling were not immediately recorded in the White House.

Democrats in the Senate, meanwhile, have been tip-toeing around the tulips, trying not to say or do anything that would look like they were saying or doing something. This is a slightly wiser course than that of the anguishing Alliance-but not much. Middle America, who sees John Roberts as Mr. Everyman, thought to themselves: there the liberals go again. They either get hyperbolic about not very much, or they mince around without much evidence of any principles they use to chart their course. And thus, Democrats do it to themselves again. Not only will they lose the nomination "fight" over Roberts, in doing so they will dishonor themselves even more with the public.

Liberals have a certain peculiar sickness-an inability to accept success. When the initial civil rights and feminist revolutions were underway-supported by liberals against the resistance of the conservatives-the injustices afflicting minorities and women were gross, unmistakable, and unambiguous. This is why ordinary Americans ultimately came to admire us for our efforts on behalf of justice and equality. Then a terrible thing happened-we succeeded in changing America. As a result, the liberals-because they could not rest from their compulsive reforming-began looking for ever more tiny slices of injustice to get indignant about, with their highly-refined moral/political sensibilities sniffing out the presence of even a few molecules of wickedness in the air. At some point, this frenzied search for the smallest stains of sexism or racism, and the insistent harping on these issues, alienated large segments of middle America, who deserted us for the conservatives. In the eyes of middle America, liberals had become zealots, and the vast majority of Americans do not really like zealots. This is not the whole story of our decline and fall, but it is a key part, and it is the part that is instructive for our present reflections.

To be effective crusaders against injustice we ought to attack the gross, unmistakable, and unambiguous injustices, of which our world offers an abundant supply. We need to stop the stupid business of demonizing every conservative because they are not liberals. We need to stop reflexively opposing Republican nominees and concentrate our ire on those who are really beyond the pale. Yes indeed, we should have opposed that zealous absolutist Robert Bork with all the power at our command. Right cause, right fight. Well done liberals.

And we should have opposed Clarence Thomas too, on the grounds that he was a raging incompetent-a man with a small and very closed mind, with inflexible and absolutist opinions. Stupidity joined to absolutism. If ever there was a case of a nominee lacking "judicial temperament," Thomas was surely it. The NAACP did oppose him, but many conflicted liberals were unable to do so. Ultimately the 11 Democrats in the Senate who voted to confirm Thomas made the difference in this closest confirmation vote of the twentieth century (he squeaked by on a 52-48 margin). One suspects that some liberals just could not oppose a black nominee because this might cause a molecule or two of something that fellow liberals-with their refined snouts sniffing the air-might detect as racism issuing from their pores. So they just couldn't. But we should have. Right cause, right fight, and some liberals ran for cover. And if Anita Hill had not come along to place liberals into a conflicted position of choosing their anti-sexism over their anti-racism, probably many fewer liberals would have opposed Thomas. The fact that he lacked both the intellect and the judgment to be a Justice would have forever been a truth unspoken by most liberals.

And we should, dear God, have opposed Antonin Scalia-who is little more than Bork without a beard. Scalia is a disaster for America, in all the ways that intolerant absolutists always are. But here again, liberals were not firmly against Scalia. Indeed, Scalia sailed through the Senate on a unanimous confirmation vote. A keen mind joined to an intolerant absolutism-good God, that is a truly dangerous combination. It seems hard to believe there could be a worse set of traits in a judge than those exhibited by Clarence Thomas, but Scalia's set is surely it. Smart and smug is a much more dangerous combination than dumb and smug.

So, dear liberal friends, let us imagine together that glorious victory in which you defeat the nomination of John Roberts to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. You will all high-five each other with glee, as you sip your exquisite Chardonnay in the watering-holes around the Capitol. And for a day or two you will be insufferable in your pleasure with yourself. Then what? Do you dream that if Roberts goes down that Bush will then nominate, who? A liberal? Are you nuts? What on earth makes you think that Roberts would be replaced by someone better? Have you no sense of the danger of his being replaced by someone worse? Don't you conceive the possibility that Thomas and Scalia may not be the last members of an extinct herd? Can you not imagine that Republicans will then clamor for the President to move hard to the right with his next nomination, to pay you back for defeating him on this one?

Roberts is a good as it is ever going to get with this Republican President in office. And in the public relations battle, the Bush Administration won the nomination fight on the day the nomination was announced, when every mainstream media outlet in America instantly depicted Roberts as Mr. Everyman. It was over on Day 2. Smile, congratulate the nominee and the President, and show middle America that you can lose with grace. In fact, support the nomination, in which case you will not lose at all. Show middle America that you are in touch with reality enough to admit that we will have a conservative as the next member of the Supreme Court. Show them that you can cheerfully support reasonable and likeable conservatives. Show middle America that you are not a bunch of molecule-sniffers. Show America that you can be reasonable and accommodating and compromising. Let the Republicans be the party of the zealots.

If the vote in the Senate to confirm Roberts is not unanimous, then the Democrats better make damn sure it is the nut-cases among the Republicans who cast the NO votes, not our own nut-cases. We have to stop questing for ideological purity and stop our Jesuitical slicing of our grievances into slices so tiny only liberals have the power to perceive them. We have to stop offending the middle-of-the-road sensibilities of the middle Americans who have deserted us for the Republicans, and whom we must retrieve if we are to ever again be a majority party in this country. We need to save our righteous indignation for the times when the evil is palpable to people other than just to liberals.

Listen up Democrats: You lost the election in 2004. The Republicans won. This means they get to appoint people to the Supreme Court. This means that any and all nominees put forward for the next three years are going to be conservatives. There aren't going to be any liberal Supreme Court nominees. Democrats need to stop this delusional behavior that seems to suggest they think that if they just manage to defeat Roberts that Bush will substitute some sort of liberal in his place. There are no liberals judges in your future. Stop tarnishing the image of the party by complaining and carping and acting as if you cannot read the election results. You lost. Get over it.

Afterword: This column was written prior to the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist, and prior to the President elevating the Roberts nomination to be that of Chief Justice. These developments change nothing about the central argument of this essay.