It sounds as if President George Bush and his administration learned some lessons from the ill-fated nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court:
With President Bush expected to pick a new Supreme Court nominee within days, several sources close to the selection process said the White House is focusing on a short list of appellate court judges vetted this summer before he nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to the high court.
The administration has backed away from any insistence that the nominee be a woman or a minority. Rather, it is focused on potential nominees who have previously won Senate confirmation, whose intellectual qualifications would be unquestioned and who have paper trails that make clear their conservative credentials, said one source who is close to the nomination process.
Those candidates, according to the sources, include several federal appellate judges, among them: Samuel A. Alito Jr., J. Michael Luttig, Michael W. McConnell, Emilio M. Garza, Priscilla R. Owen and Edith H. Jones. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the discussions.
By focusing on such candidates, the Bush administration is shifting to what one source described as President Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of picking justices. “The nominee can’t be a stealth candidate for a number of reasons,” the source said. “There are very, very few people who have the kind of credentials that the administration can put up in this environment that would not have a record.”
The administration’s efforts are in line with demands by conservatives on both sides of the fractious debate that doomed White House Counsel Harriet Miers’ Supreme Court nomination. The conservatives are urging Bush to brush aside any concerns about triggering a polarizing confirmation battle with Senate Democrats and to pick a candidate who has displayed a long, stark record of conservative legal thought.
So the stage is set for a brutal confrontation between the two parties — ending in a Democratic attempt at filibuster, the GOP pushing the button on the “nuclear option” to eliminate filibusters and massive, increased polarization (that would be welcomed by some partisans on both sides).
Or is it?
The fact is, if Bush has X number of conservative candidates, he can choose one who is both conservative and pleases conservatives but doesn’t force Democrats to unify and go to all-out war — even if they know they’ll lose the all-out war. Once again, even though he plans to pick a conservative candidate, the choice is up to the President as to whether he’ll opt for more polarization or try to reach his goals and choose someone who won’t represent defying Democrats to try and stop him.
Democrats can gain the support of their partisans but probably won’t get a ton of traction if the candidate is conservative but not highly controversial. The bottom line — which some forget — is that Bush was crystal-clear in both of his presidential campaigns that he’d be nominating conservatives to the Supreme Court. Whom did some Democrats expect he’d pick? Ramsey Clark?
Which way is likely? With Miers, and the Plame indictment, you could argue he needs to unify the base ASAP with a patently in-your-face nominee. But you could also argue that, since he has three more years left, it might be unwise to govern in the White House as the President of only one party and only conservatives. It’s his choice — since some on his list would provoke less Democratic opposition than others. And no matter how he chooses, he’ll face some political consequences.
Unless John Roberts can be cloned.