RedState has a superb piece on how President George Bush should proceed on filling the Supreme Court slot by Jay Cost, a graduate student at the University of Chicago who is working toward his Ph.D in political science.
In the post that you MUST read in its entirety, Cost outlines 9 tips for GWB in filling the Supreme Court seat left by Sandra Day O’Connor’s resignation yesterday. And you can immediately tell the difference between how Cost, a political scientist, views achieving tactical goals for a larger stragetical goal versus how many lock-step ideological writers view it. He argues that that immediate and short-term needs require the White House to give its choice some careful thought.
Bush, he writes, is at a low point in his power and his goal should be to restore his power. He suggests the Bush team should be realistic in terms of acknowledging the poll numbers and loss of some clout in Congress: “This situation requires him to take a very different strategy than a President at the height of his power might take.”
One of his key points:
If Bush wishes to use this as an opportunity to extend his power, he must ask how this can be best accomplished. The answer, I believe, is a clean victory in this nomination process. A clean victory, one where the Senate quickly approves his first choice without a bloodbath, would improve his public standing as well as his standing within the Congress. If everybody sees that Bush is able to get what he wants without much fuss, it will extend his power and enable him to achieve his goals down the road. As I said, a President’s power is largely informal, and therefore largely psychological. This means that political victories tend to breed political victories. On the other hand, a protracted fight will only encourage his opponents and create further skepticism within the public about his ability to get his way. This would diminish his power — political defeats tend to breed political defeats.
His advice? Bush must “neutralize” the left versus “mobilize” his base since the fight this time isn’t in the electoral college but the Senate, where there are various ways a minority party can fight back and obstruct.
Give the Senate a nominee who places groups like Moveon and People for the American Way in a difficult position. They will oppose Bush regardless of whom he appoints because they want Bush to lose. However, the correct nominee will minimize their ability to influence potential opponents in the Senate. If these groups cannot present to Senate Democrats a politically compelling case to oppose the nominee, Bush will see fewer opponents in the Senate and therefore get a nominee past the minoritarian roadblocks he faces.
This might mean that the American right will be disappointed. They might want a nominee who boldly and unequivocally states his affinity for the Rehnquist/Thomas/Scalia wing of the Court. If Bush’s goal is to extend his power, he cannot appoint such a person because the right cannot help him — not in the Senate.
Cost therefore suggests Bush pick a “dark horse” and someone with a short paper trail, to throw the Democrats off balance. The nominee should be vetted properly so as to prevent the Republicans’ worst nightmare: a “stealth liberal.” Just being a minority will not be enough.
He concludes:
It seems to me that Bush has two goals with this vacancy, both of which concern power. On the one hand, he wants to maximize the power of his office tomorrow by getting a clean victory today. On the other hand, he wnats to maximize the power of his legacy by getting a nominee who reflects his views. Ideally, these two will not conflict. But, the ideal here is unlikely. He might have to trade a marginal gain in one area for a marginal loss in another….
I would only say that I believe Bush’s most important goal is a quick and clean nomination process…Bush has no political capital (which is an inside-the-Beltway term for power) to spare at the moment. He must build some to accomplish anything significant in this term. Thus, insofar as his legislative agenda means more him than a single Supreme Court seat, he should look for a quick, clean victory. He should look for his first choice to sail through the nomination process with little-to-no damage.
Good advice. And it which boils down to this: GWB shouldn’t go with a less polarizing, more unifying choice that can meet some of his ideological goals but not unleash joint political dismemberment in the Senate.
Good advice. But, then, this administration has often marched to the beat of its own drummer.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.