In a news report mash note that appears in today’s New York Times, journalist administration sycophant Elisabeth Bumiller describes the interviews that President Bush conducted with potential Supreme Court nominees.
If the spin-doctors spinning Bumiller are to be believed, Bush was more interested in the cross-training regimens of prospective justices than their judicial philosophies:
“Well, I told him I ran three and a half miles a day,” Judge Wilkinson recalled in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “And I said my doctor recommends a lot of cross-training, but I said I didn’t want to do the elliptical and the bike and the treadmill.” The president, Judge Wilkinson said, “took umbrage at that,” and told his potential nominee that he should do the cross-training his doctor suggested.
“He thought I was well on my way to busting my knees,” said Judge Wilkinson, 60. “He warned me of impending doom.”
Judge Wilkinson’s conversation with the president about exercise and other personal matters in an interview for a job on the highest court in the land was typical of how Mr. Bush went about picking his eventual nominee, Judge John G. Roberts, White House officials and Republicans said. Mr. Bush, they said, looked extensively into the backgrounds of the five finalists he interviewed, but in the end relied as much on chemistry and intuition as on policy and legal intellect.
I don’t doubt that Bush was more interested in treadmills than jurisprudence; after all, every candidate coming before him had been thoroughly vetted by his staff and carefully chosen from a list of “evergreen” nominees. So why not make the final decision based on cardiovascular fitness, on the candidate’s ability to outwit, outplay, and outlast those who would challenge him?
We can criticize the Bush administration for many things, but a lack of stagecraft is probably not among them. Though its sense of set decoration can sometimes be a little off, the administration has presented its nominee according to the dictates of television’s most recent trend.
Welcome to Survivor: SCOTUS Edition.
The show opens with Bush introducing John Roberts to the nation, as his adoring wife and cherubic children look on. The message conveyed — and conveyed pretty effectively — is that Roberts is an all-American family man.
Peppermint PattyBush tells us that Roberts was the captain of his football team; that he worked during his college summers; that he loves his family. In the days that follow, American newspapers fill in the back-story: witness this collection of images from the New York Times, which includes fascinating tidbits such as the information that “During his junior year, he played Peppermint Patty in the production of ‘You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.’”
We didn’t quite get an announcement that Bush looked into Roberts’ eye and saw his soul — Dear Leader has been burned before on that one — but the import of the media campaign is clear: we are meant not just to approve of the nominee, but to fall in love with him.
And not surprisingly, the less intellectually rigorous among us already have. I wonder how many boxes of tissues and tubs of vaseline David Brooks went through as he penned this column.
The administration chose a nominee without a long paper trail — a judicial Zelig, if you will — which gave them an opportunity to create the narrative around which analysis of the nominee would be based.
Is Roberts a made man, as Atrios has written? If he is a made man, is it in the sense of being admitted to the Republican country club, or in the sense of already having his nomination in the bag? Or both?
The question with which many liberals have wrestled over the past few days is how much of a fight we should put up against this nomination — whether it would be better for liberals to spend our political capital on Roberts, or to save it up for the next nominee. As usual, Billmon provides incisive commentary:
I mean, it’s time to wake up, guys. We’ve got a different rule book now — brought to you by Karl Rove and the propaganda machine from hell. The Republicans don’t use those tactics because they’re sick, sadistic bastards (well, not only that). They use them because they work. And until the Dems learn to play by the same rules, they’re going to get their heads handed to them, time after time after time.
I don’t know if it’s a good idea to use the tactics Billmon lays out in his post — and I don’t think that “corporate lawyers in the Democratic Party” are the main reason why liberals would hold back — but I do know that even if Democrats face an uphill battle against the Roberts nomination, conceding defeat at the outset doesn’t get us anywhere.
Instead, I think we need to disrupt the narrative, break the frame, and shatter the Leave it to Beaver story that the administration is selling. How we best go about doing that is an open question, but it might be a good idea to start here (via sukabi at ASZ) and here (via Majikthise) and here.
After all, I’ve yet to see the reality show that didn’t get ugly once the voting started.
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SkaroffBlog » Blog Archive » Initial thoughts:
[…] Matt from Tattered Coat, whose posts seem to get better by the day, does an excellent job of dissecting what the media coverage of the nomination indicates about what to expect from the wingnuts, talking heads, and both Dems and ‘Pubs as well. We can criticize the Bush administration for many things, but a lack of stagecraft is probably not among them. Though its sense of set decoration can sometimes be a little off, the administration has presented its nominee according to the dictates of television’s most recent trend. […]
Rod:
That David Brooks Op-Ed piece is really quite remarkable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone bend over quite that far. If I were Roberts, I would be blushing. I think somebody has a pretty blatant crush on a certain somebody else, which is so ironic I can hardly even stand it.
publicorgtheory:
I wonder how many boxes of tissues and tubs of vaseline David Brooks went through as he penned this column.
Harsh.
I’m fairly reflective about the tactics right now. This can be an endless “what does it all mean” game, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the choice was intended to provoke exactly the Democratic backlash some recommend. Is it possible that sticking it to Opie sets public opinion against those who would oppose the next nominee?
Granted, that thought gives far more credit for strategic thinking than might be due, but think about how quiet Downing Street and Plamegate have gone in the media. Just as nominating a justice is certain to grab the front page, nominating a justice who’s not objectionable enough would be likely to make the minority party look bad, or at least give support to spinning it that way.
The Heretik:
The administration chose a nominee without a long paper trail — a judicial Zelig, if you will — which gave them an opportunity to create the narrative around which analysis of the nominee would be based.
Good line. One of the better I have seen on this.
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