David Broder writes today that Roberts’s performance in the hearings was so impressive, even dazzling, “that it is hard to imagine how any Democrats can justify a vote against his confirmation.”
Well, that may be a bit much, suggesting as it does that Broder’s imagination — or his familiarity with Democrats these days — must be a bit limited. (Yesterday, Broder’s colleague at the WaPo, E.J. Dionne, wrote that “as many senators as possible should vote no on Roberts,” arguing that senators who don’t have “the guts” to vote against Roberts “will be conceding to the executive branch huge power to control what information the public gets and doesn’t get about nominees to life positions.”)
Broder, on the other hand (and far more persuasively), argued that the picture of Roberts that emerged very clearly from the hearings “is so far from the caricature of a conservative ideologue depicted by some of the interest groups that their attacks seem absurd.” He concluded:
Roberts’s only problem is that he has set a standard so high, it will be difficult for the next nominee to measure up.
If the Democrats are smart, they will not bow to their interest groups but instead will embrace this extraordinary nominee and challenge President Bush, who has at least one more vacancy to fill, to “send us another Roberts.”
The Conventional Wisdom, which is often correct, holds that Bush can’t afford to nominate another white male, much less another conservative white male, that he will have to zag left (or what in our current racially/ethnically sensitive times seems left) and nominate a black, Hispanic, or woman.
I suppose there’s a good chance that’s what he’ll do. There are certainly talented blacks, Hispanics, and women available. But if Bush, out of sheer stubbornness or firm principle, should decide to “give us another Roberts,” he’ll nominate Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, now serving on the Fourth Circuit. Wilkinson is easily Roberts’s match in erudition, intelligence, and manner, and he has both a greater breadth and depth of experience — professor, editor, lawyer, judge. As far as I can see he has only two drawbacks: age — at 60 he might be expected to serve only twenty years or so; and a voluminous paper trail — in addtion to twenty years worth of opinions, Wilkinson has also produced books and articles over the years. They reveal both his intelligence and the fact that he was obviously not preparing himself for a grilling in the Senate.
ADDENDUM
Some Democrats seem to be following Broder’s advice, confident (falsely confident, I believe) that there are no more Roberts waiting in the wings. As this article in today’s New York Times puts it,
Democrats, for their part, are insisting that the next nominee match Judge Roberts’s intellect and impeccable r
