So Barack Obama has gone and nominated Elena Kagan as his next Supreme Court pick, which should surprise absolutely nobody; she was always going the frontrunner for the job once she got some experience in a major government position under her belt first, which was why Sotomayor got nominated last year instead of Kagan – the latter was still being seasoned. (Here, I’ll go one better: when Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires next year, it’ll be probably be Merrick Garland or Sidney Thomas replacing her. I’d prefer to see Pamela Karlan, Harold Koh or Leah Ward Sears – I would have preferred any of those over Kagan, frankly – but Obama is who he is.)
As for Kagan, the lefties proclaiming her “Obama’s Harriet Miers”1 are all on crack. Miers was an undistinguished family lawyer. Kagan is a former Harvard Law School dean. There’s kind of a difference. You can complain, perhaps, that Kagan hasn’t written a lot of articles, but so what? She’s clearly intelligent and frankly people arguing that she’s a stealth conservative are on even crackier crack than the “Obama’s Miers” crowd because people who are stealth conservatives don’t spend their lives working in liberal law schools and for Democratic presidents.
In short: she’ll be fine. Not a daring or exciting pick, but a solid one.
- And why is everything in this administration “Obama’s X,” where X is something that happened to Bush? Bush was a disaster, Obama isn’t. NOT THE SAME THING. [↩]
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And why is everything in this administration “Obama’s X,” where X is something that happened to Bush?
A desperate attempt to tie a popular president to an unpopular one. It pulls the popular one down while rehabbing the image of the unpopular one (“See? That incompetence and chicanery could happen to ANYONE!”).
And why is everything in this administration “Obama’s X,” where X is something that happened to Bush?
Different groups of folks use the formulation “Obama’s X” as you outline it here:
1. Republicans who are desperate to have Obama screw up as bad as Bush did to vindicate their belief that he’s as big an idiot as their guy was.
2. Democrats who are certain that Obama is going to screw up as bad as Bush did and keep jumping at shadows because they’re afraid every decision he makes is going to be the big one.
While it’s true that Obama hasn’t been the disaster that Bush was, he hasn’t been all that great yet either. Perhaps he should be compared to the first Bush, or to Carter,
I haven’t heard enough about Kagan yet to have an opinion. I’m not optimistic, but I hope she’ll at least help to balance against Bush’s lousy appointees.
I had really wanted Obama to nominate Andrew Napolitano, but I guess there was never any chance of that. I would’ve settled for Nadine Strassman or somebody like that. The problem is Obama never asks for my advice on anything.
I was going to say that Kagan is Obama’s Sotomayer, except replace “Latino” with “Allegedly Gay”. I mean, look at all the similarities.
Both are women. Both are legal scholars. Both were nominated by Obama to the SCOTUS.
I was listening to someone on NPR talk about how Kagen has no experience in a courtroom.
I must say I prefer that over Scallia’s apparent lack of experience with what most of us call “day to day life.” His views on the rights of suspects and privacy laws are just the top two rulings he’s had I can think of that speak to a “well, it’ll never be ME affected by this, since it never has been before” attitude about the law.
I don’t recall people saying “This is going to be Bush’s stained blue dress” either…
But…but Diane Wood!
I feel a very Gob-like “Come on!” approaching.
I’m a fan of Diane Wood too, but so long as SCOTUSes are nominated to lifetime terms, you don’t nominate the candidate who’s already sixty.
I’m with Matthew Yglesias on the belief that lifetime terms in a politicized court are stupid, and the idea of an 18-year term – so that a justice gets nominated every other year, in a non-election year – strikes me as the ideal situation for the United States, but it’s not gonna happen anytime soon so forget Wood.
“And why is everything in this administration “Obama’s X,” where X is something that happened to Bush?”
I can think of a very simple reason which isn’t even partisan: Bush was essentially the first real US president of the internet age; everything he said and did from the moment he stepped into place was discussed and recorded with a level of detail that no one to hold the office previously had gotten, and he gained a level of common-place familiarity for the average person that even sax-wielding Bill hadn’t achieved, although he did start the process. And when someone does something, you instinctively reach to connect and compare it to the something with which you are most familiar, not necessarily what is most apt.
Oh, let’s not compare Obama to Carter. The right wingers already hate him because he’s black, we don’t need to make their job easier because “everyone thinks he’s useless and sucks (end right wing argument)”
I’m a fan of Diane Wood too, but so long as SCOTUSes are nominated to lifetime terms, you don’t nominate the candidate who’s already sixty.
Especially to replace a Justice who’s retiring when he’s ninety. Because Judge Wood would have five to seven years at most before the grueling SCOTUS workload crushed the life from her. Coal miners don’t know how easy they’ve got it.
Anyway, based on the fact that she’s being nominated by a Democrat, Ms. Kagan is bound to be at least as liberal as Justice Breyer. And another Breyer would be a reasonable replacement for Justice Stevens, who after all was appointed by a Republican.
Carter ended up being million-and-millions exponentially times better that the Ghoul that replaced him though.
People have been pouring vitriol on him for years so that nobody will see that and we can get airports named after the Ghoul.
Obama is disappointing, but no Republican who replaces him will not be worse, and no other replacement is going to happen.
Hopefully, we won’t get Palin and watch it all end in darkness and silence (although that explains the whole 2012 thing, “They were talking about the US presidential election!!!”)