I watched last night's Nevada Senate debate on C-Span, and for the most part thought it was a battle of Milquetoast versus Moronic. Sharron Angle clearly would be out of her depth in Washington, knowing little and understanding less about key issues (especially Social Security). Nevada certainly would be better served with Reid remaining in office.
But one part of the Q&A left me feeling true pity for the voters of Nevada, and a fair amount of ambivalence about Reid's candidacy:
[UPDATE: HuffPo video link is acting hinky. I've moved it to the bottom of the diary and below the tip jar. It's the 3rd video from the top on this page. -JR]
The moderator asked:
Q: The next question goes to Senator Reid, and it has to do with the Supreme Court. One of the most important duties given to a Senator by the Constitution is the approval of an individual to a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. So we can get a sense [of] how you would vote, name a current or former Supreme Court Justice you admire, and why, and name a current or former Supreme Court Justice who should never have been approved by the Senate.
Reid never answered the part about which Justice he thought never should have been confirmed (which was odd, given that he voted against the confirmations of Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, and had good and principled reasons for so doing each time), but he did name two justices whom he admired. One I can almost give him a pass on: the other is inexcusable.
Reid: This may surprise everyone, and I got a little criticism for doing this: I don't agree with Scalia's opinions lots of times, but he is a masterful, masterful mind, he does good things. So Scalia has done a job. I don't agree with his opinions, but he's really an example to anyone who appreciates the law.
This is actually quite understandable: for all his many, glaring faults, Antonin Scalia has been the face of a school of constitutional thought that has a lot of traction among scholars and practitioners. Original public/semantic meaning analysis is too popular a theory to ignore: it must be engaged and challenged. And having its strongest proponent on the High Court--writing some of the most cogent opinions any justice has ever penned (so clear and readable that every first-year law student in the country can deconstruct them)--almost makes up for the fact that he consistently comes out on the wrong side of cases and regularly fails to offer the protections of the law to those who rightfully deserve it. Given his abilities as a writer and a leader of a legal movement, I can get behind this portion of Reid's answer.
If only he had shut up there, instead of then saying this:
Reid (con't): Uh, Whizzer White. I liked him because of his opinions, but also because he was an All-American football player.
Some of us clearly remember mcjoan's Presidential Candidates Forum at YearlyKos '07. It was not too long after a debate in which Bill Richardson--at that time still considered a potential VP nominee and a credible dark horse--said Whizzer White was his model Justice (prompting a deluge of criticism and the wrath of Armando). This video starts with the very first question Joan asked Governor Richardson:
Mcjoan: Good afternoon, Governor. Thank you for joining us. You said in the last debate--or in a previous debate--that your model Supreme Court Justice would be Byron "Whizzer" White, despite the fact that Justice White was in the dissent on both the Roe and the Miranda cases. ... Have you given more thought to that answer, and to what you would like the Supreme Court to look like after a Richardson administration?
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Richardson: I screwed up on that one. [Laughter and applause] You know, I loved John F. Kennedy, and I figured 'if Kennedy had appointed him...,' but it was a screw-up.
I'm pretty sure that was the most applause Bill Richardson received at the convention.
In addition to the two dissents mcjoan cited that put White on the wrong side of the law and history--Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade (accompanied in dissent on Roe by none except Justice Rehnquist)--he also wrote the odious and anti-gay majority opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding bans on private acts of homosexual sodomy, and deciding that there was no constitutional right for gays to have sex even in their own homes behind locked doors (when that case was overturned 6-3, Scalia, Reid's other model Justice, joined the dissent).
As Ed Kilgore (among others) noted at the time of the Richardson gaffe, Whizzer White, in addition to being on the wrong side of three major civil rights decisions, was not exactly a constitutional whiz. I at least give Scalia credit for knowing what he believes and articulating it forcefully and clearly, but the same really can't be said for White, who had a truly confused jurisprudence on separation of powers and the First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendments.
Look, I get that Harry Reid is no champion of a woman's right to choose, and that he's running a close race in a fairly conservative state. But really, Whizzer White?!! I'm sure he was one of the best halfbacks to ever play the game, but liking him as a model Justice because he played football is like saying Reagan was a model President because he played George Gipp so well. And liking him because of his opinions is, as Armando noted about Richardson, practically a disqualifying act for leadership within the Democratic Party.
Far as I'm concerned, that was as bad an answer to a SCOTUS-related question we've seen all year (yes, including Christine O'Donnell's, but that may just be because I'm grading on a curve). Harry should know better and, if nothing else, should have learned from Bill Richardson's self-described screw-up.
[Video (if the link works):]
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