This week’s televised confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor before the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate may not have been the show to watch for viewers seeking thrills and suspense, I suppose. But for a slow week in July, it was pretty good political theater nonetheless.
Because Democrats enjoy a substantial majority in the Senate, Sotomayor’s confirmation as President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the Supreme Court has never been much in doubt since its posting.
Her pending elevation to the high court as a replacement for retiring Justice David Souter — making her the first jurist of Hispanic descent to become a member of The Supremes — was inevitable “barring a total meltdown” on her part, as South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham so eloquently stated the case early in the hearing.
That being so, the hearing became a swell opportunity for outnumbered Republican members of the Judiciary Committee to make the nominee squirm with tough lines of questioning seemingly aimed at impressing their conservative constituencies while not alienating the Hispanic vote as with trying to derail a nomination al-ready sewn up.
They hit the judge with all the current hot-button issues — abortion, gun control, property rights and the like — and with controversial views she expressed in her public speechifying during her 17 years on federal court benches.
Although Republicans scored their points and on occasion made the sidestepping Sotomayor appear to be inconsistent in her answers, for the most part the nominee proved to be every bit as adept as any politician in the room at refusing to be pinned down. Her supporters, including her patron, Obama — a master of the genre — could not have been disappointed in her overall performance.
Sen. Graham, always worth the price of admission to such periodic Washington sideshows, acknowledged in his good ol’ boy down home country lawyer manner that Sotomayor’s court rulings, though sometimes tilted a bit to left of center, have been within the mainstream.
It was not her rulings that caused him concern, but her public speeches heavy on overtones of gender and ethnic bias that had “bugged the hell out of me,” Graham told the judge. If the Supreme Court thing didn’t work out for her, she probably should forget about getting into the speechwriting business as an alternative career, he counseled.
One of the speeches Graham had in mind as having bugged the hell out of him was, of course, Sotomayor’s much-publicized 2001 address which included the comment that a “wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience” might make “better” rulings from the bench than a white male, the key offending word being “better.”
Had Graham or any other conspicuous male made an equivalent public statement in praise of wise white men he surely would not have been seated where Sotomayor was, awaiting confirmation to the United States Supreme Court, the senator told the judge. One could fairly picture males throughout the land symbolically high-fiving the senator for his political incorrectness in suggesting the existence of a double standard.
Sotomayor conceded that her attempt at “rhetorical flourish” in that infamous speech bombed miserably and was a mistake. But that didn’t stop Republicans from revisiting the subject.
At one point, Graham, ostensibly unable to locate the quote in his papers, asked Sotomayor if she remembered her exact words, and if so would she help him out by reciting them. She shot him a look that said “Nice try senator, but if you think I’m dumb enough to fall for that, you’re nuts,” and remained mute, judicial restraint preventing her from explaining that she hadn’t been born yesterday.
Televised congressional hearings may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Many viewers, weaned on the knock-down drag-out rudeness of television shout shows, probably see civilized debate as terminally boring.
On the other hand, even when such hearings lack the pizzazz and great story lines of an old-time Watergate or Iran-Contra scandal, many citizens likely find them somewhat addictive.
I’m with them, and likely will be until the coming apocalypse, when none of it will matter much.
BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.