President Bush, in his radio address today, spoke of his approach to nominating Sandra Day O’Connor’s successor as follows:
My nominee will be a fair-minded individual who represents the mainstream of American law and American values.
He said a bunch of other stuff too, but none of it had any content. This one sentence, however, is interesting – the "mainstream" of "American law." If he really means that, it’s actually a pretty big signal. Alberto Gonzales, I think it’s fair to say, is within the "mainstream" of American law. So is ex-Solicitor General Ted Olsen, and probably D.C. Circuit Judge John Roberts. On the other hand, Janice Rogers Brown, for example, is not – like her or not, she is on the far edge on numerous important issues, and cannot be considered a "mainstream" judge if words retain any meaning.
Is Bush sending a signal? Is he laying the groundwork to disappoint his far-right minions by, say, nominating someone he actually likes (Gonzales) rather than someone who might steer the Court well to the right? Or is this just happy-talk without any real content?
Maybe we’ll find out this week.
Yeah, I think that Gonzales (and heaven help us–John Yoo too) is within the mainstream of American legal thought. What does it say that justifications for torture are now mainstream? In Gonzales case he does it by defining deviance down. X terrible treatment doesn’t constitute torture, but Yoo actually dares to say that Congress doesn’t have the authority to stop a war-time president from authorizing torture.
It very easily could be happy talk to trick liberals into relaxing (won’t work). Remember “uniter, not a divider”? đŸ™‚