Obama On Roberts II

An interesting link to Obama’s full statement on his Roberts nay-vote. Money quote:

The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination. I do so with considerable reticence. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that this reticence on my part proves unjustified and that Judge Roberts will show himself to not only be an outstanding legal thinker but also someone who upholds the Court’s historic role as a check on the majoritarian impulses of the executive branch and the legislative branch. I hope that he will recognize who the weak are and who the strong are in our society. I hope that his jurisprudence is one that stands up to the bullies of all ideological stripes.

Notice the positive tone. Tone matters. More context here.

Polarization And The Democrats

A reader writes:

Ann Rice, in her endorsement of Hillary, called her "prophetic" for her health care reform efforts in 1993. Well, if derailing the viability of health care reform for a generation is prophetic, sure. Now she promises to repeat the same mistake. No matter how hard she works, does anyone think she’ll convince Mitch McConnell to create a new welfare state program? Doesn’t she remember Bill Kristol’s memo calling for all out opposition. Sorry, but six years of keeping her head down in the Senate to rebuild her reputation is hardly the experience that will be needed.

Polarization’s a bitch for liberals. Even if it’s a "roll of the dice", Obama is our only shot at building a movement than can defeat polarization. He’s doing it the old-fashioned way, asking people to work for change. It’s hardly a sure thing. But, as Oscar Wilde wrote,

"A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish."

We don’t need to to change the leadership of polarized Washington, for which Hillary is no doubt the best suited of the Democratic candidates. We need to end polarization, and that requires a Democratic landslide that only Obama might achieve. So let’s roll the dice.

The Many Masks Of Clinton

Whatever works:

Like the tears, her victory speech suggested that Clinton is resolved to inhabit a new persona, at least as long as she needs to. Instead of her usual power suit, she wore a flowery brocade jacket that oozed femininity. She gushed about her "full heart," and how she had "found my own voice."

Sixty years old, with all that massive experience in the work of transforming the nation, and she’s just now finding her voice? More likely, she’s just found a new way to disguise her essential self.

Clinton’s Berlusconi-ism

A really original and insightful column by Chris Caldwell in the FT on the melodrama of Clinton’s very public, and very scripted emotional "breakdown" before the NH primary:

The recent histrionics bring to mind the closing days of the Italian campaign of 2006, when Mr Berlusconi ruminated on his rapport with his nation’s telephone sex workers and stormed into a meeting of Confindustria to denounce the assembled businessmen for having “skeletons in their closet”. Mr Berlusconi’s 11th-hour antics brought him a political comeback as spectacular as Mrs Clinton’s on Tuesday. He narrowed a double-digit poll deficit to a few thousand votes and nearly won.

She’ll try anything. A blogger dissents here.

Face Of The Day

Sarahobamapetermacdiarmidgetty

US Senator Barack Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah Obama stands in her house on January 12, 2008 in Kogelo, western Kenya. Barack Hussein Obama, father of US presidential candidate hopeful Obama, was born and raised in Kogelo. He died in a car accident in 1982. Senator Barack Obama’s parents separated when he was young. By Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.

Obama and Roberts

Some dissents from this dissent:

Perhaps Obama simply recoiled at the quid pro quo implied by Roberts’ meeting with Bush on July 15 2005 – the same day he overturned the Hamdan verdict – not to mention all that had gone before. Most people would regard it as unethical for a judge to have a private meeting with a plaintiff during a hearing, but Roberts thought nothing of meeting with Cheney, Miers, Rove and Gonzales during the arguments and deliberations of Hamdan.

And another:

I’m a lawyer, an economic & foreign policy conservative/social liberal (is that a "pragmatic liberal" or "libertarian conservative"?), who would have voted against Roberts in the Senate. Unlike your dissenter, I have probably voted for Republicans and Democrats equally. Roberts’ credentials are stellar, but his equivocal, perhaps ambiguous, answers at the hearings combined with features of his career in private practice sent up red flags.

Those same credentials also gave him something of a free pass through the hearings. In the few instances where he was actually made to answer the hard questions, he revealed himself to be exactly what he is turning out to be: a pragmatic conservative radical closely aligned philosophically to Scalia, but with more finesse and discretion.  The "blue dogs" who joined with the Republicans are, for me, the ones who betrayed their principles in the name of political expediency. 

Obama was in a better position than most senators to see through Roberts’ facade of reasonableness and recognize the essentially radical judicial philosophy driving him.  I view his vote on Roberts as an imprimatur of his balanced outlook and philosphical integrity.  Roberts is no friend of individual liberities.  He is a statist of Cheneyian dimensions. History will be the arbiter, but my bet is that Obama’s vote will be vindicated over time.  In close cases Roberts will prove himself an ally of the unitary executive – as long as that executive shares his agenda; he will uphold the right of government to legislate morality and limit personal liberty; he will, under the guise of theoretical pluralism, uphold in fact a favored position for Christians under the First Amendment.