Briefly

Roberts v. Miers

Lord knows, I wasn't crazy about the John Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court--but my objections were purely ideological. Even a casual look at his credentials made it evident that the President had done an admirable job of selecting a stealth candidate: one whose conservative bona fides were obscure, but whose qualifications were impeccable. And it didn't take long at all for me to realize that this is how the process is supposed to work: the President gets to name his nominee, and has every right to pick someone whose views conform with his own; the Senate may decline to confirm the nominee, but they have no real say in who gets nominated in the first place. (The "advise" part of "advise and consent" is by far the weaker part of the equation.) So, as much as I may dislike it, I was obliged to admit that the selection/confirmation process was followed fairly, and that in the end a qualified candidate was seated on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then came Aunt Harriet. And by now you already know where I'm going with this, so do I really need to continue on?

The interesting question for Democrats is this: should they oppose or embrace her? Ideologically, she may end up being more moderate than the other "strict constructionists" whom Bush could have named; but she is plainly not qualified for the job, and to my mind that's the part that really matters. Call me crazy, but I never have been able to work up the kind of high dudgeon that most liberals feel about Antonin Scalia because I've seen Scalia's mind at work and I know that he's brilliant and thoughtful, even though I disagree with him almost all the time.

To me, the thing that really matters on the Supreme Court is that it be comprised of the best and brightest legal minds. Agreement or disagreement ideologically is a distant second. Therefore, if I were a Democrat--and wait, I am!--then I would take a stand against Ms. Miers, even knowing that Bush is likely to then nominate Ms. Rogers Brown or someone like her. But at least the candidate would have something resembling the ability to do the job, which has to be the part that really matters.

Murrow and Friendly

I saw Good Night, and Good Luck last week, and enjoyed it a bunch. The movie is exactly what I said was needed after the last election: more political art. I realized last November that over the last several years, liberals I think decided that on many of the important social issues they had already won the national argument. Their thinking, I think, went something like this: "My position on [fill in the blank--abortion, religion in the classes/courts, etc.] is so demonstrably right, so logically unassailable, that surely everyone can see it, and I can go back to my cheese-and-wine parties." Trouble is, the conservatives never for an instant stopped making their arguments, and in the absence of a real debate, the side that never stopped yammering slowly made inroads in the public consciousness.

Therefore I welcome a film like Good Night, and Good Luck. And even while I recognize that it is not fair and balanced (despite being scrupulously fact-checked), I rejoice in the fact that it doesn't try to be. Clooney had something he wants to say, and he's got a right to say it. Sure, you can make the argument that Murrow's role in McCarthy's downfall wasn't as central as Clooney makes it out to be, but I don't really care: it's a good story that makes a compelling point worth making, and that to me is the part that matters. We need more art like this, and I hope that writers and musicians and moviemakers all across the land are hard at work putting out their unvarnished, deeply-felt viewpoints just as Clooney did.

And while I'm on the subject, I felt like mentioning that Fred Friendly (Murrow's producer, played by Clooney, who literally sat at Murrow's feet during the McCarthy broadcasts) was the commencement speaker when I graduated from Emerson in 1987. He gave a great speech about journalistic ethics and I became an instant fan. I highly, highly recommend that if you ever get the chance, you should watch his brilliant 13-part PBS series called "The Constitution: That Delicate Balance." As Friendly himself put it, the aim of the programs was to "make the agony of decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking." He accomplished this by gathering together in a round-table format top minds of the time, from former President Ford to Supreme Court justices like the aforementioned Antonin Scalia and Potter Stewart, plus others like the then-head of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, and the brilliant think-tanker Willard Gaylin. A moderator, usually Harvard's Arthur Miller (not the playwright), would pose a theoretical question and the panelists would begin to discuss how they might approach the problem; then the moderator would turn the screw and make the problem harder to deal with, then yet harder again. The results were often brilliantly revealing, and consistently challenging. Very, very much worth seeing if you ever get the chance.