Initial thoughts
July 21st, 2005 by JoshI’ve yet to say anything on President Bush’s new nominee to the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr., and for the most part I am reserving my judgement until I know more. So far I’m not as discouraged as I expected to be, thanks mostly to an NPR interview I caught with Georgetown University Law Center professor Richard Lazarus, an environmental law advocate, self-described liberal, and former roommate of Roberts. I don’t have any notes on it but the gist was that Roberts is smart, fair-minded, and not the blind partisan so many of us automatically assumed the Bushies would offer us. Not to say Roberts is a particularly good guy either, but it seems like this is about the best we could expect from W. Though the obvious plan to knock Karl Rove off the media radar has already failed.
Matt from Tattered Coat, whose posts seem to get better by the day, does an excellent job of dissecting what the media coverage of the nomination indicates about what to expect from the wingnuts, talking heads, and both Dems and ‘Pubs as well.
We can criticize the Bush administration for many things, but a lack of stagecraft is probably not among them. Though its sense of set decoration can sometimes be a little off, the administration has presented its nominee according to the dictates of television’s most recent trend.
Welcome to Survivor: SCOTUS Edition.
