It's called fairness. And Jeralyn at Talk Left has a post and a comment thread that illustrate what an enormous difference it makes in the way liberals and conservatives approach the political battlefield.
Jeralyn argues that progressives should hold their fire in opposing the nomination of Bob . . . I mean John Roberts until more of the facts are in:
I'd like to know more about him before I make up my mind. I don't think it helps that liberal groups are coming out swinging so soon. It has the appearance that they would oppose anyone Bush would nominate.
Now her position is eminently reasonable -- in both senses of the word. Jeralyn is taking the classic rationalist approach to questions of fact: let both sides argue their case, sift and weigh the evidence, then decide. It's how lawyers, and most particularly judges, are trained to look at the world.
But it's also the classically liberal approach to politics, in which the struggle for power is treated like some kind of glorified courtroom debate, with strict rules of evidence, an impartial umpire (the judge) and 12 jurors, straight and true, to render a verdict.
Not suprisingly, given the quality of Jeralyn's readers, the comment thread on her post reflects this same deliberative, thoughtful approach. To be sure, the liberal talking points against Roberts are represented. But you'll also find a number of comments like this:
The worst thing the left could do at this point is to give a knee-jerk, predictable response. Let's just wait and see.
Of all the choices he was seriously considering, I think John Roberts is one of the least objectionable mainly because of his superlative legal mind.
We definitely need to hear more, but we need to use caution in opposing him just because he's conservative.
These aren't trolls. These are liberals talking. But if you scroll down towards the bottom of the thread, you finally get the conservative response:
The heading of this blog tells it all - "Too soon to bash John G. Roberts" .... LOL. I read that to mean...you'll eventually bash him, just not yet...!
And of course, Jeralyn's anonymous troll picks out the one comment on the thread that suggests Roberts should be opposed simply because Bush appointed him -- a remark posted by someone using the World Socialist Web Site as a return email address. This, our troll screeches, is the "typical lefty reaction."
That's pretty much the last ten years of American political history in a nutshell. While liberals sift and weigh the evidence, debate alternative points of view, and reach for that ever elusive "fairness," the conservative machine sifts and weighs alternative propaganda points, debates the best way to manipulate public opinion, and reaches for power -- first, last and always.
The modern conservative movement understands that fair and balanced is a marketing slogan: an Orwellian label for its exact opposite. Or, as David Horowitz wrote in his Art of Political Warfare -- a totalitarian how-to manual for GOP candidates and conservative activists:
You cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate. You can do it only by following Lenin's injunction: "In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth."
Lenin: (teary eyed) He's like the son I never had!
I think we all understand what the conservative response would be in the current situation if the tables were turned: Attack, attack, attack. Ted Kennedy clone! Wild eyed radical pro-sodomy extremist! Vince Foster's murderer!
This isn't about legal qualifications or judicial philosophy or even political ideology. It's about power -- and smearing the other side's nominees is a great way to rev up the base, do some fundraising and, if you get lucky, collect another scalp.
There are liberals who know how to play that game -- like the staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee who leaked Anita Hill's allegations against Clarence Thomas to the media. But the hardball players on our side constantly have to manuever around the "fairness" faction, which insists on clinging to old-fashioned notions like due process and the burden of proof. (Hill's harrassment claims were leaked to put pressure on Joe Biden, the Judiciary Committee chairman at the time, who didn't want to let Hill testify in public.)
The hardball players, on their side, on the other hand, get nicknames like "the president's brain," have offices in the West Wing, and can count on entire legions of GOP Senators and People's Deputies to act like human minesweepers if that's what it takes to clear a path for their attacks.
This is the world we live in. No one is going to hand out brownie points to progressives for being "fair" to Judge Roberts. His record is admittedly thin, but what there is certainly points to a judge on the extreme conservative end of the scale, not just on reproductive rights, but on the environment, corporate regulation and civil liberties. Roberts also has absolutely no experience -- zippo -- in the criminal justice system. And as Jeralyn herself points out, the criminal justice system in this country is a freaking horror show at the street level. It also generates a substantial share of the case load for the Supremes, thanks to our never-ending war on drug users.
These would be abundant reasons to oppose Roberts as actively as possible -- if his qualifications and philosophy were the only issues. But they're not. This nomination is just a battle in a much larger political war, and as Horowitz puts it:
The act of defining combatants is analogous to the military concept of choosing the terrain of battle. Choose the terrain that makes the fight as easy for you as possible.
Stalin: (puffs out his chest) I always knew that boy would make good!
The real question, then, is purely pragmatic: Do the political benefits of going to the mat over Roberts outweigh the costs? My judgement (and I realize I could be wrong about this) is that they do not -- both because he looks just about impossible to stop, and because even bigger Supreme Court battles almost certainly lie ahead: after Rehnquist and then when the first of the "liberal" justices retires. And that last one really does promise to be the judicial battle of Armageddon.
Under the circumstances, it might be better to save our meager ammunition for those later struggles -- which, with luck, may be fought out after the 2006 elections, giving the Dems a chance to improve their bargaining position by picking up a few seats.
As I said, I could be wrong, and I'm certainly open to persuasion. But withholding fire on Robers out of some high-minded sense of "fairness," or a desire to consider all the facts -- well, I think it should be obvious that we don't live in that kind of country any more. And if progressives don't start adapting their principles to fit that reality, we could find ourselves living in an even more mindlessly reactionary one before long.