Obviously, the Dems haven’t had a lot of luck over the last four years. Republicans control the House and Senate, more Americans chose our guy for president but their guy is sitting in the Oval Office, and the GOP has a majority of the nation’s governors and state legislatures. It’s not a pretty picture.
But in one sense, we’ve been incredibly lucky. There haven’t been any vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Historically, this is very unusual. Almost every president, even those who only serve one term, get to appoint at least a couple of justices to the high court. Of the 42 people who have served as the nation’s chief executive before Bush, only four have failed to have the opportunity to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, and only one of those was elected to serve a full term in the White House.
* William Henry Harrison didn’t fill any Supreme Court vacancies because he died a month after taking the oath of office.
* Zachary Taylor didn’t name any justices because he died after two years in office.
* Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, but didn’t serve a full term and didn’t fill any high court vacancies.
* Jimmy Carter is the only president to serve a full term and not name any justices to the Supreme Court.
If we can get through the next 217 days without any retirement announcements, George W. Bush will join Carter in this very select group. The nation will have dodged a very dangerous bullet.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2000, the notion that the next president would get to leave his mark on the high court was almost a given. Clinton, despite having served two full terms, only named two justices to the Supreme Court, one in each of his first two years in office. For a two-termer, this was the fewest opportunities since James Monroe left the White House in 1825 (Monroe served eight years and appointed only one justice).
By Election Day 2000, the court had not seen a vacancy in six years and rumors about retirements were ubiquitous. The next president, most believed, would replace at least two justices, and perhaps even more.
And yet, nothing. Sure, there have been rumors, and Rehnquist has admitted to “thinking about retirement,” but as of now, the Supreme Court looks exactly as it did when it stopped the Florida recount and handed the presidency to Bush four years ago.
In case anyone needed another reason to vote for John Kerry in November, here are four:
* William Rehnquist turns 80 this year and has had health problems.
* John Paul Stevens, one of only two reliable left-leaning justices, will be 84 next month and is the court’s oldest member.
* Sandra Day O’Connor enjoyed her 74th birthday last week and has been the subject of retirement rumors for a couple of years now.
* Ruth Bader Ginsburg turned 71 earlier this month and has also had health problems.
I can appreciate the fact that almost no one in the country votes for president with the judiciary in mind. It’s odd, even for the most esoteric poli sci major, to have “potential justices” listed as the number one issue motivating someone’s vote.
But the fact remains that Bush has already demonstrated his unwavering commitment to name right-wing ideologues to the federal bench. The chances of the Supreme Court going another four years without a single vacancy are very remote. If given the opportunity, Bush obviously won’t hesitate to pick the youngest, most extreme conservative he can find to help tip the scales of what is now a closely-divided high court.
And what will the consequences be? It’s often too easy to forget that the Supreme Court can and does have a major role in settling critical public policy disputes. If given another term, Bush would almost certainly name justices who would be hostile to church-state separation, indifferent to civil rights, disinterested in environmental protections, sympathetic to corporate interests, unconcerned about citizens’ right to privacy, anxious to overturn Roe v. Wade, and actively opposed to the rights of workers, minorities, and women. And that’s just for starters.
The Supreme Court isn’t yet an issue in this year’s presidential campaign, but with so much at stake, it certainly should be.