On July 1, Sandra Day O’Connor surprised a lot of people by announcing her retirement from the Supreme Court. On July 2, Bush said he’d pick his replacement quickly.
Based on this White House’s modus operandi, this was expected. When more than half of his cabinet needed to be replaced after last November’s election, Bush rarely allowed the vacancy to go a day or two without immediately nominating a replacement. It was supposed to be the same here. Bush aides gave word that the president would name a nominee within 48 to 72 hours of a vacancy to keep the left from filling the rhetorical void.
It obviously hasn’t worked out that way. At first, we’d get a nominee almost immediately. Then, we learned we’d have to wait until August. Today, the Bush gang has shifted gears again, indicating that a nominee could be announced this week.
President Bush, accelerating his search for a new Supreme Court justice, appears to have narrowed his list of candidates to no more than a few finalists and could announce his decision in the next few days, Republican strategists informed about White House plans said yesterday.
Advisers to Bush had anticipated an announcement closer to the end of the month, but the White House signaled allies over the weekend to be prepared for a nomination this week, according to the strategists, who asked not to be named because the process remains officially confidential.
Why all the confusion and shifting plans?
I actually understood the strategy of waiting until August. The delay allowed every group with an agenda to start fighting, but with no nominee out there, everyone’s been shadow boxing. No nominee means no specific attacks.
Indeed, Bush hinted over the weekend that he prefers a shorter nomination process.
“The experiences of the two justices nominated by President Clinton provide useful examples of fair treatment and a reasonable timetable for Senate action. In 1993, the Senate voted on and confirmed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court 42 days after President Clinton submitted her nomination. And despite the significant philosophical differences many senators had with Justice Ginsburg, she received 96 votes in favor of confirmation.
“The following year, Justice Stephen Breyer was confirmed 73 days after his nomination was submitted, with 87 votes in his favor.”
It’s worth noting that Bush was playing numbers games here. If we count from the announcement of the nomination, Ginsburg’s confirmation took 50 days (not 42), Breyer’s took 77 (not 73), and other recent nominees have taken much longer, including Scalia (92), Rehnquist (92), Thomas (106), and Bork (114).
Still, the point’s the same — Bush wants a truncated process that will push the Senate to act quickly before Dems can ask too many pertinent questions.
But if this makes sense, and it does, then why suddenly shift again and announce a nominee this week? This is pure speculation, but I have to assume this has everything to do with Karl Rove’s current “situation.” The Plame Game scandal isn’t going away, the questions are getting trickier, and Mehlman is running out of unpersuasive lies.
A Supreme Court nominee knocks Rove off the front page immediately, and forces the left to start shifting its attention elsewhere. If the White House waits until August to name O’Connor’s replacement, that leads to a few more weeks of all Rove, all the time. If the announcement is this week, the political world’s attention is divided and Rove will take a little less heat.
Again, it’s just conjecture on my part, but it seems to make sense, doesn’t it?