NOT A PROUD SPECTACLE

After watching roughly ten hours of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Samuel Alito this week, I came away with some vivid impressions. As always, the experience of watching our most powerful lawmakers “at work” can be quite unsettling. The old comparison with sausage-making comes to mind—the only difference being that, with sausage-making, the end product may actually be palatable if you can forget what went into it. That’s not always the case with the workings of Congress.

But there was an aspect of the hearings that I found refreshing. Against the spectacle of tawdry, divisive partisanship and long-winded, self-aggrandizing performances of those who played eagerly to the cameras, there was a notable contrast in Judge Samuel Alito, a genuinely honorable and distinguished American public servant who has courageously submitted his professional life to open and minute inspection by the Senate, the press, and the American people—all for an opportunity to further serve his country.

This writer was greatly impressed with Judge Alito’s ability to patiently withstand hours of tedious interrogation—which was at times nearly incoherent and at other times openly hostile—and calmly and carefully respond to virtually every question. Alito was unfailingly courteous, even in the face of inexcusable arrogance or condescension (on the part of Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer, to name a couple), and exhibited an amazing recall of detail in cases that he (or the questioner) cited as judicial precedent. Judge Alito’s ability to respond instantaneously to long, sometimes exasperatingly convoluted questions demonstrated a formidable memory for detail and for the judicial context and significance of prior case law.

In stark contrast to this was the reprehensible behavior of some Democrats on the committee—in particular, the deliberately bellicose posturing by the ponderous patriarch of patrician elitists, Ted Kennedy. Most viewers (if they know anything at all about Ted Kennedy) were probably not surprised. Our expectations of the senior senator from Massachusetts have been thoroughly conditioned by his consistent patterns of behavior in the past—both personal and public. Still, I would venture to say that many were appalled to see Senator Kennedy surpassing even his own low standards of statesmanship in the way he abused his privileged role as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Senator Kennedy’s staff apparently had resurrected an old script for this occasion, used on earlier occasions for attacking former Chief Justice Rehnquist and later, Robert Bork. With his accustomed red-faced bellicosity, Kennedy replayed his infamous “Robert Bork’s America” speech wherein women would be forced to obtain back alley abortions, out-of-control fascist police would batter down citizens’ doors in the middle of the night, and children could not be taught about evolution. This was simply the latest incoherent political rant, released under a new label: “Alito’s America.”

Indeed, it was the only ammunition Kennedy (or indeed, any of the other Democrat Senators) had for contesting Alito’s nomination. Kennedy’s nasty demeanor deteriorated into badgering and harassment when he questioned Judge Alito on two issues (recusal on the Vanguard issue and membership in the Concerned Alumnae of Princeton organization). Judge Alito had already addressed both issues in the course of the hearings, but Senator Kennedy was not satisfied. His obsessive hammering on those two issues—which most observers would conclude were among the least serious of the issues before the committee—was both pathetic and laughable. It finally exploded in a fiery exchange with Chairman Arlen Specter, who sternly reminded Kennedy that he—not Kennedy—was chairman of the committee.

I suppose there is some value in these unintentionally humorous eruptions. They seem to mitigate somewhat our discomfort in knowing that, thanks to the video camera, unstatesmanlike conduct among members of “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is in full view of the entire world. A little levity can go a long way, intentional or not.

Those who were foolish enough to challenge Judge Alito on Constitutional law found themselves way beyond their depth. One has to give some credit to Joe Biden, who knew better than to go there. Instead, he played to the cameras with his made-for-video smile that flashed on and off like a neon sign over a cheap diner.

Chuck Schumer, the unchallenged “master of smarm,” was cut off at the pass late in the afternoon of one session when Lindsey Graham delivered what amounted to a filibuster, forcing Schumer’s allotted time up to six o’clock, the exact time when the cable networks switch to news programming. Virtually alone on C-Span, Schumer blathered lamely about the 1985 job resume in which Sam Alito had listed his membership in the Concerned Alumnae of Princeton, a now-defunct organization. This writer missed this little episode, but according to Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Opinion Journal, Schumer told an “odd mother-in-law story,” which Alito mistook for a question. As Alito began his response, Schumer impatiently cut him off, saying, “Just let me move on.”

Following the conclusion of Judge Alito’s testimony, a panel of witnesses from among Judge Alito’s peers, some of whom had known and worked with Alito for 20 to 30 years, expressed their unequivocal admiration for him as a human being and as a judge.

Among those witnesses were members of the American Bar Association’s Federal Judiciary Committee. In evaluating Alito’s qualifications to serve on the nation’s highest court, that committee had examined Judge Alito’s considerable record of judicial service (in excess of 4,000 cases) and interviewed some 2,000 individuals across the country, 300 of whom are judges. Based on their customary evaluation criteria—integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament—the ABA committee unanimously conferred their highest rating on Judge Alito, confirming publicly that he is “well qualified” for the position of justice on the nation’s highest court.

As a lay person with no prior in-depth knowledge of Judge Alito’s character or his judicial competence, I concluded from my observations of his conduct during the hearings that Judge Alito is not only a man of impressive intellect, but a gifted and devoted public servant who has taken his judicial responsibilities very seriously over the course of 15 years on the bench. Those attributes—combined, as I believe they are in the person of Judge Alito—present an inspiring picture of the qualities that most Americans yearn to see in positions of highest authority in our system of government. It is my hope that Samuel Alito will be confirmed, and that he will have a long and distinguished career as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

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