Demagogue

Last night I got together with some fellow political junkies to prepare for and watch Bush's SCOTUS nominee annoucement at a local watering hole. We spent a few hours discussing all of the judges on the short list as well as tossing out names of out-of-right-field nominees. It's a given that we weren't going to approve of the nominee, so someone came up with two nomination categories-- there were the "Tequila Justices" whose nomination would require several shots and the "Beer Justices" that would only require another round or two of beer. Tequila was reserved for wingnuts like Janice Rogers Brown or J. Michael Luttig or Priscilla Owen. Rightly or wrongly, Roberts was placed in the "Beer Justices" category.

At first we had trouble getting the bar to change the channel on one of their 7,659 televisions. We nearly had to resort to sneaking into the "Friends of Roy Blunt" (R-MO) private party in the back room of the bar. However, an hour before the offical annoucement a little bird (in the form of a BlackBerry) told us that it was going to be Roberts. So the annoucement itself was entirely anti-climatic.

I do think it's interesting that Bush's choice is not a particularly ballsy one, Roberts is certainly no Robert Bork. Roberts is a sold conservative who is also fairly polished, allegedly he is widely respected and will likely pass without too bruising of a fight. I argued last night that as a group we pay inordinate attention to social and civil rights issues, but that Bush will likely nominate someone to make the business world happy and not just play to his theocratic base. Last night Roberts seemed like that kind of nominee. Although it gives me pause that people like Jay Sekulow of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice are already calling John Roberts Jr. an "exceptional" choice.

Here's to hoping that Roberts really is only a "Beer Justice" and not a stealth "Tequila Justice."