tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post7313930268409071772..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Controversy!!!!Jonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-87777239415534310842010-06-15T12:54:25.287-05:002010-06-15T12:54:25.287-05:00Ah, but is the lack of nominees itself a product o...Ah, but is the lack of nominees itself a product of the process being FANTASTICALLY broken?<br /><br />A lot of potential judges might not want the nomination knowing that it means a year or more of hearing nothing and keeping your life somewhat suspended for that time. <br /><br />Furthermore, you note that none of these had any dissent after a huge amount of time. Can you imagine how careful administrations have become over nominating anyone who has ever said anything? If these sqeuaky-clean ones take about a year to confirm, how long would someone who had protested once, or didn't vote in two elections, or wrote an opinion that got overturned by the supremes, or once had an idea to get confirmed? Would they even get confirmed?<br /><br />What's more, the whole game has a whiff of auditions for the supreme court to it. As such, administrations are looking for future justices to appoint as judges now. This is, of course, a fairly ridiculous enterprise. <br /><br />All of this, though, doesn't truly take away from your point that presidents have been falling down on nominations for a while, and it's been getting worse every year.<br /><br />I think that if you fix the process in the Senate, presidents would actually fill the jobs better. Not perfectly, but better.<br /><br />PS - Apropos of the recent CJR and Salon pieces, things like this post are an example of what better communication between scholars and reporters might accomplish. I hope that a columnist or reporter reads this, because perhaps it can filter its way up the reporting ladder to make it as either a background question to Gibbs or even a formal question to Gibbs, or, dare we dream, Obama. I know some columnists read Plain Blog, so how about it, guys? Care to pass this one up the ladder?<br /><br />PPS - I don't mean to imply that columnists are lower on some hierarchy of journalists, just that they can serve as part of a conduit of ideas to and fro the Beltway.Matt Jarvisnoreply@blogger.com