The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Whither Danforth?

Tonight, at 9pm Eastern, el Shrub has asked the broadcast networks for roughly 10 minutes to try to sucker punch the competition by plugging his Supreme Court nominee. He'll spin a web of bullshit about the need for an unobstructed process, implying that any use of whatever means at hand to halt the progress of a candidate the president's selected is not to be tolerated by decent folk. His careful selection of senators and other party faithful, who have already been briefed on the nominee, will be quick pound away on both how wonderful the choice is and how "unprecedented" any "partisan obstructionism" in such an instance will be.

I'm not going to speculate on the most likely candidate to be sprung on us. That much is set, and we'll see soon enough. Speculation and ramifications can be found directly or via additional links over at SCNominationblog. As you've doubtless heard, the one getting the most buzz is Edith Clement. If you want to find out about her, go there. (Update 7:52 pm: Or go check on who now appears to be the true nominee, Judge John G. Roberts.)

Anyway, Mr. Vacation (or is it Maestro Vacation these days?) passed along a message concerning the nomination of Senator John Danforth. The direct link is to a note from Senator Jean Carnahan concerning the issue.

The message and the site is pleasant enough, giving no reasonable person anything of much weight to argue with. The problem, though, is that it appears to make a Missourian's presumption that everyone knows all about Senator John Danforth. (That the note is pitched to the Frat Boy directly, noting that he's called on Danforth twice for other service, doesn't do a great deal to inspire much confidence. I'd trust George to recommend a good country club, but not much else.) Here we're looking at the inversion of their state motto. I'm not from Missouri, so you'll have to show me.

Trying to sum up a person, even someone who's served in public office over the course of decades, with ten minutes of data search is hardly fair. Just trying to sift through the BS could take hours or even days. With that in mind, I offer the following as a preliminary view. Anyone who has corroborating or dissenting info is welcome to let me know in the comments.

So, what do I know about Danforth?

Well, first, I know he's a Republican. That alone, giving the prevailing climate in this nation, is enough to give me pause.

An ordained Episcopal minister and self-described "Christian moderate." A three-term (18 years) senator from Missouri, then nominated 2001 as Special Envoy for Peace to Sudan, then UN Ambassador last year, though he resigned after 7 months.

He appears to be a reasonable Republican, though, as evidenced by a March 30, 2005 piece he wrote for the New York Times. Rolling this piece over in my mind, I'm appreciative that the former senator is in the political mix at some level, as the GOP needs voices of moderation to help pull it back from becoming fully the Party of the (self-labelled) Christian Right.

That doesn't mean I truly want him on the Supreme Court. I may ultimately have to look at him as a case of the best we could hope for under the circumstances, but I'm not yet at that point. As I don't have a direct vote in any of this, my inclination at this stage is to press as far to the left on the issue as I can manage.

The court has shifted towards the right to such a degree that outgoing Justice O'Connor was a philosophically-fitting right wing appointee in 1981 and is leaving the court (presumably) in 2005 as a "moderate" justice. If this had been a case of her moderating her views - the graceful aging of perspectives and the ripening of wisdom - it would be one thing, but by all credible accounts she stuck to her philosophical guns and the court moved around her. I can't speak for anyone else, but that's disturbing to me.

Back to Danforth, some quick checking found a piece from Mother Jones outlining multiple instances of what to my eyes amounts to insider trading between 1991 and 1993. I don't mind someone making smart investments, but being in a position to direct federal funds and be part of the process to allow business mergers, does seem to be a rather loaded game.

A very good, informative piece is an NPR interview with him (just over 26 minutes long) from June 29th of this year, which can be listened to here. Again, I'm suspicious of anyone who really is such an avowed Bush booster, but I do appreciate his understanding of and being outspoken on how important it is to keep matters of state separate from matters of religion. That's a paramount issue with respect to a Supreme Court nominee.