The politics of spin

Newt Gingrich is bloviating again -- as only Newt can do -- saying that Kagan's nomination should be withdrawn. She's unqualified, he says, because of her anti-military stance when she was Dean at Harvard Law School.

Wouldn't you think that what we need most on the Supreme Court are justices who are capable of calmly weighing the balance between two competing principles, both of which are held to be right? Isn't that what most cases that reach the high court are all about?

That is exactly what impressed Wasington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. about Elena Kagan several years back when she was Dean of Harvard Law School and made the decision to limit the military recruiters on campus because of their discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Yesterday the AJC reprinted Dionne’s column from the Washington Post about Kagan and the military recruiting controversy. He says he had a conversation with her back then, and it was in fact her balanced way of discussing her position that would be the best argument FOR her being confirmed to the Supreme Court. Although he personally came to a different conclusion, he admired the thoughtful way she came to her conclusion.

Dionne’s position was that the military needs the liberalizing influence of educated recruits, so their discriminating against gays should be fought in other arenas and allow them to recruit on college campuses for those who can influence the military from within.

Her position was that, in a free and democratic society, the military should be able to recruit on campuses, but at the same time university officials have an obligation to maintain policies that protect groups that are part of their student population from discrimination. So you have a conflict between two principles. At Harvard Law, she struck the balance by allowing recruiters access through a student veterans group, but not through the main career office.

Dionne said that her comfort in having a calm and thoughtful discussion with him about the issue — they agreed on the conflicting principles but came to different conclusions about the remedy — was exactly what we need on the court.

Hopefully, she will be able to convince the senators of the same, although Dionne said these hearings hardly allow one to be candid and therefore wind up being rituals of non-substance, which is probably the prudent way to go. He coins a phrase: “vacuity in pursuit of confirmation is no vice.”

Let's hope Kagan can somehow get across to the senators this quality that impressed Dionne. What a waste, spending all that time trying to score political spin instead of having a reasoned discussion of issues in our highest deliberative body.

Ralph