WASHINGTON — Do you know who Harry M. Reid might be? Frankly I
did not know either until he was quoted in the newspapers as having
said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Justice Clarence Thomas is “an
embarrassment to the Supreme Court.” He also asseverated that
Justice Thomas’s opinions “are poorly written.” As he made these
utterances recently on “Meet the Press” I concluded that the man
must have some stature, unless, of course, the issue being treated
on the show was small-town bigotry. Well, it turns out that this
fellow Reid is a United States senator. In fact, he is the incoming
Senate Minority Leader from Nevada.
Senator Reid will replace the ever-purring Senator Tom Daschle
as Minority Leader after Senator Daschle’s mishap on November 2.
This should be amusing. On the same program he also said Justice
Antonin Scalia would probably get his support if the President
nominates him to be chief justice because Justice Scalia is “one
smart guy.” So Senator Reid is not a small-town bigot. Rather he is
just another vulgar mind, raised to eminence by Democrats and
emboldened to favor us with his crude thoughts. If in the course of
“Meet the Press” he were to have wiped his nose on his sleeve I
would not be surprised. Doubtless, he would have a morally-superior
explanation if anyone questioned his etiquette. This is the
consequence when liberalism’s morally-superior mindset affixes
itself on mediocrity.
The moral pretense of the American liberal is a thing to marvel
upon. So is the intellectual pretense. The Nevada senator who
pronounced on Justice Thomas’s record and literary merit is a man
of no intellectual distinction whatsoever. Having read over the
transcript of his remarks on “Meet the Press” I can tell you he
articulates woodenly. His thoughts are banal. How well he writes I
cannot say with total confidence, but if he writes as well as he
speaks he is — after his first few simple sentences —
unreadable.
What would provoke such a born blank to pronounce on the
intellectual capacities of either Justice Thomas or Justice Scalia?
The incoming Senate Minority Leader believes he is part of that
large gaggle of impostors who consider themselves liberals or
“progressives,” as they in their florid vanity would have it. They
are confident that they stand in that long line of prodigies that
goes back to the New Deal and beyond to the Progressive Era. Their
forebears believed in the Bill of Rights, the right of laborers to
organize, public health, internationalism, and other perfectly
sensible matters. Today the Harry M. Reids believe in Vast
Right-Wing Conspiracies, a government as good as Sweden’s, and the
United Nations as a monitor of American foreign policy. Oh yes, and
they believe Justice Thomas does not write very well.
They also believe that they won the presidential election in
2000 and many believe that they won it in 2004. They doubt the
outcome of the 2004 election because they approached Election Day
absolutely confident that they were headed for a stupendous
triumph. They believed that despite the fact that their
presidential candidate was the most ridiculous presidential
candidate since, well, since General Wesley Clark, who could not
have been more preposterous if he had run as a nudist. Of course,
if Franklin Roosevelt were resurrected and forced to enunciate the
positions of today’s national Democratic Party he too would
probably have lost in 2004.
The problem with Harry M. Reid’s party is that it is about 30
years out of date. Its economic position is that of John Kenneth
Galbraith, without the wit. Its foreign policy is that of Warren
Harding. Its social policy is that of Betty Friedan, without the
charm. If Senator Reid does not know who Warren Harding is I
suggest he call Justice Scalia, that “one smart guy.”
Thirty years ago Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said
all the “new ideas” were coming from the right. Off and on he tried
to come up with some new ideas for the Democrats. Whether he
succeeded or not, the Democrats paid no more attention to his ideas
than they paid to the right. They slumbered contentedly in their
conceit that they were the morally and intellectually superior. Now
they are being led by this preposterosity, Reid. And he thinks his
judgments on Justice Thomas matter. He is in the minority and that
minority will remain a minority for a very long time with him as
Leader.
