WASHINGTON -- Is it possible that Justice David H. Souter has
sensed what I have sensed in reading the liberals’ dutiful
adieus to him, their judicial Benedict Arnold? They are
all snickering behind their hands. Sure, he pleased them
enormously by his 19 years of tergiversations against
conservative jurisprudence, after being President George H. W.
Bush’s “conservative” Supreme Court nominee. But through all
Souter’s years here in Washington he revealed himself to be a
stupendously self-absorbed oddball and not much else. He fell far
short of the liberals’ conception of a progressive Supreme Court
dissenter, to wit: a charismatic, outspoken, slightly
outré intellectual on the model of William O. Douglas.
Souter has been, as the Washington Post puts it, notable
for his “quirky independence in spurning the right.” The
operative word here is “quirky.” It is not meant as a compliment.
Our liberals admire eccentricity but not the eccentricity of a
misanthropic loner. Thus, in every supposedly friendly
retrospective that I have read of him since he informed the
Democratic president that he, a Republican Supreme Court nominee,
was retiring, the liberals have stressed his weirdness: the
misfit, the loner, the guy whose luncheon consists of yogurt and
an apple he eats “core and all.” That was the New York
Times speaking. On the front page of its “Week in Review”
section, the newspaper ran a huge picture of him from years ago
wearing a silly plaid suit, the collar of his shirt vaguely
reminiscent of Calvin Coolidge, his face expressionless, but his
eyes large and glistening, like the caricatures one used to see
of girls with huge Bambi-like eyes. Another Times
picture shows him, coat-and tie, hastening past his ramshackle,
unpainted, wooden farmhouse, situated at the end of an unmarked
dirt road in rural New Hampshire. Some locals have thought it was
abandoned.
It is a farmhouse his parents and grandparents inhabited and
bequeathed to him, an only child, a bachelor, the Supreme Court’s
“solitary soul,” as the Post subtly joshes. At every
opportunity, the liberals write in their bon voyage
reminiscences, Souter would flee Washington and drive his
Volkswagen sedan to this hick hideout. He eschews the aeroplane,
public appearances, and society in general. Now he is vacating
his rented Southwest Washington apartment. He will not spend much
time packing because, we are told by the amused liberals he never
unpacked when he drove down from New Hampshire in 1990. He just
kept his effects in boxes. So now back into those boxes he will
dump his clunky shoes and his ratty old out-at-the-elbows
sweaters before taking his last solitary ride back to the woods.
There he likes to hike alone at night with a flashlight. I did
not make this up. These are the details that the liberals have
been relating about him as they recapitulate his career as a
Republican-turned-progressive. As I say, they are snickering.
They have very little to say about Souter’s work on the court
other than that he sided routinely with the liberal minority. I
can understand their reticence. After conferring with scholars
who follow the court, I can report that they recall not one
opinion of his that was memorable for anything other than
smugness. As one told me, Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissents have
been “thought-provoking,” Justice John Paul Stevens’s
“intelligent.” Souter in his dissents has been simply a liberal
tag-a-long. There is something about him that is not quite adult.
He asks questions persistently, the liberals say with a wink.
Well so does a lost child.
It is said that Justice Souter is a “ferocious reader” (That from
the Washington Post, perhaps again in jest. There is
nothing ferocious about this milksop.) Supposedly he reads a
great deal of history, but his rare public remarks give little
evidence of it. In one of his occasionally remarked upon dissents
he seems to be oblivious of history. Two years back he sided with
the liberal minority in expressing the fear that Louisville,
Kentucky might slide back into segregation, perhaps even Jim
Crow, without citywide racial quotas in its schools. If history
demonstrates anything it is that America is well beyond racial
bigotry from government, whether local, state, or federal.
Souter’s bland years on the Court should remind us of the
importance of experience in choosing our leaders. President Bush
and his advisers might have thought it was clever of them to
nominate a judge with almost no paper trail. After serving on the
New Hampshire Supreme Court for seven years, Souter served just
two months on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st
Circuit before his nomination. But for almost two decades it has
been clear that he is out of his depth. The troubling thought is
that the president who is about to nominate Souter’s replacement
is out of his depth too.
I began this column with a question. Does the departing justice
realize that the liberals, whom he benefited, are snickering? The
answer is no. As with much else, he is oblivious.
topics:
Supreme Court
