Have you ever seen a middle-aged white guy try and do the
Macarena ?
You know the type. A few too many pops at the country club bar,
he grabs the hot young Latina waitress and yanks her onto the
dance floor. Convinced he’s doing an American Idol-worthy Ricky
Martin imitation, somewhere in his brain as he stumbles awkwardly
over his white shoes he actually thinks he’s sending The
Tolerance Signal. The “ain’t I the hip white guy” sign. The
evening ends with a tip to the waitress assuring her how much he
supports “you people” in their ongoing struggle for truth,
justice and the American way. Oh, and by the way, he’s been to
Taco Bell.
The image came to mind watching the behavior of South Carolina’s
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham during the confirmation
hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. He will vote for her
confirmation.
Fleeing from principle, Graham, whose campaign
website says he “never abandons his independence or strays
from the conservative reform agenda,” did both.
Condescending to Sotomayor about her “wise Latina” beliefs, he
also ruminated that some of the speeches she has given are
“pretty disturbing,” and they “blow me away.” He wondered aloud
“who are we getting” in a Justice Sotomayor, something not unlike
guzzling scotch and wondering if there is a connection to
perpetual hangovers. When this is followed by praise that she is
“bold” and “edgy” and that “elections matter” and the president
deserves “deference” and that “I desire as a Senator to find a
new way to start over and get back to a Senate that’s more
rational in its approach when it comes to confirmation,” Graham
appears to be leading the rest of us to a disturbing conclusion.
Senator Graham is no dummy. To proceed to vote to put someone on
the Court who is so obviously devoted to principles he claims to
oppose gives new meaning to terms such as cowardly, lily-livered,
irresolute, chickenhearted or, in Spanish, no cojones.
Or does it?
The problem exhibited by Graham is in fact not what it seems.
It’s worse.
“Elections matter,” he says — citing President Obama’s victory.
The election that mattered in South Carolina was the one in which
Lindsay Graham ran on a pledge never to stray from the
conservative reform agenda — and then did so. “Deference” to
presidents? President George W. Bush would have appreciated
Graham’s deference when he nominated William “Jim” Haynes to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Haynes, then the
general counsel at the Pentagon, had been bold and edgy when it
came to providing legal advice on the issue of detainees captured
on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
But Haynes’s record is not the point here. As a senator Graham is
perfectly within his rights to vote “no” on a judicial nominee
for any reason. The sly hypocrisy comes from Graham’s insistence
that he is voting for Sotomayor in part because of his “desire as
a Senator to find a new way to start over and get back to a
Senate that’s more rational in its approach when it comes to
confirmation.”
The lack of a “rational ..approach” in the confirmation process
has many fathers, Ted Kennedy holding pride of place. But Mr.
Graham’s performance on the Haynes nomination is part and parcel
of this irrationality. Unlike Sotomayor, who will get a vote in
the Senate Judiciary Committee and a floor vote, Haynes’ 2003
nomination by Bush was, according to accounts at the time, held
by Graham for four years. Realizing Graham would never allow him
to receive a fair vote, Haynes withdrew in 2007.
As a majority-party Senator until 2007, Graham could have pushed
for reform in the confirmation process, not least of all by his
conduct with Haynes. He could have supported timelines for
hearings, committee votes and floor votes, rules that would have
applied to all judicial nominees of all presidents. He did not.
His performance on the Sotomayor nomination, aside from
abandoning conservative principles to be seen as the tolerant hip
guy who can dance the Macarena and eats at Taco Bell, is really
something else.
A Senator operating from political weakness is offering to repair
a judicial confirmation process he himself played a real role in
damaging. By offering up his vote for the confirmation of a judge
who has made it as plain as day she will practice identity
politics from the bench.
Is Graham crackers? Unprincipled? Or just plain phony.
