Wave Maker

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I find this notion of the "transforming experience" to be particularly ironic, because, based on my experience and personal observation, politicians also undergo something of a transformation after they get elected -- but the two transformations could not be more different.

The transformation to jurist involves the shedding of one's persona to a significant extent -- Justice Roberts said during his confirmation hearings that "Judges wear black robes because it doesn’t matter who they are as individuals. That’s not going to shape their decision. It’s their understanding of the law that will shape their decision." (*while Judge Roberts, I think, was making a point of using the black robe as a metaphor, there is at least one decidedly less significant historical reasoning behind behind this tradition). But here we have several experienced jurists explaining the transformation in which the individual leaves his past behind him, casts off his allegiances, his prior advocacies, his personal opinions, and becomes another person, sworn to only one allegiance, the Constitution and his oath of office to uphold it.

By contrast, when elected to political office, citizen Smith so often is transformed in a decidedly more unseemly way. Where he first was in awe of the splendor and accoutrements of his office, he eventually comes to consider himself Important; he carries himself higher, he does not appreciate the deference shown to his position, he expects it. When I first left college in 1977 and went to Washington D. C. to interview for a job with Senator Leahy, he assured me that everyone in the office called him"Pat." Years later when I stopped in to say hello, staff laughed at my recounting of the story, and assured me they refer to him as "Senator."

And with respect to political ideology, the case is even more stark. Where once statesmanship and common ground were lauded (my past musings here), today in Congress, ideological stridency is the coin of the realm for both parties. Middle-grounders are marginalized by leadership and ridiculed by the "party faithful" (and convincingly re-elected by their constituents). Presidential hopes rise or fall on the candidate's ability to court the wings during the primaries and win the mad dash to the center for the general election.

And yet we are compelled to witness the antics of Ted Kennedy attempting to bully Judge Alito and lecture about "ethics," as though there is anything in his checkered career that would qualify him to hold forth on the subject. We must listen to Chuck Schumer tell us how unconvinced he is that Judge Alito can set his personal opinions aside, when it is plain that Schumer himself would not, could not, subjugate his own opinion to anyone else's, let along admit that he may be wrong, unless his political survival depended on it. Nonetheless, something tells me that, may years from now, if Schumer were to tire of the Senate and was enticed by the lure of lifetime tenure on the federal bench, he would steadfastly assure us that his thirty years of partisan bomb throwing was "just politics," and expect us to believe him.

Well I don't believe him. Now or ever. I believe in the statements of Judge Alito's colleagues on the Circuit Court and from the U. S. Attorney's office. I believe those who have worked with him and studied with him. And I believe in the process of transformation, so eloquently described by the jurists that endorse him.

I only wish that we could convince Congressmen to wear black robes.

Posted by: Wave Maker / 9:37 AM/ |