The Gorsuch nomination

Some quick and partial thoughts on Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court:

1. This country's system for appointing federal judges is, by world standards, bizarre.  No other advanced nation, to my knowledge, has a judicial selection system that is so political and politicized.
   
   
2. Ideally, we would radically reform the system, either by constitutional amendment or by a less formal grand compact between the political parties.
   
   
3. But that seems unlikely anytime soon.
   
   
4. In the meantime, the best medium-term hope is that we can somehow lower the temperature on both sides, and resist the temptation to turn nominations to the Supreme Court into occasions for bitter political theatre.  In fact, we actually managed to do precisely that through most of the last two presidential administrations.
   
   
5. Neil Gorsuch is by all accounts smart, thoughtful, principled, decent, and eloquent.  (I don't know much about him, and am willing to be corrected, but I have no reason to think otherwise.)  Democrats should not try to besmirch him or try to characterize him as a judicial pariah.  If there is to be a fight about his nomination, it should not be focused on him as a judge or as a person.
   
   
6. On the other hand, it is scandalously true that this nomination would not have been Trump's to make had the Republicans not stolen President Obama's opportunity to put Merrick Garland on the Court.  The reasons they gave for not even giving Garland a hearing were unprecedented, specious, sophistic, and hypocritical.
   
   
7. So it would be perfectly reasonable for Democrats (and democrats and constitutionalists) to argue, not that Gorsuch is a particularly unworthy nominee, but that the only way to unwind the Garland travesty is by insisting on a genuine consensus candidate.  Or, as Trump has put it in a different context, it might be time to insist on a pause until the politicians “can figure out what the hell is going on.” 
   
   
8. There's also a decent argument that in these extraordinary times, with Trump in the White House, resistance in many forms is important, and morally and politically justifiable.  But, again, the point should be resistance to Trump, not overwrought attacks on Gorsuch.

Perry Dane