That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post, the subtitle of which is ‘and Dianne Feinstein rescues it.’ Here’s how it opens:
As you go deeper into any judicial-confirmation battle, you encounter the incentives, constraints, and personal relationships that shape the behavior of individual senators. In Fifth Circuit nominee Leslie Southwick’s confirmation saga, Barack Obama and Dianne Feinstein each played an outsized role.
I forgot to include this closing anecdote in the initial version that Substack distributed, but have now added it in:
After the confirmation vote, a celebration took place in the Judiciary Committee hearing room. I was pleased to attend and to meet Southwick. In addition to several Republican senators, Feinstein took part in the celebration and received a hero’s welcome.
I thanked Feinstein for her courage and used the opportunity to tell her that there was another pending nominee who had been unfairly abused. I urged her to help him out. Who’s that?, she asked. D.C. Circuit nominee Peter Keisler, I replied. A look of dread crossed her face, and I realized that my request would go nowhere.
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