■ THE UNPREDICTABLE BILL CLINTON: Newsweek, on the next Supreme Court nominee: “Clinton’s relentless search for diversity could take him in the direction of a woman or a minority.”
■ Let’s face the realities. 1) In Byron White’s successor, we will be getting someone whose jurisprudence is far closer to Hillary Clinton’s than to Robert Bork’s; 2) we stand virtually no chance of defeating this nomination; and 3) if we did, judging by the Attorney General affair, we would be likely to get an even worse nominee as a replacement. So what is to be done? The Justice Department several years ago put out a report, The Constitution in the Year 2000, setting forth hundreds of questions to be asked Supreme Court nominees as an aid in determining the constitutional direction in which they desired to take the country in areas such as criminal justice, religious freedom, civil rights, economic liberties, and others. If we have no prospect of defeating another liberal voice on the Court (and we don’t, whatever happens to a particular nominee), why not use this as an occasion for an intelligent debate on the future of the Constitution? Judging by their performance on the Reno nomination, such a debate is too much to expect from Senate Republicans. Nevertheless, hearings based on the Justice Department report would contribute far more to the permanent interests of the Constitution—and achieve far more politically for the Republicans—than attempting to uncover some exotic new character flaw in the Clinton nominee.
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