Informed Speculation

Eric at Viking Pundit has a post that illustrates how completely marginal the New York Times editorial page has become under Gail Collins, and why it will hardly be missed in its new subscription-only incarnation (beginning tomorrow! Oh, no!). Presumably, one of the missions of a decent editorial page is to persuade; another would be to inform. Neither function is fulfilled by Collins and her crew, as the stance on any given issue can be summarized quite succinctly: If Bush be for it, I’m against it.

Thus, we have the ridiculous spectacle of the ‘paper of record’ opposing the nomination of John Roberts, and actually advocating a ‘no’ vote:

If he is confirmed, we think there is a chance Mr. Roberts could be a superb chief justice. But it is a risk. We might be reluctant to roll the dice even for a nomination for associate justice, but for a nomination for a chief justice – particularly one who could serve 30 or more years – the stakes are simply too high. Senators should vote against Mr. Roberts not because they know he does not have the qualities to be an excellent chief justice, but because he has not met the very heavy burden of proving that he does.

Phooey – what a bunch of hokum that is. The nominees of a president, historically, have been given an extremely wide berth unless it is proven they are unfit for the job.

The entire reason to have confirmation hearings is to attempt to discern if there is anything inherently unsuitable about the candidate. Surely, it is not the job of the nominee to ‘prove’ anything, but merely to answer the questions put to him. This justification by the Times is nonsensical at best.

Again, it is instructive to contrast the approach of the Times to that of its major rival, the Washington Post:

JOHN G. ROBERTS JR. should be confirmed as chief justice of the United States. He is overwhelmingly well-qualified, possesses an unusually keen legal mind and practices a collegiality of the type an effective chief justice must have. He shows every sign of commitment to restraint and impartiality. Nominees of comparable quality have, after rigorous hearings, been confirmed nearly unanimously. We hope Judge Roberts will similarly be approved by a large bipartisan vote.

This is not to say we expect that as chief justice, Judge Roberts will always rule as we would like. Reading the tea leaves of any justice’s future votes is a dicey business. But on a number of important issues, Judge Roberts seems likely to take positions that we will not support. His backing of presidential powers, and willingness to limit civil liberties, appear worrisomely large, while his deference to congressional authority relative to the states may be too small. He appears more suspicious of affirmative action than we think the court should be, and his view of certain civil rights protections has been narrow. Given his comments about precedent and the right to privacy, we do not believe a Chief Justice Roberts will be eager to overturn federal abortion rights. But we recognize that he might end up supporting that unfortunate step, as the late chief justice William H. Rehnquist did unsuccessfully. These are all risks, but they are risks the public incurred in reelecting President Bush.

Quite so; John Kerry lost the election; does the Times expect he and the Democrats can now ignore that result, just because the latest nominee is (gasp!) a conservative? What a pity that this is what passes for discourse on the editorial page of our nation’s most influential newspaper…