SCOTUS Nomination

With the nomination of John Roberts yesterday, there was a hue and cry from some on the Left that the timing of this was designed to distract from Leakgate. This makes no sense to me. Ostensibly, was the timing propitious? Sure. But I know almost nothing about Roberts, and I suspect I am not alone. If part of the motive behind the timing of this was to distract, wouldn't the White House have better served itself by nominating someone other than a plain-vanilla, soft-spoken, seemingly moderate jurist who by all accounts has high-profile admirers on both sides of the aisle? Except for the predictable debate about Roe v. Wade that will take place, this choice is not going raise the level of rhetorical mercury out there. And I suspect that over the next few days a realization will set in that, absent something out of left field like unpaid nanny taxes, this nomination will be successful.

It speaks volumes about the administration's evaluation of its own political capital that instead of a more controversial Bork-redux choice that would have both rallied its firebrand base and knocked Leakgate from the public discourse for weeks or months, it went with a nominee that appears to do neither. To the extent the administration was "forced into moderation" by its own agenda-sapping problems with Leakgate and other issues, that's probably a good thing.