BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

Bush's 'diversity' a cynical ploy (Robert L. Harris, Hampshire Gazette, 11/08/03).

President Bush is no fool. He knows that to ensure his re-election in 2004 he not only has to hold his strongly conservative base but also raise his numbers among other groups as well - Latinos, African Americans, Arab Americans, Catholics and women. If at the same time he can cause trouble for the Democrats with these groups, that doesn't hurt either.
To that end, Bush is doing something that Republicans generally don't like to do: He's seeking broad diversity on the federal bench. In his first 14 nominations to vacancies on the U.S. federal appeals courts, the president has actively looked for candidates who do not reflect the traditional, mostly white male mien of the federal courts.

But don't get excited. There is a catch - and a cynical one at that. Although he's chosen diverse nominees, Bush has also gone far, far out of his way to pick some of the most conservative nonwhite and/or female jurists in the nation. This, he hopes, will win him votes (although without really doing much for the groups he claims to be benefiting) and it also puts Democrats in the awkward position of being charged with racism and sexism if they oppose his nominees. . . .

Justice Janice Rogers Brown, Bush's newest nominee for the prestigious D.C. Circuit, is an African American, a Californian and a woman - but she too is a right-wing conservative who says the court decisions that upheld the New Deal mark ''the triumph of our socialist revolution'' and believes that age discrimination protections provide no public benefit. . . .

Presidents have a right to nominate candidates who share certain ideological beliefs, broadly speaking. But this is just plain cynical. Because these candidates don't reflect the ethnic and racial groups they come from and because (in searching high and low for, say, right-wing African Americans) Bush has had to sacrifice quality, Democrats - who have long been the ones speaking out most strongly for diversity - have felt obliged to oppose many of these nominees. . . .

Where performance is ignored and personal characteristics become the criteria, we are in very dangerous waters. Debate over judicial nominees should focus above all on the qualifications of the candidates, and on whether or not they will follow the law - not upon immutable aspects like race, gender and ethnicity. Any other course demeans both the nominee and the federal court system.

If the personal factor is considered at all, it should be in relation to substance, so that the nominee reflects the prevalent views of the group.

Mr. Harris is a former president of the National Bar Association and a founder of the California Association of Black Lawyers. In other words, he has dedicated his life to the proposition that race, excuse me, immutable characteristics, is the most important thing to know about a lawyer or judge. I suspect that he has come to his conviction that confirmation should depend solely upon competence only recently and, of course, Justice Thomas is the best of the current Justices. But, most of all, his calling President Bush cynical is the pot calling the kettle, um, diverse.

Posted by David Cohen at November 8, 2003 7:53 PM