GOVERNMENT SERVICE AS BLOOD SPORT:

Filtering out the best (Thomas Sowell, February 9, 2005, Townhall)

For a whole generation now, and especially since the orchestrated smear campaign against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987, Senate confirmation hearings have often had an ugly Roman circus atmosphere whenever a nominee was someone that special interests feared or hated.

At some point, either this administration or some future administration needs to put the brakes on this kind of behavior because many people with achievements and dignity will not agree to become nominees if that means being dragged through the mud by irresponsible politicians on national television. [....]

The kind of process through which individuals are filtered changes the mix of people who emerge on the other side, whether that process is Senate confirmation or any of the other processes through which people must pass to reach a coveted position.

The consistently low academic quality of the people who go into teaching in our public schools -- as shown by innumerable studies going back more than half a century -- is an almost inevitable consequence of filtering them through schools of education, whose ridiculous teacher training courses would repel virtually any intelligent person.

Some dedicated people with intelligence may suffer through ed school in order to teach, but many others will decide that they have better things to do than listen to the pretentious garbage presented to students under the guise of teacher training. [...]

Filters matter. The Senate should not become a filter like schools of education that filter out good people.

Doing to the federal courts what we've done to public education would certainly seem unwise.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 11, 2005 11:47 PM