Big Fish from Small Ponds
I wrote some of these thoughts earlier as comments in various other posts here at TPM and elsewhere in the past and I'd like to expand on them a bit.
As we all know Judge Roberts blew the oath of office on Tuesday. It looked like he froze on such a momentous occasion, maybe he was taken aback by the size of the crowd. The Chief Justice's job doesn't require him to be on such a large stage very often. And thankfully in the end the flub was no big deal.
But I think this points to a valuable lesson about diversity. George Bush selected Roberts from a limited pool of judicial talent. He only considered like minded strict conservatives for the highest post on the highest court we have. Most if not all of the candidates Bush chose from for the job rose through the ranks of the Federalist Society. These guys have been groomed for high courts from the time they leave law school. They've proved themselves time and time again through rulings from the bench and in their written opinions over the years. When given the chance to nominate SC justices Republicans are no longer willing to risk taking a flyer on a O'Conner or a Kennedy who proved too independent and were such big disappointments to them.
Roberts was the best they had to offer but coming from such a small pool of talent doesn't necessarily mean he was the best Bush could have done, even from their side of the aisle. Roberts was a very big fish from a very small pond. And as such he apparently suffers from the delusion that he's not only the best of the best, but like the man who put him on the court he thinks he's better than he really is. The egotistical exercise of trying to recite the oath from memory without back up notes speaks loud and clear to that delusion.
We have a very big pond here in the US. We don't have to select Supreme Court justices or anyone else only from Ivy league schools or closed incestuous professional societies where they are stunted by adhering to a particular set of beliefs considered sacrosanct and beyond challenge or even open minded debate. We'd certainly be much better off with people in the highest offices in the land who have learned a little humility through out their lives instead of only those who see their rise to the top foreordained by a series of positions taken, rulings uttered, all predictably checked off the list that keeps them rising to the top of the pyramid. .
In a different field my dad was an example of why diversity works. He was an all state high school halfback in the fall of 1941 on the undefeated Rock Island High School football team. He earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois, the first in his family to go to college. WW11 intervened and he spent 3 years as a flight engineer on a B-24 flying around the South Pacific hunting for Japanese submarines. When he came back he joined a class of about 180 other scholarship players on the bulging squad, most returning war veterans like himself. Typically there was less than a third that number of incoming freshman football players in any given year but obviously 1946 wasn't a typical year. My dad was an excellent athelete. Tall, strong and fast for the time he had a knack for the game, he was the archetype of a college football player in 1946. But at his position was a guy a couple years younger by the name of Buddy Young, a little black kid from Phillips High School in Chicago. While short and stocky - listed anywhere from 5'3" to 5'7" - Buddy Young was nothing short of sensational. He set national track records at Illinois. He was built low to the ground and was as shifty as he was fast, sort of the Barry Sanders of his time. Opposing teams couldn't see him behind the big linemen when the play started and if he didn't make them miss he'd stick his helmut in their gut and bowl them over. When he got by them he was gone. Nobody could catch him.
My dad was never going to crack the starting lineup with Young in front of him.
He tried to transfer to Northwestern but the Big Ten had an agreement not to raid each other's scholarship players. NW's coach reluctantly turned him down. He was stuck.
So my dad accepted his fate. He went on to get his master's degree in education. It's not like the NFL back then was a road to riches like it can be today anyway. Well into the 1960s most professional football players had to hold off season jobs to make ends meet. A whole lot of them wound up (and still do today) suffering from crippling injuries the rest of their lives. My dad went on to teach and coach for awhile but as our family grew he moved on to the more lucrative field of selling trucks and he spent most of his adult life earning a very good living. He excelled at it. More than once he earned Ford Motor Company awards for truck salesman of the year complete with rings, plaques and trips to Vegas. His knees were still good enough to play tennis twice a week into his 80s. Buddy Young went on to be a football star in the NFL and was one of the first union organizers of the sport. It worked out for the best for everybody. Illinois put the best football team they had on the field, my dad got the education he wanted and Young went on to not only earn the stardom professionally he so richly deserved as a player but helped make the business side of the NFL fairer to it's employees after his playing days were over.
Here's probably the most extreme example of the downside of lack of diversity. In the early 1940s the USA and Nazi Gerrmany were competing to build the first atom bomb. Hitler had driven Jews from his country in the 1930s before he got around to gassing those who remained. With his racism he not only gutted his own pool of nuclear physicists but he drove many of the refugees who happened to be Jewish into the willing arms of the USA with a determination to win that race at all costs. His "pure aryan" scientists were no competition for the much wider talent pool from which the allies had to draw many of whom trained in Germnay's own universities.
Another example: Babe Ruth is considered the best baseball player of all time. He was the MIchael Jordan of the game. He won two World Series games as a pitcher for the 1918 Red Sox. He hit 54 homeruns to set a new record one year surpassing Homerun Baker's previous record of 21 in a season. But Ruth never faced some of the best baseball players of his generation because of racism. We'll never know just how good he was because instead facing a Satchel Paige in his prime he faced a pitcher of lesser skill because Paige wasn't allowed to play major league baseball for most of his career. Conversely would Ruth have been driven to even bigger heights if some of the best homerun hitters of the time were allowed to compete against him? Would there have been a Mantle/Maris McGwire/Sosa season long homerun contest between Ruth and a black player in the 1930s? Like I said we'll never know.
And we'll never know if Roberts is the best justice Republicans have because unless their candidates for the court have to fit a very specific profile they'll never rise to the top. Roberts may be the best the Federalist Society had to offer but that's like saying Paul Wolfowitz is the smartest foreign policy expert the neocons produced. That's not saying much.
As we all know Judge Roberts blew the oath of office on Tuesday. It looked like he froze on such a momentous occasion, maybe he was taken aback by the size of the crowd. The Chief Justice's job doesn't require him to be on such a large stage very often. And thankfully in the end the flub was no big deal.
But I think this points to a valuable lesson about diversity. George Bush selected Roberts from a limited pool of judicial talent. He only considered like minded strict conservatives for the highest post on the highest court we have. Most if not all of the candidates Bush chose from for the job rose through the ranks of the Federalist Society. These guys have been groomed for high courts from the time they leave law school. They've proved themselves time and time again through rulings from the bench and in their written opinions over the years. When given the chance to nominate SC justices Republicans are no longer willing to risk taking a flyer on a O'Conner or a Kennedy who proved too independent and were such big disappointments to them.
Roberts was the best they had to offer but coming from such a small pool of talent doesn't necessarily mean he was the best Bush could have done, even from their side of the aisle. Roberts was a very big fish from a very small pond. And as such he apparently suffers from the delusion that he's not only the best of the best, but like the man who put him on the court he thinks he's better than he really is. The egotistical exercise of trying to recite the oath from memory without back up notes speaks loud and clear to that delusion.
We have a very big pond here in the US. We don't have to select Supreme Court justices or anyone else only from Ivy league schools or closed incestuous professional societies where they are stunted by adhering to a particular set of beliefs considered sacrosanct and beyond challenge or even open minded debate. We'd certainly be much better off with people in the highest offices in the land who have learned a little humility through out their lives instead of only those who see their rise to the top foreordained by a series of positions taken, rulings uttered, all predictably checked off the list that keeps them rising to the top of the pyramid. .
In a different field my dad was an example of why diversity works. He was an all state high school halfback in the fall of 1941 on the undefeated Rock Island High School football team. He earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois, the first in his family to go to college. WW11 intervened and he spent 3 years as a flight engineer on a B-24 flying around the South Pacific hunting for Japanese submarines. When he came back he joined a class of about 180 other scholarship players on the bulging squad, most returning war veterans like himself. Typically there was less than a third that number of incoming freshman football players in any given year but obviously 1946 wasn't a typical year. My dad was an excellent athelete. Tall, strong and fast for the time he had a knack for the game, he was the archetype of a college football player in 1946. But at his position was a guy a couple years younger by the name of Buddy Young, a little black kid from Phillips High School in Chicago. While short and stocky - listed anywhere from 5'3" to 5'7" - Buddy Young was nothing short of sensational. He set national track records at Illinois. He was built low to the ground and was as shifty as he was fast, sort of the Barry Sanders of his time. Opposing teams couldn't see him behind the big linemen when the play started and if he didn't make them miss he'd stick his helmut in their gut and bowl them over. When he got by them he was gone. Nobody could catch him.
My dad was never going to crack the starting lineup with Young in front of him.
He tried to transfer to Northwestern but the Big Ten had an agreement not to raid each other's scholarship players. NW's coach reluctantly turned him down. He was stuck.
So my dad accepted his fate. He went on to get his master's degree in education. It's not like the NFL back then was a road to riches like it can be today anyway. Well into the 1960s most professional football players had to hold off season jobs to make ends meet. A whole lot of them wound up (and still do today) suffering from crippling injuries the rest of their lives. My dad went on to teach and coach for awhile but as our family grew he moved on to the more lucrative field of selling trucks and he spent most of his adult life earning a very good living. He excelled at it. More than once he earned Ford Motor Company awards for truck salesman of the year complete with rings, plaques and trips to Vegas. His knees were still good enough to play tennis twice a week into his 80s. Buddy Young went on to be a football star in the NFL and was one of the first union organizers of the sport. It worked out for the best for everybody. Illinois put the best football team they had on the field, my dad got the education he wanted and Young went on to not only earn the stardom professionally he so richly deserved as a player but helped make the business side of the NFL fairer to it's employees after his playing days were over.
Here's probably the most extreme example of the downside of lack of diversity. In the early 1940s the USA and Nazi Gerrmany were competing to build the first atom bomb. Hitler had driven Jews from his country in the 1930s before he got around to gassing those who remained. With his racism he not only gutted his own pool of nuclear physicists but he drove many of the refugees who happened to be Jewish into the willing arms of the USA with a determination to win that race at all costs. His "pure aryan" scientists were no competition for the much wider talent pool from which the allies had to draw many of whom trained in Germnay's own universities.
Another example: Babe Ruth is considered the best baseball player of all time. He was the MIchael Jordan of the game. He won two World Series games as a pitcher for the 1918 Red Sox. He hit 54 homeruns to set a new record one year surpassing Homerun Baker's previous record of 21 in a season. But Ruth never faced some of the best baseball players of his generation because of racism. We'll never know just how good he was because instead facing a Satchel Paige in his prime he faced a pitcher of lesser skill because Paige wasn't allowed to play major league baseball for most of his career. Conversely would Ruth have been driven to even bigger heights if some of the best homerun hitters of the time were allowed to compete against him? Would there have been a Mantle/Maris McGwire/Sosa season long homerun contest between Ruth and a black player in the 1930s? Like I said we'll never know.
And we'll never know if Roberts is the best justice Republicans have because unless their candidates for the court have to fit a very specific profile they'll never rise to the top. Roberts may be the best the Federalist Society had to offer but that's like saying Paul Wolfowitz is the smartest foreign policy expert the neocons produced. That's not saying much.
