The Last Dance

"See, you've told me nothing, Judge.  With all due respect, you've not -- look, it's kind of interesting, this Kabuki dance we have in these hearings here, as if the public doesn't have a right to know what you think about fundamental issues facing them." 

-- Sen. Joseph Biden, September 14, 2005

Joe Biden believes he is smarter, better looking, cleverer and more capable than anyone in the world.  In other words, Joe Biden is a bore.  He is a pompous, annoying, affected bore.  He is one who has mastered at least the second half of Christ's Golden Rule.  While I do not believe the old story that, when he was a boy, Biden fell, face first,  into his cereal bowl after falling in love with his own reflection, there is no doubt he is deeply inspired by his own appearance, mein and ideas.   

Jonah Goldberg recently put it this way:

" The man loves his voice so much, you’d expect him to be following it around in a grey Buick, in defiance of restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization’s usual imperatives to stop talking. Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don’t understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I’m going to get right to it and besides these aren’t the droids you’re looking for…."

No doubt about it, Joe Biden is enough to make a deaf man cry.

But Biden is right about one thing: the Senate confirmation hearings of Judge John Roberts really did become one great big "Kabuki dance." 

Roberts refused to answer any questions related to his judicial philosophy, provide his view on most past decisions or, generally, talk about anything else that would be of interest to a senator sincerely trying to determine whether he should vote for Roberts' confirmation.

And, of course, the Democrats have only themselves to blame for that.

After their filibusters of forthcoming nominees and their pre-game smack, predicting the rejection of anyone but a "mainstream nominee," they cannot argue, fairly, that they are outraged by Roberts' failure to answer questions.  They will (and have) used mainstream and publicly accepted answers to such questions to smear nominees and distort their positions and demagogue us all to tears.  They also take the view that any legal philosophy that might result in even one fewer abortion amounts to an "extreme philosophy" and a clear basis to filibuster.

So the Democrats are left with a smiling nominee who refuses to answer obviously reasonable questions posed by obviously unreasonable interrogators.  "Advise and consent" becomes "Duck and Run." 

Or it becomes a "Kabuki dance," music by Judiciary Committee Democrats, but choreography by a White House that will not take "No Pro-lifers Need Apply" for an answer.    

In spite of Biden's folksy chides, Kennedy's hollow, semi-literate taunts, and the empty, ritualized groans of exasperation from other Committee Democrats that they could not see the man behind the robe or the executive privilege, it is the Democrats who are responsible for the demise. 

In the end, the corpse of Useful Judicial Nominations Hearings lies, stinking, on the Democrats' doorstep.  And Biden and his friends killed it. 

Comments

[Remainderman]

We had thought that kabuki was theatre -- what the unsurpassed Celtic collossus Gene Kelly and crew were doing in "Singin' In The Rain", albeit in a decadent, Western way. The Senator may have seen the same old song and dance, but those of us who would bust an inguinal something-or-other-you-betcha-and-how if we tried the same moves still appreciate it.

In addition, for Roberts, it was either 1) do the kabuki or 2) be the kabob.