Hanna, I agree with you about the unfortunate trend of senators opposing perfectly qualified nominees for the Supreme Court, cabinet posts, etc, just because they are from the opposite party. As Republican Kit Bond said in announcing his support of Sotomayor, “Elections have consequences.” And when your party loses an election, you should extend the courtesy of approving the people the president chooses except in the cases in which the person clearly doesn’t meet the standards for the job. However, Senator Obama himself was part of this partisan creep. You’d be hard pressed to say that John Roberts and Samuel Alito were not qualified for the Supreme Court, yet Obama voted against both of them because he didn’t like their philosophies. So it’s dispiriting, but no surprise that President Obama’s excellent Supreme Court nominee was voted down by a majority of Republicans.
Photograph of Barack Obama by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
