If you ask Bill Clinton what he thinks, President Obama should throw a curveball with his next nominee to the Supreme Court. The qualities he'd like? Someone young, energetic, and someone who's not a jurist. That rules out virtually all of the names on the White House's reported shortlist—led, at the moment, by Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Two other top contenders, Merrick Garland and Diane Wood, have two of Clinton's strikes against them; both are appellate justices and are pushing 60. Speaking over the weekend with ABC's Jake Tapper and MSNBC's Luke Russert, Clinton quoted the late high-court justice Hugo Black, who said that people from small towns—sheriffs and county judges—would be better equipped to know "how the lofty decisions of the Supreme Court affect the ordinary lives of Americans."
So who would he appoint? Clinton wouldn't talk names. But he did firmly remove two from the list: his and his wife's. "[Hillary] would be good at it, and at one point in her life, she might [have] been interested," he said. "But she's like me, you know, we're kind of doers." It was a less than subtle way of saying that the court would be a dead end, and both can be more influential outside the marble palace.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
