No Labels, No Guts, No Glory

The group "No Labels" that formed this week aspires to help Democrats an Republicans find common ground to solve this country's problems. A moderate group comprised largely of independents like Michael Bloomberg and including a few Democrats and fewer Republicans (what does that tell you?) , the No Labels group wants the extremes of each major party to put their differences aside and work toward a sensible, centrist governing style.

This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

First of all, as E.J. Dionne wrote in a column published today, the No Labels group supposes that the American left is as extreme as the American right. In fact, the American left has moved so much toward the center, the Democrats have become as moderate as the old Rockefeller wing of the Republican party, while the Republicans have become more extremely conservative and beyond the scope of moderation. There are politicians as far to the left as Rand Paul is to the right, but they've become hopelessly marginalized over the last thirty years. As for Democrats, they're willing to compromise - like President Obama - but what's the use when Republicans aren't?

Secondly, "bipartisanship" is a fuzzy aim. If your idea is to support bipartisanship that produces legislation insuring a brighter future for America, fine. But if you support the kind of bipartisanship that gets any old bill passed, no matter how bad it is, you're better off with lines in the sand. Case in point: A telecommunications bill that passed in 1995 and was signed by President Clinton enjoyed broad bipartisan support. It also allowed large media conglomerates to own more broadcast outlets in more media markets - sometimes in the same market - and ruined the quality of programming on music radio. It also put news radio until the control of fewer companies; in New York, news stations WCBS-AM and WINS-AM, once competitors, are owned by the same company. The only major difference between them is that WINS has teletype machine sound effects.

Thirdly, No Labels doesn't seem to have any ideas or proposals of their own. This group doesn't seem to stand for anything; it's only interested in combining the best ideas of either side. It doesn't matter to them that the best ideas in Washington these days may not be good enough. Some of them are just plain bad. But bad ideas are what we Americans are best at generating. No Labels is one of them.

No Labels will go the way of so many other "moderate" groups that tried to move the country forward but proposed solutions that only kept it moving in place. It will disband without any fanfare. Another such group slated to join them would be the Democrats.

Hair Raising

It's time to do away with public Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Sonia Sotomayor spent the entire week giving perfunctory, noncommittal answers to rehearsed questions from senators trying to please their base. Everyone was playing not only to their strengths, but to the cameras as well. This has been standard procedure for roughly twenty years, after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork expressed honest, learned and intellectually stimulating though fundamentally repugnant views about jurisprudence and got his nomination handed back to him in the form of a rejection. Since then, these hearings have been all about talking a lot an saying nothing . . . on both sides of the table. (The Clarence Thomas hearings were the exception to this post-Bork posturing, but for all the wrong reasons.)

At one point, one senator - I believe it was Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter - asked Sotomayor the one interesting and original question of the hearings. That was whether she, as a Supreme Court justice, would recommend television cameras used in the Court's proceedings. Great - more denigration of the Court. The Court is already trivialized by some of the cases they've handled, references to the justice as the "Supremes" (as if they were a pop group), and Clarence Thomas's mere presence on it. Do they have to have televised proceedings? Do we want to see Chief Justice Roberts play to the cameras? Televised courtroom proceedings are vulgar; they're voyeuristic, creepy, and overblown, as anyone who remembers the O.J. Simpson murder case or has ever watched Court TV on other occasions knows.

To image how the Supreme court would function on C-SPAN, just consider Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the Senate, and how wonderfully they've worked. We need less, not more television coverage of our judicial system. When the interpretation of the law is at stake, we need public servants to talk to each other, not to a TV audience crying to be pandered to.

So I suggest we stop televising Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. And when they get behind closed doors, then Amy Klobuchar lets her hair hang down . . . oh, wait a minute, I'm getting this confused with a Charlie Rich song . . . anyway, when they get behind closed doors, then Amy Klobuchar, Jeff Sessions, Patrick Leahy, John Cornyn and all the rest can ask someone like Sotomayor all the relevant questions they should ask - and the nominee can actually give honest answers - all without the distraction of live TV.

One good standard has survived the Bork hearings, however. Someone in my family (I won't say whom) complained about Sotomayor's appearance and said she should have gotten her hair done. Gee whizbangers, she's trying for a Supreme Court justiceship, not a movie role! I'm glad Supreme Court nominees don't physically make themselves over, just as Bork rejected advice to shave his beard. We don't want judges, lawyers, and the rest spending more time on personal appearances than on cases. After all, Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark gave as much time to preparing her hair as to her case, and look how that turned out.