The New York Times editors, even before the revelation of her abortion advice during the Clinton administration, were nervous about the stealth nominee. They fret:
President Obama may know that his new nominee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, shares his thinking on the multitude of issues that face the court and the nation, but the public knows nothing of the kind. Whether by ambitious design or by habit of mind, Ms. Kagan has spent decades carefully husbanding her thoughts and shielding her philosophy from view. Her lack of a clear record on certain issues makes it hard to know whether Mr. Obama has nominated a full-throated counterweight to the court’s increasingly aggressive conservative wing. … But where, precisely, has Ms. Kagan been during the legal whirlwinds of the last few years, as issues like executive power, same-sex marriage, the rights of the accused and proper application of the death penalty have raged through the courts?
Why, hiding her views to position herself for the Court, of course. It is ironic that the president, who got to office concealing his own views, now is unsettling his base for selecting someone who has concealed hers. The lefty Times editors find this most troubling:
In a 2001 Harvard Law Review article, Ms. Kagan defended a robust assertion of presidential power unless specifically limited by Congress — albeit in the service of “progressive goals” on the domestic front. She told the Senate last year that she agreed the government has the right to indefinitely detain enemy combatants captured around the world. As Mr. Obama’s solicitor general, she has supported his administration’s positions, little changed since the Bush administration, on the use of military force against Al Qaeda, the habeas corpus rights of military detainees and the state secrets privilege.
Conservatives may roll their eyes, convinced that no Harvard Law School dean is going to cross the left. But the issue here is the rather paranoid and perpetually aggrieved left. Obama in their eyes has been a disappointment. Indeed, it was their apathy that convinced the Democrats that they had to roll the dice on ObamaCare in order to turn out the liberal base in November. Now he gives them a nominee — for the seat of the sainted leftist Justice Stevens — who’s a squish? Hmm. Obama may have been too clever by half on this. The right will probably still not embrace her, and the left will, once again, be peeved. Sort of the worst of all worlds, no?