Diminishing Returns

I said earlier that there were hints and insinuations on the Left suggesting some disappointment with the Sotomayor nomination, although outwardly they "celebrated" the nomination of the First! Latina! Justice! (Ta Daaaaa!). Now, Richard Cohen comes out and says what many more are thinking, but whose finely calibrated philosophy could never allow them to admit: Sonia Sotomayor: A Safe, Soporific Bet For The High Court

Don't get me wrong. (Sotomayor) is fully qualified. She is smart and learned and experienced and, in case you have not heard, a Hispanic, female nominee, of whom there have not been any since the dawn of our fair republic. But she has no cause, unless it is not to make a mistake, and has no passion, unless it is not to show any, and lacks intellectual brilliance, unless it is disguised under a veil of soporific competence until she takes her seat on the court. We shall see.

In the meantime, Sotomayor will do, and will do very nicely, as a personification of what ails the American left. She is, as everyone has pointed out, in the mainstream of American liberalism, a stream both intellectually shallow and preoccupied with the past. We have a neat summary of it in the recent remarks of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who said he wanted a Supreme Court justice "who will continue to move the court forward in protecting . . . important civil rights." He cited the shooting of a gay youth, the gang rape of a lesbian and the murder of a black man -- in other words, violence based on homophobia and racism. Yes. But who nowadays disagrees?

Cohen even dares to go where even the "mean" GOP Senators would not go, saying that the Ricci case was about the denial of individual civil liberties, and that Sotomayor came down foresquare on the side of the rights of the state over that of the individual. Why can't our guys ever make points like this?

What, though, about a jurist who can advance the larger cause of civil rights and at the same time protect individual rights? This was the dilemma raised by the New Haven firefighters' case. The legal mind who could have found a "liberal" way out of the thicket would deserve a Supreme Court seat. As an appellate judge, Sotomayor did not even attempt such an exercise. She punted.

Sotomayor has demonstrated that she is minimally qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. Rah. But there are hundreds, if not thousands of Americans who can meet that standard. In relentlessly demanding the promotion of mediocraties to satisfy an unspoken quota, the Left diminshes itself and the laws it champions as constitutionally protected "social justice."