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.The story or stealth routes work best when the nominee is littleknown to the public in advance.Why? Image making is easier with ablank slate.Supreme Court appointments are well designed for image mak-ing because nominations often begin with that blank slate in termsof public awareness of the nominee.Over more than 200 years, fewSupreme Court nominees have been widely known to the public whenthey were nominated.And even that rare level of familiarity to thepublic has been nonexistent in recent years.8Well-known figures, however, particularly politicians, alreadyhave public records that make image making difficult.For example,although President Clinton wanted to appoint a politician to theCourt, shaping the image of that individual would have been muchmore difficult than doing so for a lesser known individual.Clintonencountered some of that difficulty when he publicly consideredBruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor, 1988 Democratic presiden- 136 electing justicetial candidate, and then Interior secretary.Floating Babbitt s name ledto immediate opposition from conservatives.As mentioned in chap-ter 2, it is no coincidence that elected officials, with their strong namerecognition and public and controversial records, have been passedover for nomination since Earl Warren.Federal appellate judges, on the other hand, are particularly advan-taged in this process in that they rarely carry a public image thatneeds to be changed.9 Instead, images can be made from scratch.Meeting Public ExpectationsThe White House needs the nominee to appear to correspond to publicexpectations of a Supreme Court justice.The public imagines justicesas fair-minded individuals who act like the symbol of justice, with itsblind approach to arbitrating disputes in society.Therefore, SupremeCourt justices are supposed to be jurists or legal thinkers who carryno specific agendas with them as they ascend the bench.Justices arenot supposed to be ideological extremists who use the bench to fur-ther their own ideology.Conveying that message about the nominee embodies knowledgethat the public is critical to the administration s success in winningelite and public support and eventual confirmation.For example, in1993 the Clinton administration quickly sought to depict the nomina-tion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as consistent with the centrist, nonideo-logical tone of the Clinton administration.The administration s line,repeated over and over, was that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, like Bill Clin-ton, was a centrist who eschewed ideological labels.Judge Ginsburgherself reinforced that image with her subsequent public comments.However, the success of the Ginsburg nomination was not repeatedinitially in the next nomination.In a session with the press immedi-ately after the announcement, White House Counsel Lloyd Cutlerdescribed Breyer as the one who had the fewest problems. 10 Ratherthan personifying the ideals of the judicial system, the appointmentwas inadvertently portrayed as the outcome of a nakedly political pro-cess in which the least objectionable candidate is the winner. today s nomination process 137An important aspect of image making is to minimize the appear-ance of political factors in the selection process.Presidents presentnominees to the public with the inevitable line that this persondeserves the position almost wholly because of merit and that regard-less of the constituency nature of the appointment, once the creden-tials of the individual are known, there will be consensus on grantingconfirmation.President George H.W.Bush s declaration, mentioned earlier,that Clarence Thomas was the best person for this position is oneexample.11 Similarly, President Clinton s anger during the Ginsburgpress conference at the insinuation that politics played a role in hisdecision making rather than just merit is another piece of evidence ofthe critical nature of framing the appointment for the press and thepublic as apolitical.Meeting Supporter ExpectationsThe mass public is not the only attentive audience [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The story or stealth routes work best when the nominee is littleknown to the public in advance.Why? Image making is easier with ablank slate.Supreme Court appointments are well designed for image mak-ing because nominations often begin with that blank slate in termsof public awareness of the nominee.Over more than 200 years, fewSupreme Court nominees have been widely known to the public whenthey were nominated.And even that rare level of familiarity to thepublic has been nonexistent in recent years.8Well-known figures, however, particularly politicians, alreadyhave public records that make image making difficult.For example,although President Clinton wanted to appoint a politician to theCourt, shaping the image of that individual would have been muchmore difficult than doing so for a lesser known individual.Clintonencountered some of that difficulty when he publicly consideredBruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor, 1988 Democratic presiden- 136 electing justicetial candidate, and then Interior secretary.Floating Babbitt s name ledto immediate opposition from conservatives.As mentioned in chap-ter 2, it is no coincidence that elected officials, with their strong namerecognition and public and controversial records, have been passedover for nomination since Earl Warren.Federal appellate judges, on the other hand, are particularly advan-taged in this process in that they rarely carry a public image thatneeds to be changed.9 Instead, images can be made from scratch.Meeting Public ExpectationsThe White House needs the nominee to appear to correspond to publicexpectations of a Supreme Court justice.The public imagines justicesas fair-minded individuals who act like the symbol of justice, with itsblind approach to arbitrating disputes in society.Therefore, SupremeCourt justices are supposed to be jurists or legal thinkers who carryno specific agendas with them as they ascend the bench.Justices arenot supposed to be ideological extremists who use the bench to fur-ther their own ideology.Conveying that message about the nominee embodies knowledgethat the public is critical to the administration s success in winningelite and public support and eventual confirmation.For example, in1993 the Clinton administration quickly sought to depict the nomina-tion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as consistent with the centrist, nonideo-logical tone of the Clinton administration.The administration s line,repeated over and over, was that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, like Bill Clin-ton, was a centrist who eschewed ideological labels.Judge Ginsburgherself reinforced that image with her subsequent public comments.However, the success of the Ginsburg nomination was not repeatedinitially in the next nomination.In a session with the press immedi-ately after the announcement, White House Counsel Lloyd Cutlerdescribed Breyer as the one who had the fewest problems. 10 Ratherthan personifying the ideals of the judicial system, the appointmentwas inadvertently portrayed as the outcome of a nakedly political pro-cess in which the least objectionable candidate is the winner. today s nomination process 137An important aspect of image making is to minimize the appear-ance of political factors in the selection process.Presidents presentnominees to the public with the inevitable line that this persondeserves the position almost wholly because of merit and that regard-less of the constituency nature of the appointment, once the creden-tials of the individual are known, there will be consensus on grantingconfirmation.President George H.W.Bush s declaration, mentioned earlier,that Clarence Thomas was the best person for this position is oneexample.11 Similarly, President Clinton s anger during the Ginsburgpress conference at the insinuation that politics played a role in hisdecision making rather than just merit is another piece of evidence ofthe critical nature of framing the appointment for the press and thepublic as apolitical.Meeting Supporter ExpectationsThe mass public is not the only attentive audience [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]