Political Comment

I caught Mario Cuomo on C-Span this morning answering calls from viewers. I miss Mario-- I always thought he was one of the more intelligent and thoughtful (they're not exactly the same thing) politicians around, and it's a little disappointing to me that he never pursued office after losing the governor's race in New York back in '94, or accepted an appointment to the Supreme Court. It's on that last point that he offered a really great comment in response to a caller this morning, addressing the upcoming pick by Obama to fill the seat being vacated by David Souter. This was partially in response to a New York Times article this morning, indicating that Republicans have already constructed arguments against most of the possible candidates. Cuomo offered a mini history lesson on how many justices defied political expectations once they joined the Supreme Court, and he made what struck me as a great baseball analogy about the presumption of pre-judging how anyone will respond to the cases they have not even heard yet. He compared the process of holding hearings, weighing testimony and evidence as akin to a baseball umpire waiting for the pitch to be thrown before actually calling it a ball or a strike. So the key is to pick an appointee who is intelligent and thoughtful (where have I heard those qualities mentioned before?) and who can be trusted to render decisions based on the merits of a case and not ideology. That's obviously a tall order, but assuming that ideology trumps such common sense among the current prospects is probably doing most of them a disservice, and creating an artificial obstacle that demeans the entire system.