Peter Beinart: Elena Kagan's Achilles' Heel

The Daily Beast:

Obama's potential Supreme Court pick banned military recruiting at Harvard Law. Peter Beinart on how that stance has damaged liberals�"and why conservatives are right to bash her for it.

President Obama is about to nominate someone for the Supreme Court. On the day he or she is unveiled, conservatives will announce that they are approaching the selection with an open mind. Ten minutes later they will declare, more in sadness than anger, that the nominee has the judicial philosophy of Chairman Mao and the temperament of Dennis Rodman. Ten minutes after that, liberals will rise en masse to defend the nominee as wise, brilliant and humane, a person who restores our faith in humankind. And the kabuki theater will continue like that all summer long.

I can't blame my fellow liberals for playing along; if the other side fires, we have to fire back. But there's one exception. If Solicitor General Elana Kagan gets the nod, conservatives will beat the hell out of her for opposing military recruitment on campus when she was dean of Harvard Law School. And liberals should concede the point; the conservatives will be right.

Read the whole story: The Daily Beast

Comments

[thepoliticalcat]

01:57 PM on 05/10/2010

I've never understood the appeal of Peter Beinart. He's a sloppy thinker, and posturing as a pundit just reveals his sad lack of depth.

[Countess]

09:32 AM on 05/10/2010

The very small circle of Ivy league elites that run the supreme court is another example of how concentrated power is in the corptocracy.

[writersbloc]

12:45 PM on 05/10/2010

Point taken. Yet if you have the brain and the means, then you will likely enroll at a top university. That's what rational above-average intelligence people do.

[GunnyJ]

07:10 AM on 05/10/2010

As a former military recruiter, school officials have the option to make their campus open or closed. It is no big deal and this practice happens frequently. If a student is interested in the military they will seek the recruiter and set an appointment on campus or off campus. Further, many times the students request the campus be closed, depends on the particular crop of students on a campus...

[David Rozgonyi]

05:58 AM on 05/10/2010

Unfortunately, the US military is an organization that, with the full support of the highest levels of the government, still culls openly LGBT citizens from their ranks even if otherwise and in every other way they are decorated soldiers serving in the most critical national security areas such as arabic translators. This is blatant, cut-and-dried discrimination. Regardless of Kagan's flipflopping on the issue, she was right the first time: an openly discriminatory organization has NO business promoting its message on college campuses. Frankly, I'd only allow local restaurants (instead of McD et al) to open on campus, too, but that's another story....

[Zapatista]

03:19 AM on 05/10/2010

GOP Questions for her ....

1. Do you have a case of the gay?

2. Why aren't you purdy?

3. Why do you like books?

4. USA, greatest nation in human history or of all time?

[LeftLeanWing]

02:10 AM on 05/10/2010

Bienhart is an IDIOT.....

Kagan did allow military recruitment at the Harvard Law School...

Much to the chagrin of folks opposed to DADT.

[citizen1787]

01:34 AM on 05/10/2010

Why is geography and regional representation never brought up in the Supreme Court nomination process?

The western US is known for being more independent and libertarian politically, yet this is not represented on the court.

Of the nine current Justices only two were born west of the Mississippi and none of them went to law school out west. Is the curriculum and instruction at all western US law schools inferior to institutions in the East? or just the connections?

Currently, the Midwest has two Justices, one is retiring and it looks like his replacement will be someone from New York who went to Harvard.

Also, why are there no Americans of asian descent on the Supreme Court? Has one ever been nominated? and why is there only one protestant christian one the court in a country where protestants are the majority faith?

John Roberts- b. Indiana, went to Harvard law.

John Paul Stevens- b. Illinois, went to U. of Chicago BA and Northwestern Law.

Antonin Scalia- b. New Jersey, went to Georgetown BA and Harvard Law.

Anthony Kennedy- b. California, went to Stanford BA, the London School of Economics and Harvard Law

Clarence Thomas- b. Georgia, went to Holy Cross(Mass.) BA, Yale law.

Ruth Ginsburg- b. New York, went to Cornell BA, Columbia law.

Stephen Breyer- b. California, went to Stanford BA, Harvard law.

Samuel Alito- b. New Jersey, went to Princeton BA, Yale law.

Sonia Sotomayor- b. New York, went to Princeton BA, Yale law.

[unitron]

01:56 AM on 05/10/2010

Earl Warren was from "out west" and look how the conservatives loved him. : - )

[citizen1787]

02:09 AM on 05/10/2010

I don't care if it is a conservative or a liberal. I just want someone who didn't go to an Ivy league school for once in my life.

Are UCLA, BYU, U. of Texas or Cal-Berkley, etc. so inferior to Ivy league law schools?

Why the East Coast bias?

[thepoliticalcat]

02:07 PM on 05/10/2010

While Boalt Hall is in the top ten law schools, the same cannot be said of the others that you list. The best students will aspire to go to the best schools. The "bias" you speak of is a bias in favour of merit, not location. The top ten law schools are, still, mostly on the east coast.