Against Packing the Courts

Democrats have learned nothing from Merrick Garland

More than any other single political event — including the Watergate scandal — the dishonest and morally indefensible attack on Robert Bork led by Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden created the rancorous procedural and political maximalism that defines life in Washington today. Senators Kennedy and Biden — the guilty, sodden conscience of the Democratic party and its second-rate brain, respectively — did more than any two elected leaders in modern American history to cheapen consensus, render compromise unprofitable, and derail long-term cooperation between the major national political parties and, more important, between the two dominant American political tendencies for which they stand. This is Joe Biden’s America, and its politics are crippled.

Republicans, of course, are driven by the same self-interest that drives any ordinary politician, and unilateral political disarmament was never a serious option for them. Republicans will use every tool at their disposal, something the Democrats ought to keep in mind when they consider establishing new political precedents, as with the current boomlet in support of packing the Supreme Court — expanding the number of justices on the Court beyond the current nine and filling those bonus seats with reliable Democratic hacks on the model of Justices Kagan and Sotomayor — as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

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