Road Rules Challenge

Today’s Rasberry column in the Post opposing the Roberts nomination contains one of the more inane anecdotes I’ve read in recent history:

The second thing about balance came from a friend -- black, conservative and Republican -- who was laying out the reasons he opposes the Roberts nomination.
It isn't his conservatism, my friend said, but the too-smooth path by which Roberts has arrived at this juncture. Son of a wealthy steel executive, Roberts attended private schools, Harvard and Harvard Law School, then held a federal appeals court clerkship, followed a year later by a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice (now Chief Justice) William Rehnquist.

He then was named special assistant to the U.S. attorney general, and associate counsel to the president (at age 27) before joining one of Washington's top law firms. Then Roberts went to the office of the solicitor general of the United States and, for the past two years, a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The point: Nothing in that glide path suggests exposure to anything that might temper his conservative philosophy with real-life exposure to the problems and concerns of ordinary men and women.

Would Rasberry (or his friend, since he’s decided to evade responsibility for the sentiment by crediting it to a “friend,” allowing him to suggest the idea and then claim it isn’t necessarily his) prefer that Roberts had spent time flipping burgers or digging sewage ditches? Roberts has lived a life of privilege, but it’s that disdained privilege that’s given the man the resources to become one of the top legal minds in the country. If Roberts had spent time engaged with “the problems and concerns of ordinary” citizens, he’d be far less likely to boast the impressive resume that qualifies him for the spot.

Only a fool would try to dethrone the rarified position of a Supreme Court Justice; Rasberry wants an Everyman donning those robes. Anyway – aren’t the liberals the ones that always sneer at Bush’s middle-America appeal? But now Rasberry – excuse me, his friend – wants it on the Court?

Let’s not even touch the fact that he believes that “real-life exposure” would temper conservative philosophies. Last I checked, liberalism was the ideology of the academic class. Maybe Rasberry needs some real-life exposure of his own.