OPINION:
President Biden has announced he will choose a Black woman to nominate for retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s seat.
That means he puts skin color first, consideration for the Constitution second.
In a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, only 23% of Americans said they agreed with Biden’s race-based intents. The vast majority, 76%, say they want “all possible nominees” considered — not just the Black ones.
Even 54% of Democrats want Biden to back off his skin color test for the U.S. Supreme Court.
That’s significant.
Yet Biden says he’s bound by his campaign promise to pick a Black woman.
“The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity — and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court,” Biden said. “It’s long overdue in my view. I made that commitment during the campaign for president, and I will keep that commitment.”
Nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court is certainly a worthy endeavor.
But nominating a Black woman whose top qualification is the color of her skin, not the knowledge of the Constitution, is horrible politics that sets the stage for a subpar judiciary system. Whatever happened to the dream of the Martin Luther King Jr. decade — the one where the aspiration was to one day be judged by the content of character, not color of skin?
Those were fine words, even finer goals.
Biden could certainly stand a refresher course on that 1963 speech.
Many in the media and politics have been busily making comparisons between Biden’s intent to nominate a Black woman to the court, and former President Ronald Reagan’s remarks about bringing forth the first woman to the Supreme Court, namely, Sandra Day O’Connor.
“Biden promised a black female justice. Reagan made a similar pledge,” The Washington Post wrote.
“Biden is not the first president to promise to select his nominee from a specific demographic group,” The New York Times wrote.
And this, from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham: “President Reagan said running for office that he wanted to put the first female on the court.”
But there are crucial differences in the rhetoric.
Reagan specifically said his first consideration wasn’t gender.
“Needless to say, most of the speculation [about my nomination for Justice Potter Stewart’s seat] has centered on the question of whether I would consider a woman to fill this first vacancy,” Reagan said on July 7, 1981. “As the press has accurately pointed out, during my campaign for the presidency, I made a commitment that one of my first appointments to the Supreme Court vacancy would be the most qualified woman that I could possibly find.”
He went on: “Now, this is not to say that I would appoint a woman merely to do so. That would not be fair to women nor to the future generations of all Americans whose lives are so deeply affected by decisions of the court. Rather, I pledged to appoint a woman who meets the very high standards that I demand of all court appointees.”
See the difference?
Biden picked skin color. It was settled science for him.
Reagan picked judicial standards, while announcing preference for a particular sex.
The difference is in the priority. Which came first, the Constitution or the skin color? With Biden, it was the latter. It was an insistence on the latter and a refusal to consider other options because of a campaign promise. With Biden, it was a political decision. With Reagan, it was judicial.
On Supreme Court nominees — on all court nominations, for that matter — law, experience, constitutional knowledge, ethics, moral character, American patriotism should all come first. As for skin color? As for any other considerations that aren’t based on a learned and determined ability to uphold Founding Father principles and limited government ideals and the notion of God-given individualism upon which this country was based? Well, put ’em on the list.
Even skin color — put it on a wish list.
But it shouldn’t be listed first. America’s justice system, after all, is supposed to be blind.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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