June 22, 2008
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From the Wichita Eagle, a slant on Hillary Clinton and another on Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.
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David Nichols: Might Obama follow Ike’s lead on Justices?
(Wichita Eagle, 6/22/08)
After Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton recently met for a private tete-a-tete, speculation mushroomed as to what Obama might be offering his former rival. Pundits cited all the possibilities: the vice presidency, a spot in the Cabinet, Senate majority leader and — yes — appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Is it possible that Obama might adopt Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 strategy for dealing with a contentious political rival? California Gov. Earl Warren had run for president three times and saw himself in line for the Republican presidential nomination in ’52, but the war hero of Europe came home and derailed his plans.
Myths abound concerning the Eisenhower-Warren relationship, including the erroneous story that Ike used an appointment to the court to repay Warren for support at the Republican convention, where he didn’t have a majority of delegates secured. In fact, Warren didn’t release his delegates until after the contest was over.
But after his election in November, Eisenhower strode into Herbert Brownell’s room at the Commodore Hotel in New York City, where the future attorney general was working on Cabinet appointments. According to Brownell, Ike announced, “I want Gov. Warren to know that we consider him a part of the Eisenhower team.” Did he want Warren in the Cabinet? No, said the president-elect, “I think he’d be a good man on the Supreme Court.”
Eisenhower placed the call himself. “Governor,” Warren recalled Eisenhower saying, “I want you to know that I intend to offer you the first vacancy on the Supreme Court.” Eisenhower confirmed the call in his memoirs but claimed that he was only “considering the possibility.” But the proof of this secret deal lies in the fact that when Chief Justice Fred Vinson died the following September, Eisenhower nominated Warren for the job.
Ike had made an extraordinary promise. There was no court vacancy, nor was one anticipated. Eisenhower essentially mortgaged one of the most significant appointments a president makes. Eisenhower was not an impulsive man; he was a planner by temperament and training. Why then make this promise to Warren?
The circumstantial evidence suggests that Eisenhower was already thinking about running for a second term in 1956. Warren, one of the Republican Party’s most ambitious politicians, would be less likely to re-emerge as a rival if he were safely planted in a nonpartisan position on the Supreme Court.
Warren accepted the nomination, and the Warren court produced groundbreaking decisions expanding civil rights, free speech, privacy rights and the separation of church and state.
Putting Warren on the Supreme Court changed America. Clinton clearly has the potential to become a powerful justice. If a President Obama nominated her, another disappointed presidential candidate might make her own historic impact on the high court. And maybe Obama could worry a little less about 2012.
David A. Nichols is a former academic dean at Southwestern College in Winfield. He is the author of “A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution.”
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Is Obama-Sebelius Ticket Possible?
Ronda Holman, member Wichita Eagle editorial board
Kansans think enough of Kathleen Sebelius to have elected her governor twice, the last time with a hefty 58 percent of the vote. And for the past year, her approval rating in Survey USA’s monthly polling has averaged 65 percent — stratospheric compared with some of her fellow governors.
But it’s a long way from being esteemed by Kansans to being vice president. Or so it seemed, before the national political media started assessing Sebelius as a potential running mate for Democratic nominee Barack Obama.
The collective vetting seemed to peak with Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza devoting two days to Sebelius’ pros and cons. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein credited her with offering “a heap of electoral promise but with small but significant question marks.” Feminist lightning rod Camille Paglia endorsed her, declaring that “an Obama-Sebelius pairing would be visually vibrant and radiant, like a new day dawning.” Time magazine considered her “a partner who is young and charismatic and also breaks a historic barrier” — of gender. Last week, a New Republic columnist termed Sebelius “the most competent executive of any of the rumored Democratic veep candidates.” On “Fox News Sunday,” former Bush strategist Karl Rove even put her in his final four for Obama. The speculation will be fueled by Sebelius’ politicking for Obama this weekend in her native Ohio.
The most obsequious commentators would have people believe Sebelius can deliver women voters and moderate Republicans to Obama en masse — too much to ask of any running mate. They also make much — too much, we’d argue — of her role in resolving the school-finance impasse and eliminating the Graves-era budget shortfall, and of her 2002 decision, as insurance commissioner, to block the sale of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas.
On some level, the basis for Sebelius’ stardom — that she’s a Democrat twice elected to govern a heavily Republican state — is being misunderstood. She has benefited from the serial inability (or refusal) of the ideologically fractured state GOP to find a consensus candidate, which helps explain why polling indicates her selection wouldn’t even win Kansas’ six electoral votes for the Democrats.
Especially relevant to the question of what Sebelius would do for Obama’s touted post-partisan nomination is her relationship with the GOP-led Kansas Legislature, which has deteriorated to the point of near rebellion during the past session’s coal-plant battle. Obama, who has his own religion problems, may also be leery of a running mate reviled by some pro-life activists and recently rebuked by the archbishop of Kansas City, Kan. She remains a leaden speaker, and was roundly (and unfairly, we think) criticized for her Democratic response to the State of the Union address. At least everybody seems to agree on Sebelius’ biggest shortcoming: “Foreign policy is foreign to her,” noted Cillizza.
Still, Sebelius deserves a lot of credit for her professionalism, informed policymaking and even fearlessness under partisan fire, and for what amounts to a one-woman resuscitation of the Kansas Democratic Party. She’s a political pro unlikely to fall into a “macaca” trap.
And it would be exciting for Kansas voters to see their governor tapped for the already historic Democratic ticket.
But count us among Kansans who’ll believe an Obama-Sebelius ticket when they see it. Meanwhile, Sebelius has work to do, and 2 ½ years left on her contract with Kansans.
(JRM COMMENT: I love the closing paragraph. No one seems to have been worried that Mccain, OBama and Clinton weren’t doing their day Job, and certainly Kansas wasn’t berating Brownback for ignoring his senatorial duties when he was actively campaigning to be the president of the Snowflake children of Americaand various gelatinous substances in petri dishes)
