For Dems, Less Might Be More

I’m as excited as anyone about the prospect of “Advise and Consent, the Sequel,” with a budget rivaling “War of the Worlds” and advance hype just short of Tom Cruise jumping on a couch, declaring his love for Arlen Specter.

Eighteen years after “Borking” became part of the language, the two main protagonists in that battle are still at it. Specter, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, got in one more lick Sunday against the Supreme Court nominee he defeated back then, Robert Bork. “If his ‘original intent’ stood, we’d still be segregating the United States Senate with African Americans on one side and Caucasians on the other side,” Specter said on CNN. Bork said later in the same program: “I know Specter, and the truth is not in him.”

Somehow Alberto Gonzales, one of the potential candidates to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, seems incapable of generating that level of venom. He may prove to be a stealth candidate with rock-hard positions we don’t know about, but he comes across as milder than that. The right wing jokes that “Gonzales” is Spanish for “David Souter.” And the left dislikes him for condoning torture at Abu Ghraib. The bipartisan dismay has lent Gonzales an air of being just right.

I’m not saying Bush is going to nominate Gonzales, the old friend he huffily told folks to lay off of as he flew to the G-8 summit in Scotland. He might even nominate a real hard-liner, lure the Democrats into eliminating him and then get whomever he wants to replace O’Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist when he retires.

What I am saying is that although Bush looks more and more messianic, he’s got enough of his father’s pragmatism in him to want to overturn Roe vs. Wade about as much as he wants to read the collected works of Shakespeare.

If Roe goes down, so does his majority, his legacy and present and future politicians bearing the name Bush. Traditional Republicans who voted for Bush for his pro-corporate, pro-tax-cut views will put aside their selfish concerns and flock to pro-choice candidates, who tend to be Democrats. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the guy who knocked down the late Lee Atwater’s Big Tent.

Watching Karl Rove, you know he has his right flank under better control (he got them to the polls in 2004) than Democrats have their left one. Evangelicals look into Bush’s soul and see a man who would criminalize abortion as soon as possible, while moderate Republicans see a man who is only doing what’s necessary to keep conservatives mollified.

Rove let those on the right vent for a few days about Gonzales and then, about the time he slipped and called Gonzales “Justice” in a meeting with the Washington Post two days ago, had his minions tell them to chill.

Bush has tossed the right enough red meat (Terri Schiavo, embryo protection in stem-cell research, Social Security reform, tax cuts, the war) so that when red meat he doesn’t want to deliver is called for, he has the room to finesse it. It’s quite a trick. Bush does not keep Laura from saying, as she did on the “Today” show in 2001, that she doesn’t want to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, and he lets the twins take the stage at the GOP convention, speaking of sex in front of Grandma and the delegates in a fashion that says no way do they belong to a party that lets Phyllis Schlafly have her way.

This doesn’t mean there won’t be Kabuki theater from now until October. There are a lot of people with a stake in a big blowout, including political fundraisers and the media.

So what should Democratic senators do, some of whom are up for reelection in 2006 and most of whom secretly believe that putting your name on a benign-sounding piece of legislation with a sweet name like No Child Left Behind is a better career-builder than Borking someone? Republicans have successfully defined advice and consent downward. Whisper “extraordinary circumstances” for anyone other than a felon or flat-earther and you can kiss the Gang of 14 compromise saving the filibuster goodbye

When you combine the polls on Congress (it stinks) with the ones on the Supreme Court nomination (a quick and fair fight is all we ask for), it argues for continuing to do what’s worked best for Democrats: as little as possible while letting Republicans go too far.

By abandoning the field, Democrats have unleashed Bush’s most fearsome opponent: reality. On Social Security, Republicans are a victory away from annihilation. If only Democrats had done even less, they might have restored their FDR coalition and been sure of winning back the White House and Congress. If the GOP wants to be the party of James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, let them have the shovel to dig that hole. It might not bring Democratic victory tomorrow, but it will soon and for decades to come.