I feel stupid for having dared to hope Sen. Chuck Grassley would make the leap to vote for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson getting on the Supreme Court. Thankfully, she made it through without the support of Iowa's senior senator. But the victory could have been sweeter, the moment more memorable, had our senator risen to the occasion to help make history and acknowledge Jackson's formidable qualifications.
The few people l'd shared that prospect with said I was nuts. They asked what world I was living in, in which congressional leaders cast forward-looking votes regardless of party or precedent or the threat of being sidelined or losing their seats. Loved ones asked if I hadn't been listening to the scathing, partisan banter of committee members.
I did, but maybe I misread the signals from Grassley, the judiciary committee's ranking Republican member. He was more agreeable than many of his committee colleagues who baited Jackson or rebuked her answers. When she said she couldn't yet make a judgment on having cameras in the Supreme Court, he called it fair. He found it “gratifying” that she didn't think the Constitution could be changed based on "the policy perspective of the day.”
“We'll be able to measure now for the next 30 years whether she carries it out,” Grassley quipped. No thanks to him.
When he didn't challenge any of her responses to his list of prepared questions, I took it to mean her answers satisfied him.
He even complimented Jackson as “very graceful” and “very smart in her answers,” while saying she had sidestepped some. After the first day of the hearing, he told her jokingly that his wife had praised her opening statements, but not his.
But then, after the hearings, he said he wouldn't vote to confirm her because of her record, without specifying which parts. "She and I have fundamentally different views on the role judges should play in our system of government," he said without explanation.
It seemed as if he was impressed enough to vote yes but wouldn't because she was a Democratic president's nominee. If so, it shows just how cynical and dysfunctional our politics have gotten. For her part, Jackson showed impeccable knowledge about the law and the Constitution, evidence of diverse experiences as a lawyer and judge, and a passion for justice outside the halls of power.
By voting to confirm the first Black female Supreme Court justice, Grassley could have shown the nation you can put politics aside and rise to this unique moment in a divided America. He could have signaled to Iowa's youth that sometimes a true leader must cross party lines —or any lines that divide us — to lead.
Perhaps the youth of Maine, Utah and Alaska, states represented by Republicans Susan Collins, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, who did cross party lines to support Jackson, will get that lesson instead.
Ironically, Grassley and several other Republican senators even made a point of saying how fair they had been at these hearings compared with how Democrats behaved with Republican nominees. “You don't see all this theater you heard when I was chairing the Kavanaugh hearings,” said Grassley. Someone else brought up Clarence Thomas.
Honestly, I don't see how either man can be compared with Jackson. Both Kavanaugh and Thomas had been the subjects of sexual misconduct allegations. In both cases, their accusers had shared disturbing stories about their behavior toward them. Yet both men were confirmed anyway.
Jackson hasn't been accused of anything, but that didn't stop Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina from gratuitously chiding her: "You say you don't have a judicial philosophy per se. Somebody on the left believes you do, or they wouldn't have spent this amount of money to have you here in this chair."
He also declared, as if she were responsible, "You're the beneficiary of Republican nominees having their lives turned upside down, and it didn't work." Lest we forget, Republicans on the committee successfully blocked even a hearing on President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016. They claimed, evidently making the rules up as they went along, that the president shouldn't get to nominate anyone in his last year in office.
Jackson responded to all of this nonsense thoughtfully and affably. She was gracious when Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was not. After offering up a potpourri of grudges against the Supreme Court and laying an increase in violent crimes, unsafe streets, emboldened gangs and drug overdoses at the feet of liberal judges who "care more about offenders than victims," Cruz declared, "If Judge Jackson is confirmed, it will have an impact on safety." He didn't mean a good one.
Still, Grassley observed of the hearings, “I think that you've seen everybody being calm and collected, fair.”
If my disappointment over Grassley's failure to support Jackson was predictable, I saw similar disappointment from an unexpected place. Some of his Republican constituents gave him a hard time at a March 25 town hall in Marengo over it, as captured on video and tweeted by the group American Bridge 21st Century. The group describes itself as "holding Republicans accountable." One man who praised Grassley's past moves and said he'd voted for him chastised the senator over Jackson's treatment, saying, "I think you're not for the people, you're more for the party."
I rest my case.
