Don't Bench Alito - Sam the Sham, Part II
By Justin Frank, M.D.*
huffingtonpost.com
01.14.2006
A good judge, like a good umpire, has to call 'em like he sees 'em. Each umpire, despite official parameters, has his own definition of what the strike zone is. Not only that, the league amends those parameters from time to time, just as congress that amends the US constitution.
For me, the truth-telling baseball aphorism is this: You can't tell the players without a scorecard.
We need to have their numbers in order to get their number, so to speak. While it is true that umpires control the game and regulate play, members of the Supreme Court are more than umps - they are players in a three-team game. Their judicial decisions affect the legislative and executive branches - and paradoxically, they are all ultimately on the same team - trying to do what they is best for the American people as they interpret our laws.
But rather than seeing Supreme Court justices as umpires, I prefer the analogy of designated hitter--in the game, but not a position player (i.e. not members of legislative or executive "teams"). And we know that no hitter hits a home run every time; he doesn't even get a hit each time at bat. In fact, nobody gets a hit half of the time. But a good hitter is above all, consistent.
Alito has a steady swing - a bottom-up approach to each case before him. He says he is open-minded and that he studies each pitcher separately before he steps up to the plate. His law clerks say he practices his swing long and hard, and that he does so with good spirit and team camaraderie. He listens to those who tell him what to watch for in a particular pitcher, and that helps determine his approach. Because of his intense study, Alito can hit any pitch and can adjust his swing to hit the ball well.
But in the final analysis it is not how much you study, not how diligent, kind, or brilliant you are. It is where you hit the ball. Judge Alito hits the ball regularly to the same place - far right field. No matter how brilliant or clever, at the end of the day he is one-trick pony.
All we really know about Alito is what we learn by studying his stats. And that record reveals that for fifteen years Alito has supported government power at the expense of the individual citizen. The far right has studied his record, which is why they are such enthusiastic supporters. They know that in the final analysis what a player says at a press conference or in the locker room - not to mention in a Senate hearing room - is immaterial. He is ultimately known only by his record. And the far right likes the odds with Alito.
What disturbs me is that so many Senators act as if the record means nothing - that what matters to them is how he answered their questions the second week of January, 2006. They rely on what his teammates say about his work ethic and kind heart. It's simple-minded to rely on Alito's assurances that he has no agenda, that he approaches each case in a state of phenomenological reduction. Not surprisingly the media doesn't even begin to understand the problem - it focused on his wife's tears when a pitcher struck him out.
Even Alito's membership in the bigoted CAP organization is consistent with his dignified demeanor in front of the Senate. In both cases he was trying to impress prospective employers that he was the right man for the job.
It's the record, stupid. The senators who support Alito's nomination know that record better than anyone. To send this player to the highest bench in the land is a black mark on the nation's record, and our children will pay the penalty for decades to come.
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*Justin Frank M.D. is an expert in the field of psychoanalysis. A clinician with more than thirty year's experience, Dr. Frank has also been a former columnist for Salon magazine and is a frequent writer on topics as diverse as politics, film, and theater. He is the co-director of the Metropolitan Center for Object Relations in New York, a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center, and a teaching analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute.
Dr. Frank used the principles of applied psychoanalysis to assemble a comprehensive psychological profile of President George W. Bush in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (ReganBooks).
Dr. Frank did his psychiatric residency at Harvard Medical School and was chief resident at the Cambridge Hospital. Dr. Frank was also awarded the DuPont-Warren Fellowship by Massachusetts General Hospital. |
