Start with the mirror, Sam

Steve Schmidt - Oct 3

The last desperate card for MAGA senators facing defeat and repudiation is the Supreme Court.

Enter Sam Alito, the most corrupt Phillies fan ever to serve on the high court, casting his line into the Republicans’ river of hope. He considered retirement last term. He will consider it again. There might be a vacancy. There might be another appointment. There might be one more chance to convert an election victory into decades of power over people who never voted for it.

He knows precisely what he is doing, and why he is doing it: politics.

The timing offers endangered Republicans something to sell when their records have become impossible to defend. Forget what you paid for groceries. Forget the promises. Think about the Court. Think about the seat. Think about everything we can still impose if you give us another chance.

A lifetime appointment is a magnificent consolation prize for a movement facing an expiration date.

Alito’s retirement musings arrive accompanied by the familiar judicial grievance: people are being terribly unfair to the Supreme Court. He says harsh political criticism damages the institution. The larger complaint is always the same. The Court’s reputation suffers because its critics refuse to behave.

I’m sorry. I thought it was the corrupt justices.

Thomas.

Alito.

And John Roberts, standing amid the wreckage with the solemn expression of a man who believes the fire department’s principal responsibility is to protect the arsonists from embarrassment.

Apparently, the scandal is that we found out.

Clarence Thomas accepted undisclosed luxury travel from billionaire Harlan Crow. That is an extraordinary arrangement for a man whose decisions bind millions of Americans.

Ordinary people get a summons. The powerful get hospitality. Everybody else gets told to respect the institution.

The moral ugliness lies in the entitlement. Public office is a public trust. These men have treated the public’s trust as an inexhaustible resource, something they can consume while insisting that anyone who notices the depletion is undermining America.

A judge should understand why gifts from the extravagantly wealthy create an ethical problem. That understanding should precede the vacation. It should survive the vacation. It should certainly become available before the judge starts complaining about the journalists who reported on the vacation.

Then there is Alito himself. He took an undisclosed Alaska trip, including a flight on billionaire Paul Singer’s private jet.

Fishing. How appropriate.

Now he is fishing again, dangling the prospect of his departure before voters whose Republican senators need something more compelling than another explanation of why their constituents should disregard their own lives.

His ethical judgment deserves scrutiny. His political judgment is perfectly serviceable. He understands the value of a Supreme Court vacancy to a party that measures success by how much authority it can preserve after public enthusiasm disappears.

This is also the justice who blamed his wife for the upside-down American flag outside their home, a symbol adopted by election deniers.

What a household.

A man capable of excavating constitutional meaning from centuries of history becomes remarkably helpless when asked about the political symbolism outside his own front door.

The Constitution yields its secrets. The flagpole remains a mystery.

And the public is expected to accept these explanations with the respectful silence of schoolchildren summoned to the headmaster’s office.

No.

The robe does not make an implausible explanation persuasive. The title does not turn indignation into integrity. A lifetime appointment does not give its holder ownership of the country’s credulity.

Roberts belongs in this accounting. So does the business surrounding his household.

Business Insider reported that Jane Roberts earned $10.3 million in legal recruiting commissions between 2007 and 2014, including work involving firms that practice before the Supreme Court.

Consider the proximity. The chief justice leads the nation’s highest court. His wife makes substantial money placing lawyers in the elite legal industry that operates around it. The public is entitled to ask searching questions about those relationships.

Instead, we get the Washington ritual: technical explanations delivered as though ethical judgment were a vulgar misunderstanding committed by people without sufficiently impressive degrees.

Americans understand the difference between an explanation and an answer.

They also understand that an institution entrusted with immense power should demand more of its members than the minimum they believe they can get away with.

Roberts owns the institutional failure. He is the chief justice. Preserving the Court’s legitimacy is part of his responsibility, and legitimacy requires conduct that can withstand scrutiny.

He cannot substitute a dignified expression for standards. He cannot repair the damage with another sermon about how important it is that the rest of us believe.

Belief has to be earned.

The Court possesses neither a popular mandate nor a regular appointment with the electorate. Its authority depends heavily on the conviction that its members exercise judgment independent of personal benefit and partisan allegiance.

That conviction is damaged when ethical failures accumulate and accountability remains elusive.

A marble building cannot compensate. Neither can a black robe. Neither can the expensive vocabulary of men explaining why the rules are more complicated when applied to themselves.

The hypocrisy becomes unbearable when these same men demand reverence.

They want the privileges of independence and the indulgences of political power. They want freedom from electoral accountability and freedom from uncomfortable questions. They want the public to accept their decisions while treating their private arrangements as somebody else’s business.

Everything flows upward. Deference. Access. Hospitality. Power.

Responsibility somehow never makes the trip.

And now, as another election approaches, the possibility of Alito’s retirement offers MAGA a familiar sales pitch: whatever you think of us, consider what we can do to the Court.

There is the threat beneath the promise. Lose an election, and the country can replace a senator. Win the appointment battle, and a political movement can leave behind a justice whose authority extends across generations.

The citizens who reject you today may still live beneath your decisions tomorrow.

That is why this matters. This retirement conversation has political consequences, and the people benefiting from those consequences understand them.

Alito does not need to appear in a campaign advertisement. Republicans can do the advertising themselves. He has supplied the possibility. They can supply the panic, the fundraising emails, the warnings and the appeals to voters who might otherwise stay home.

Meanwhile, the Court’s ethical disgrace is repackaged as a grievance against the people describing it.

What an extraordinary theory of judicial integrity: the justices accept the hospitality, and the journalists accept the blame.

The Court’s reputation did not collapse because Americans suddenly became too stupid to appreciate its greatness. The justices have given Americans reasons to question their judgment, their independence and their willingness to hold themselves accountable.

They have answered those questions with resentment.

Respect cannot be commanded by the people squandering it.

Thomas should answer for Thomas. Alito should answer for Alito. Roberts should answer for the institution he leads, and the ethical questions surrounding his own household.

They should answer publicly, plainly, and without the familiar performance of injured grandeur.

They serve a republic. They owe that republic explanations, transparency and conduct worthy of their authority. Their power makes those obligations greater, and their lifetime tenure makes the need for accountability more urgent every year.

The country owes them no gratitude for tolerating questions. Questions come with the job. If public scrutiny has become intolerable, retirement is available immediately, without a farewell lecture blaming everyone else for the condition of their reputations.

Start with the mirror, Sam.

Then walk down the hall.