Carol Platt Liebau over at the Townhall.com blog made an interesting observation about the irony of Barack Obama denying Justice Clarence Thomas a seat on the Supreme Court because he lacked experience:
Irony alert: As Amanda (Carpenter) notes below, Barack Obama tells Rick Warren that he wouldn’t have nominated Justice Thomas to the Supreme Court because he wasn’t prepared.
Well, check out his bio: Among other distinctions, Justice Thomas served as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1982 until 1990, when he was nominated to the DC Circuit by President George HW Bush. He was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991.
Yet according to Barack, Justice Thomas wasn’t prepared to serve as one of nine justices despite working for Senator Danforth, as an attorney at Monsanto, and in federal service for nine years as the head of a federal agency (a federal government tenure three times as long as Obama’s). Yet we’re to believe that Barack considers himself prepared to serve as the one and only President and leader of the free world after three paltry years in the US Senate (along with part time service in the state legislature)?Wow. That’s hubris.
Kurt, you and Obama both should be encouraged to make experience and qualification a central theme of this election because Obama doesn’t have any.
Websters: hubris = exaggerated pride or self-confidence.
It’s hubris because Obama has a total of about 138 working days in the United States Senate which he feels qualifies him to be President of the United States. Clarence Thomas had over ten years of public service to his credit at the time of his nomination, not enough to satsify Obama’s standard for nomination to high office. Obama exhibits “exaggerated pride AND self-confidence” if he believes his 138 days of experience trumps Thomas’ 3,650 days.
And BTW, Clarence Thomas didn’t get away with sexual harassment. Anita Hill didn’t get away with falsely accusing her boss of sexual harassment for political expediency.
And speaking of political expediency, the only reason Obama chose Thomas as the justice he wouldn’t have nominated is because his liberal base would not have expected him to say anything less.
Why is it hubris? Thomas ran around with a bunch of heavy-hitters, but never actually accomplished anything, judiciously-speaking. That was one of the biggest problems facing him in his nomination. That, and the fact that he got away with sexual harassment…