Bench Memos on National Review Online

Bench Memos: "People forget this, but two of the original eleven were judges originally nominated by President Clinton: Roger Gregory and Barrington Parker. In the case of Judge Gregory, it was the first time in history that a president had re-nominated a failed circuit-court nominee originally nominated by his predecessor from the other political party. This was unprecedented and highly significant, and it was intended to send a message. It was an olive branch. The president highlighted it in his speech that day, asking the Senate to move beyond the bitterness of the past in the judicial wars and to start afresh in a spirit of cooperation and good faith.

The Democrats took the olive branch the president extended and slapped him in the face with it. They immediately held hearings for, and confirmed, the two Democrats among the nominees and then held up the rest, refusing even to hold hearings for a long time on most of them. They then complained incessantly (and, for the most part, falsely) about not having been adequately consulted by the White House with regard to these nominations. And they executed the play suggested by Professor Tribe, Marcia Greenberger, and others at a Democratic strategy session on how to block Bush judicial nominations — a session held before the president had even taken office — when they scheduled hearings under Senator Schumer to try to legitimize the notion that judicial nominations could be blocked on ideological, rather than competence grounds.

This sent the strongest possible message to those of us in the White House that there was no interest at all in cooperation or good faith from the Democratic side"