Over the years The Scrapbook has learned how to read President Obama. In a word, carefully. Consider, for example, a statement he made in the course of nominating Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court:
Note that Obama did not say that Senate Democrats voted to confirm every nominee by a Republican president. Remember Bork, the great Robert Bork, the 1987 Reagan nominee rejected by a Democratic Senate—unjustifiably, though that is a different story. The Bork nomination remains the only one in the modern era dating to the Reagan presidency (which Obama seems to mean by “the past”) that the Senate voted down.
If Senate Democrats did not approve every nominee advanced by a Republican president, however, they did vote to fill every vacancy with a nominee chosen by same. Again, we go back to Bork. Recall that Reagan chose Bork to take the seat vacated by Justice Lewis Powell. And then Reagan selected Anthony Kennedy as the nominee for the same seat after the Bork nomination failed. And Kennedy was confirmed. “Ultimately,” then, the Powell seat was filled, more than six months after the vacancy occurred. Just as Obama said.
