Elizabeth Warren’s challenge to Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday had about as much value to the impeachment proceedings as Warren’s DNA has Native American ancestry.
Which is to say, not a lot.
Warren’s question to Chief Justice Roberts was truly ridiculous. “At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government,” Warren asked, “does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?”
It was Warren at her truest self: utterly populist, faux-intellectual, and totally obsessed with partisan pageantry.
The question, supposedly seeking a serious response from the House impeachment managers, got the treatment it deserved. Roberts’s calm response showed him for the far superior public servant he is. To his credit, Adam Schiff rebuked his fellow Democrat by answering her question with a defense of Roberts’s honest presiding.
While partisan Democrats will applaud Warren, the rest of us should shake our heads, because, as with the irony of her much-vaunted plans actually being quite useless, Warren’s question was devoid of introspection. After all, our loss of faith in government isn’t a consequence of men and women such as Roberts, but of Warren, of partisans who shred the truth for narrow political expediency, of politicians who pretend to have all the answers, and of people who use positions of power to score cheap points at the expense of our institutions and public servants. Does Trump sometimes engage in this action? You bet. But Warren’s attack on a dedicated public servant wasn’t just intellectually pathetic, it was cowardly.
Warren knows that Roberts cannot allow himself to be swept up in the partisan excrement show. He must strive to sit above it. Rightly determined to maintain the judiciary’s integrity as an objective force for the law and the people, the chief justice would surely wish to be anywhere else but in the center of this political melee. But Roberts knows his duty is to be there and to put the nation first. It’s duty, stupid.
If only Warren could find it within herself to serve the people so nobly.
Watch Warren’s question below.
