Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s short stint as a potential Supreme Court nominee was as bright as it was brief, before the White House called it off.
It ignited, as some things do these days, with a senator on one of the network morning shows.
“I even heard the name Hillary Clinton today, and that would be an interesting person in the mix,” Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said on NBC’s “Today Show” when asked about potential nominees.
Speculation about her suitability burned intensely for, at most, a couple of hours. Though it was a tantalizing prospect, many news outlets appeared eager to disprove the notion.
“She’s doing a wonderful job, and the president is going to keep her as secretary of state,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
Clinton, busy with world leaders at President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit, did not publicly address speculation about her prospects, although a State Department spokesman said she planned to stick with the job she has.
By tossing her name out there, Hatch, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accomplished several things at once — he forced Obama to squash the idea, he paid a compliment to Clinton, and he fired up both the Left and the Right over the upcoming nomination process.
“I happen to like Hillary Clinton, I think she’s done a good job for the Democrat secretary of state’s position,” Hatch said. “And I have a high respect for her and think a great deal of her. But I’m not going to prejudge [qualifications].”
Still, there could be something to Hatch’s idea. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, is urging Obama to look beyond the usual roster of federal judges for a different kind of nominee.
“I wish we could have some more people outside the judicial monastery,” Leahy told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Clinton, a former practicing attorney who attended Yale Law School, would fit that bill, along with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is on the rumored list of prospective nominees.
But Obama, who makes a study of his predecessors missteps, could not have missed how former President George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the high court was received in the Senate and the legal community.
The pressure is on Obama to pick a nominee soon to allow the Senate time to consider and vote before the court’s next session in October.
“The portion of Sen. Hatch’s comments that have gone less noticed are the comments that he thinks this has the ability and the potential to get done quite quickly,” Gibbs said.
Several names are in the mix for consideration, including Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal judges Merrick Garland and Diane Wood, in addition to Napolitano and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, among others.
