by Diane Capri
“The questioning of a Supreme Court nominee is done by seniority, alternating between the parties,” the analyst told his viewers.
“More like watching a slow-mo tennis match,” Margaret said, talking back to the television as we resumed our places in the ugly green client chairs again. My gaze was glued firmly to the set, volume up, attention sharply focused. I wiped my sweaty palms against the napkin left over from lunch.
“If he is confirmed, Andrews will make law in this country until he dies or retires,” the analyst continued. “We are now close to the end of the process. The decision made by this committee, whether or not to recommend a full Senate vote on General Andrews’s confirmation, may change the course of our history for the next thirty years.”
The tuna sandwich I’d eaten earlier now rebelled in my stomach. I’d wanted the vote to be over, but I worried that a victory for Andrews would be a hellish descent into backroom politics for George and the effective end of my easy-going husband.
His immersion in this cauldron of political soup had changed him, it seemed, at the molecular level and when he eventually emerged, I worried he’d be someone totally different, someone I didn’t know and might not want to be married to.
I’d told none of this to Margaret, but she must have noticed when my attention wandered because she pulled me back to the present, saying, “Warwick is about to open the hearings.”
Senator Sheldon Warwick was the powerful Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the senior senator from Florida and my brother’s boss. Warwick was also one of our neighbors. But most significantly to me at the moment, he was my husband’s local political nemesis. Warwick’s mere presence on the small screen set my teeth on edge.
Margaret turned up the volume on the set, and we heard Warwick’s oratory. “I’d like to express my personal sympathy and the committee’s sympathy to Craig Hamilton’s family and to General Andrews, who narrowly missed being killed this morning.”
The crowd in the gallery buzzed.
Warwick didn’t wait for quiet to return, but raised his sonorous voice. “Before the decision was made to resume and finish the hearing today, we were informed that Craig Hamilton was wearing a bullet proof vest at the time he was shot. Fortunately, this has been standard procedure for controversial witnesses and their staff during these hearings. Mr. Hamilton’s doctor reported that he is in severe pain. He suffered two cracked ribs and serious bruising. He is, I’m happy to tell you, expected to fully recover.”
Margaret and I said simultaneously this time, “Thank, God.”
The gallery, too, buzzed a little louder with this news and Warwick had to wait a few minutes until he could calm them back down to a quiet roar.
As he always does to me, Warwick sounded more than a little insincere when he asked formally, for the record, “Would you like to delay today’s questioning, General? The country would certainly understand.”
The question was posed merely to manipulate the public’s perception, I knew. Warwick, a political animal who would stand for reelection soon, clearly wanted to be perceived as deferential to his party, the nominee and the process. Warwick was a Democrat. The President, a member of Warwick’s party, had nominated Andrews to the court. For these reasons, Warwick meticulously followed protocol and made a clear written record of everything that occurred.
Nor would he show any disrespect toward a war hero. Warwick was a powerful man, and he hadn’t gotten where he was today by being stupid. Regardless of his personal feelings, and George had told me that Warwick didn’t approve of Andrews, Warwick had behaved perfectly during the hearings and would continue to do so, as surely as most of us behave well when we’re being watched by our bosses.
Andrews sat ramrod straight, like six feet of tall, cool granite, prepared for another round from his own personal firing squad, prepared to dodge bullets by moving only his lips.
“Look at that guy,” Margaret said, referring to Andrews. “He’s so stiff he could be carved on Mount Rushmore.”
Margaret was right. Andrews appeared completely unaffected by what had happened outside this morning. His demeanor was the same straight-ahead, unflinching look I’d seen him display on newscasts during his war service as he addressed the nation with status reports. A look that’s bred into every senior military man, it was an expression designed to quell fears and coerce submission.
“Thank you, Senator,” Andrews said, anger and passion in his voice. “I’d never allow a fool like that to interfere with the regular process of government. We must continue.”
His tone made me cringe. There’s a reason I was never in military service myself. I’m no good at following orders and I don’t relate well to people who think they can order me around.
I wondered again why the President had ever appointed such an inexperienced, unyielding iconoclast to the Court. I could think of at least a dozen more qualified, less controversial candidates, all more compassionate than Andrews. But no one had asked me for my advice.
High-ranking and influential witnesses had given acrid and bitter testimony against General Andrews for the past nine days. I’d seen much of it, either as it happened, or in summary on the evening news.
Now, General Andrews would testify, although he could not be compelled to do so. So far, that seemed like a huge mistake in judgment to me.
Warwick recited more facts, continuing to make a crystal clear record. “The shooting incident this morning has been investigated and the shooter is in custody. The man has admitted that he tried to kill General Andrews, and he claimed to be acting alone, although his motives remain undisclosed.” Warwick stopped here and took a few seconds to stare at the General with ill-concealed distaste.
Was Warwick’s demeanor a product of my imagination? Anyone hearing the cold words he continued to dictate into the record could certainly have missed it. He continued, “Authorities do not believe, at this time, that co-conspirators exist. All parties desired to conclude the questioning today and not to delay proceedings any further.” Again, he waited a couple of beats. Or at least, I thought he did. “At the conclusion of today’s hearings, the proper authorities will resume their investigation of the attack on Mr. Hamilton.”
Warwick polled every member of the committee and General Andrews. “Do you desire to continue these hearings at the present time?” Each answered a formal “yes.”
Margaret turned to me while the polling was going on. “This is pretty unusual, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “It’s probably foolhardy, too. And the media will be all over this thing like white on rice.”
“So why are they doing it, then?” After all her years as a federal employee, Margaret inexplicably still believed her government would do things that made sense.
“No one wants this situation to drag on any longer than it already has,” I told her. Certainly, that was how I felt about it. If Warwick had polled me, I’d have voted yes, too.
“So the hearings will finish today,” she said.
I nodded again, saying nothing. The end was in sight. As soon as the reason for George’s involvement in these retched hearings was over, my life might return to normal. I allowed a small glimmer of hope to flicker in my heart.
“I’ll bet I can guess what George thinks of all this,” Margaret told me, with a grim smile.
I simply nodded. Both of us already knew that George is a very active, influential, conservative Republican. He would disapprove of anyone the Democrats chose, regardless of their objective suitability.
But I didn’t tell Margaret that I’d heard George’s voice raised in anger against Andrews more often in the past few weeks than I’d heard it during our seventeen years of marriage. His opposition was almost violent and completely out of character. Margaret wouldn’t have recognized him, and I barely did, myself. Until now, I’d thought I knew my husband better than he knew himself.
The news analyst took the break created as they polled the committee to give us a whispered summary of the p
olitical climate for the benefit of anyone living in Outer Mongolia over the past few weeks.
“The Republicans control the House of Representatives. Like a winning football team in the final minutes of the Super Bowl, they are trying to run out the clock on judicial appointments by the Democratic President Benson, whose term ends in less than a year. Republicans want to stall the process of selecting federal judges until they again control the White House and the appointment process.”
A second analyst added, “But they didn’t foresee the retirement of their most successful judicial ally, the conservative Chief Justice. The Republicans thought they’d have the chance to pack all of the federal courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, with conservative judges. The Andrews appointment threw a serious monkey wrench in their plans.”
The polling finally finished, Senator Warwick used his prerogative as chairman to complete the final questioning himself.
“General,” Warwick said now, exaggerating his long, slow drawl, giving the word what seemed like four more minutes. “Why do you think that fellow wanted to kill you this morning?”
The shooter had said he was trying to kill Andrews and the confession had already been widely played on television.
“He’s a baby killer,” the man had said, as if that was all the reason anyone needed to justify retaliation by deadly force.
Without so much as a flinch or a pause, General Andrews said, “Why do you think he wanted to kill me? He shot my secretary. I haven’t any idea why he did that. Do you?”
The conversation in the room buzzed at louder decibels. It was unlike General Andrews to sidestep any issue. Usually he confronted everything head on, loudly and with opinionated obstinacy. His opinions, frequently stated in other forums before and since his nomination, had been getting him into trouble.
General Andrews seemed to have opinions on everything. Highly unusual for a general in today’s military, and likely to get a Supreme Court nominee rejected. The thing the public fears most, and his opposition hopes for, is a nominee with an opinion.
During the days of hearings on Andrews’s nomination, the general seemed to go out of his way to confirm his opinions as controversially as possible, almost in challenge. Although he kept saying “I have no personal agenda to take to the Court,” every time he was asked a direct question on a controversial issue by anyone, he didn’t hesitate to state his views.
This alone might not have caused Andrews’s nomination to be rejected. Sandra Day O’Connor got confirmed even after she testified that she personally deplored abortion, but would not let her personal views influence her vote. Of course, she was a Republican, George said. To him, that meant you could trust her word.
But Andrews’s views seemed so outrageous as to be absurd. In the few short weeks since his nomination, Andrews had incensed Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, men, women, children, scholars, clerics, radicals, gay and straight alike.
While Warwick attempted to regain order in the room, Margaret asked, “Is there anybody Andrews hasn’t offended so far?”
“I can’t imagine who that would be,” I said.
Once he quieted the buzz of the gallery sufficiently to continue, Warwick asked a series of quick questions to which Andrews responded just as quickly.
“General, do you still support a woman’s right to choose, as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade?”
“Why should any more unwanted children be brought into the world?”
“And you oppose prayer in public schools?”
“We need prayer at home, where it belongs. Church and
State must remain firmly separated.”
Warwick looked down at his notes, shook his head as if he was having trouble believing the next series of questions that had been prepared by the committee. Then, he asked, “Do you openly advocate that the Supreme Court should make the law, not just interpret the Constitution?”
Margaret sputtered, “That’s outrageous!”
Andrews replied, “This country needs help. The founding fathers died over two hundred years ago. And if they lived here now, they’d be making some changes, too.”
Warwick waited a couple of seconds, then asked, “You are opposed to gun control, is that right, General?”
“Why not let the drug dealers kill each other? Save us all some money.”
These opinions, contained in Andrews’s public appearances over the years, had galvanized the conservatives against him early in the process. But he didn’t stop there.
Paradoxically, Andrews confounded his liberal supporters when he stated far right views as well. Indeed, Andrews’s opinions seemed incapable of classification. Neither side could completely support or reject him.
“You opposed allowing those with homosexual orientation to serve in the U.S. military?” Warwick asked.
“We don’t need the morale problems caused by social and sexual experimentation programs in the military.”
“And, the volunteer army, sir, you’re opposed to that as well?”
“It’s every man’s patriotic duty to serve. I would reinstate the draft, given the chance, yes.”
“How about allowing women to serve in combat, General?”
“Definitely not. Women in combat put our troops in mortal danger. I would not allow it.”
With each controversial answer, the absurdity of Andrews’s appointment was underscored. Warwick had to bang his gavel repeatedly and gestured the security officers to roam the aisles to restore order.
CHAPTER THREE
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 3:30 p.m.
January 20, 2000
ONCE HE COULD BE heard over the din, Warwick pressed on. “You favor the death penalty, is that right?”
“Prison doesn’t deter crime, but death makes damn sure that particular felon won’t commit another crime.”
“You oppose welfare and any form of financial support for the homeless?”
“Those people would be fine if they’d just get a job and support themselves.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Commentators had been airing these sound bites of old Andrews speeches over the past few weeks, so none of these opinions were a surprise. But they had drawn the ire of the people and generated angry protests, pitting many special interest groups against him and eroding support for the lame duck, President Benson, who had chosen Andrews. This one nomination, by a previously popular president, might be enough to hand the next election to George’s party.
“You’d think they would have coached him more thoroughly, wouldn’t you?” Margaret said. “I guess he’s just too stubborn to listen.”
The pundits had dubbed Andrews the Archie Bunker of the Supreme Court. To those of us paying attention, he’d become a laughing stock.
“He could actually be confirmed, you know,” I told her. “No joke?”
“These Senators answer to the voters. They might not want to take the chance of rejecting him. If Andrews was running for President, even George thinks he could win. These people you see on television are vocal activists. But mainstream voters seem to like his no-nonsense, straight forward style,” I told her, allowing my amazement to shine through my words.
To a society that watched cable television, confrontational news, reality shows and read the tabloids, Andrews was viewed by many as refreshingly honest.
On top of that, Americans have had a long and justified love affair with military men. That pro-military brand of patriotism had flourished. Many young Americans had died protecting the country and everyone, regardless of ideology, supported our troops.
Americans hadn’t had an opportunity to put a military hero in high office since Eisenhower. Some people thought it was time to do it again. But Andrews was no Eisenhower.
Margaret whistled. “Emotions are running pretty hot. He’s lucky someone hasn’t tried to kill him before.”
Her comment shot straight through my composure. Worry had shortened my fuse to the ignition po
int.
“Don’t say that!” I scolded her, too sharply.
Margaret, a life-long Democrat and supporter of the President, startled me when she said, “Well it’s true. Why in the hell did Benson appoint such a jackass?”
Uncontrollable violence injected into the process was the thing I worried about constantly. Having George involved in this dirty political game, even quietly, was frightening beyond anything he’d ever done before. We’d had several arguments about it, but they had only polarized us further and made us both miserable.
The commentator was whispering again now, bringing viewers up to date. “Andrews’s nomination was controversial from the start. Many court watchers have told us that Andrews was always an unsuitable candidate to replace the ultra-conservative Chief Justice when he retired. Although Andrews has a law degree, he’s never practiced law and never served as a judge in any jurisdiction.”
I felt even more ashamed of my outburst a moment ago when Margaret came to my defense.
“So what?” She blurted. “That doesn’t disqualify him from any federal appointment. After all,” she said to me, “you’d never been a judge before your appointment, either.”
I appreciated her loyalty and put an apology into my tone. “But at least I’d been a lawyer, Margaret. Andrews has never done that much.”
Senator Warwick continued, just as emotionally unruffled as Andrews, but physically more rumpled. Not many older men can stay crisp under the glare of hot lights, and Warwick wasn’t one of the ones who could do it.
“He’s not entitled to wear that uniform now that he’s retired, is he?” Margaret asked me, referring to Andrews, who was dressed in full regalia, medals and ribbons covering half his broad chest.
“No,” I acknowledged quickly as I turned the volume up a little higher, attempting to silence her comments so that I could hear.
Senator Warwick’s bald head gleamed with sweat now, but he was not deterred by the heat or the tension. He continued to rapid-fire questions at Andrews for another two hours, and Andrews just as adroitly shot back his answers. Instead of answering one of Warwick’s questions, Andrews made a comic face that showed he thought Warwick was the one being outrageous. Court watchers in the gallery laughed.