CQ Transcriptswire
SPEAKERS: JOHN KING, HOST
SEN. RICHARD C. SHELBY, R-ALA.
SEN. PATRICK J. LEAHY, D-VT.
[*] KING: I’m John King, and this is our “State of the Union” report for this Sunday, May 3th.
After just three months in office, President Obama gets a rare gift -- a vacancy on the nation’s highest court. But with opportunity comes pressure, from within his own party and from worried conservatives. The Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican Senator Richard Shelby right here to talk about the legal and political stakes.
Senator Arlen Specter ’s party switch is the latest blow to the Republican Party, but leaders of a new outreach effort say better days for the GOP are closer than you think. We’ll ask House Republican Whip Eric Cantor and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney about rebuilding the Republican brand and about the lessons they’re learning from the Democrat in the White House.
There are now more than 780 confirmed cases of the H1N1 flu strain in 17 countries, including 160 cases right here in the United States. We’ll take you inside the government’s Washington war room so you can judge the administration’s response to this alarming outbreak. That’s all ahead in this hour of “State of the Union.”
Justice David Souter’s decision to retire gives President Obama his first chance and an early chance to put his stamp on the Supreme Court. The president says his selection team will quickly get to work. So, too, though, are all the competing political voices. There are competing pressures from White House allies to pick a woman, a Latino, an African-American, and conservatives are gearing up, too, watching the White House and warning their allies not to shy away from a spirited confirmation battle.
We discuss both the legal issues and the political pressures with the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Republican Senator Richard Shelby.
Chairman Leahy, I’d like to begin the conversation with you. As the Democrat, the chairman of the committee that will consider the president’s nominee, after eight years of George W. Bush , what are you looking for, sir? There are some who say name a middle-of-the-road, a pragmatist, a coalition builder, but there are others on the left who say, no, we need intellectual fire power to go up against Justice Scalia, to go up against Justice Alito. What would you like, sir?
LEAHY: Well, I’ve talked to President Obama about this. I will be meeting with him this week. I’ve also encouraged him to meet with both the Republican and Democratic leadership on this issue.
But you know what I think about? As you walk into the Supreme Court, over the -- over the doorway, there’s a big piece of Vermont marble, and on it’s carved, “equal justice under law.” I want, first and foremost, somebody who believes in equal justice under law. That is equal justice for all, whether they are liberals or conservatives, Democrats, Republicans or whatever. And I think that is who he is going to look for.
Remember, the president was a constitutional law professor. He understands the court probably better than certainly any president in my lifetime. And I know some of the names he’s thinking of. They are all going to be extremely good, good people.
I don’t want to see an ideologue. I’ve said before I don’t like to see an ideologue of either the right or the left. I don’t think we’re going to have one.
KING: Well, Senator Shelby, I want you to explain how this standard applies to you. Because I’m holding up a pocket version of the Constitution here. There are some who say any president, when given this rare opportunity, should read this, and what a judge should do is read this, and a constructionist would say do no more, do no less than the founders intended. But Senator Shelby, President Obama has laid out some of his thoughts on this choice. Here is something he said back in 2007 to Planned Parenthood. “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old, and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.”
Is that the right criteria, Senator Shelby?
SHELBY: Well, I think that’s part of it, but that’s not all the criteria. I think the criteria should be to follow the law, not to make the law. To follow the Constitution, to try to stay within a lot of norms. I have no illusions about President Obama appointing a conservative like Alito or Roberts and so forth. But if he will appoint a pragmatist, someone who is not an ideologue, that someone is not just going to light all the lightbulbs in America on the left, I think that would be good for the country. He is very smart. He is very careful. I hope he is going to be careful in this appointment.
KING: Could there be, Senator Shelby, a sense of payback brewing among Republicans in that Senator Obama, before he was President Obama, voted against both Bush nominees, voted against Judge Alito, voted against Chief Justice Roberts. And Senator Lindsey Graham , who’s on the committee, the Judiciary Committee, says this in the New York Times. He says, “President Obama should hope that Republican senators are fairer than he was when he was a senator.”
SHELBY: Well, I’m not a payback type of guy. I think you have to keep moving.
On the other hand, a lot of us were aware of then Senator Obama’s votes against Alito and I believe against Roberts, and a lot of other Democrats. But I think Obama has -- President Obama has got some strong cards to deal. I hope he makes a great choice for the court.
KING: Chairman Leahy, take me behind the curtain. You know, I’m getting e-mails and phone calls from African-American groups, saying first black president, he should pick an African-American. I’m getting phone calls and emails from Latino groups saying he got our votes, he owes us. The women’s groups say he owes us. What is it like? What kind of pressure are you facing and is he facing right now?
LEAHY: John, I’m getting some of the same. You and I talked before we went on the air about the fact that Marcelle and I drove to Vermont on Friday, which is something we do about once a year, instead of flying, and thought it would be a nice quiet time. It was like a phone booth in our car all the way up with all these different groups, everybody else calling about who should be there.
I want the president to pick somebody for all of the American people. In the past few years, the court, many members of the court have seemed to be more and more isolated from real Americans, real people. I’d like to see somebody -- I’d like to see an appointment of somebody who has real life experiences, not just within a judicial monastery, but somebody who can reflect the feelings of real Americans.
KING: I’ll end this. A short time we have left, I want to switch to some other subjects quickly. Senator Shelby, you’re the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee. The administration in the week ahead will release the results on these so-called stress tests on America’s banks. Are we going to learn that more of our banks are in trouble of failing? And Senator Shelby, do you believe more taxpayer money will be requested by the administration to help keep them afloat?
SHELBY: John, I don’t know what we’re totally going to learn come -- I believe it’s Thursday, from the stress test. But I think sooner or later, we’re going to learn a lot. Some banks are going to come out of the stress test looking strong. Others are going to need more capital. And if they can access that capital, privately, that’s the best way. We’ll -- the banks that are lacking in capital and don’t meet this test, I think there will be a push to put more capital in them.
That’s not my way of doing business. I think we should let the ordinary course of events happen. When banks are insolvent, they should close them, whether they’re large or small.
KING: Senator Leahy, in the Boston Globe today, in an op-ed piece, you continue your effort to get what you call a commission of inquiry to look back into the practices, the detainee interrogation practices, what you call the torture committed during the Bush administration.
You write this about the Justice Department memos that President Obama has released so far. “These memoranda seem calculated to provide legal cover, a legal free pass for these unlawful policies. The Justice Department was apparently being used to immunize government officials to conduct torture by defining it down and building in legal loopholes.”
Essentially, your case that the department that was built to uphold the law was helping people break the law is the case you make. Senator Feinstein has said the Intelligence Committee will investigate this. The White House has said that is fine with them. Leave it in the Intelligence Committee. Why isn’t that good enough?
LEAHY: What I’m saying is instead of having four or five committees in the Senate and four or five committees in the House do it, why not have one nonpartisan or bipartisan commission do it all at once, get all the answers? Sort of like what we did after 9/11. We did the same thing after some of the savings and loan problems, things of that nature. And have all of the answers. Just so that nobody is tempted to repeat this, nobody is attempting to set up an idea that certain people in our government are above the law, that the law doesn’t apply to everyone. That’s what I want.
But if we don’t have such a commission, then we will have the Intelligence Committee and we will have the Judiciary Committee and we will have the Armed Service Committee and others each do pieces of it, but that in some ways is like, you know, the committee of blindfolded people who are trying to describe an elephant, each having just part of the elephant.
KING: Interesting way to put it.
Senator Shelby, it was 15 years ago -- it’s hard for me to believe because I remember it like yesterday -- you were a Democrat who switched over to the Republican Party. Arlen Specter left the Republican Party to go to the Democrat Party this last week. I just want -- do you have any advice for Senator Specter? Just your thoughts on what it’s like to be caucusing with one group on Monday and the other guys on Tuesday? SHELBY: Well, it’s a good experience from the standpoint of serving in both caucuses. You have friends in both.
Arlen Specter is a friend of mine. I differ with him on a lot of issues, but I wish him the best. I wish he hadn’t left the caucus, but he did. Perhaps there’s somebody over there, I don’t know who he is, I hope (ph) it will be Leahy, that can rejoin us and have an equilibrium.
KING: Senator Shelby in New York, Chairman Leahy in Burlington, Vermont this morning. Gentlemen, thank you both.
SHELBY: Thank you, John.
LEAHY: Thank you. Good to be with you.
Comments