David Brooks, in his recent column, offers this advice to the president:
[T]his is a Supreme Court pick, not a programming choice. Nobody will care about superficial first impressions or identity politics tokenism a few years from now. What will matter in decades to come is whether you picked a philosophical powerhouse. Did you pick someone capable of writing the sort of bold and meaty opinions that will shift the frame of debate and shake up law students for generations?
If you can find a philosophical powerhouse who is also a member of a minority or a woman (like, say, Mary Ann Glendon), so much the better, but picking a powerhouse matters most.
I wish Brooks developed more on chosing Professor Glendon, a first rate legal mind. Instead, he chose to concentrate on Michael McConnell, also a first rate mind. Perhaps developing arguments for picking either would've been the best idea.
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