Sonia Sotomayor: The Senators Own The Stage
As I watched the Supreme Court hearings the last couple of days, I was surprised but not shocked that the Republican Senators were being so tough on Sonia Sotmayor. It seemed, at first, to be completely counterproductive for the Republicans to continually repeat the same attacks over and over again with no expectation of successfully wounding a nominee that was a lock to be confirmed the minute her name was announced. They seemed to have no overall unified strategy for how to handle this confirmation hearing without playing into the bullying, misogynist, and racist stereotypes that have become synonymous with white male Republican officials. And then it came to me. It was precisely because they had no hope of derailing the nomination that they had no plan. Their efforts as a group were useless. That left an “every man for himself” mentality fueled by ego and self importance and directed towards not Sonia Sotomayor, but the national media coverage.
This hearing, for most of them, is their biggest opportunity to show how important they are to the people back home. I know this is not a new idea. Senators of either party don’t lack a sense of self importance and seem to have an innate sense of which way the cameras are pointing. In the Supreme Court hearings, the Republican Senators are simply attacking Sonia Sotomayor in order to make themselves look tough to their political base. The Country as a whole, however, is not seeing strong independent Senators and it is not, as the Republicans would like, seeing a racist and dangerous judge. The Country is seeing a Republican Party that is tone deaf to a racial, cultural and economic diversity which is quickly rendering their pure political ideology obsolete.
Public officials today are not known for their sense of strategic thinking. It’s not entirely their fault. The 24 hour news cycle and the 30 second sound bite has overwhelmed politics in the last 30 years. The candidates who run and are elected to high public office are perfectly suited to this stunted political playing field. But the same technologies that have deprived this nation of true statesmen have also made politics accessible to many individuals and classes of people that never had the opportunity to participate before. These hearings are taking place in the United States Senate and yes, the Senators own the stage. They are playing, however, to an audience that is better informed and more sophisticated than any that has existed before, and it is they who will review this performance and pass judgment on the performers. Even if the Republicans do not have a grand plan for these hearings, to the American public, it will seem like they do. This will continue to perpetuate a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. If you continue to act like an intolerant party of white males, you will irrevocably become an intolerant party of white males.
I think it is a hard line to straddle – to both satisfy the constituents at home and to appear with the times. Sometimes the two are mutually exclusive.
I agree that today’s audience is more informed, but a lot of people rely on the 30 second sound bite because they lead busy lives and don’t have the time or inclination to dig deeper. They rely on that sound bite to be factual, which is not always the case.