Mean Streak: From Clarence Thomas to Samuel Alito

He comes across as relaxed, self-assured, sharp and tough, but affable, even likable: Samuel Alito is not acting. That’s him on the television screen, being himself. He doesn’t need to act. He only needs to let his smoother persona, his dinner-table geniality, play into television’s weaknesses for those qualities. Not to make exaggerated claims, but it’s possible to be a crook, a hit man, a Jay Gould or an Abramoff and still be a terrific dinner companion. Robert Bork was a boor, in person and in his legal thinking. He came across as both in his Senate hearings. Alito is not a boor in person, nor is he coming across as such in his hearings. Not in the least. His questioners’ tactical mistake from the start was to try to make him look like a boor, like Bork, for his personal beliefs, his past demeanors, his associations, his indifference to conflicts of interests. Of course they failed. But Alito is a boor only in his legal philosophy. Hunting for scandal, Senators missed the obvious: the sort of thinking that will have Alito imprinting our laws for the next thirty-some years. It’s all there in his past decisions, his speeches, his on-the-record advocacies. Read the rest...