On Alito: defining expectations downwards?

Here's a piece by David Kirkpatrick, reporting that insiders are predicting a more ragged performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee for Alito than what we recently saw from Roberts. Participants in the practice sessions -- murder boards -- are saying that, and Democrats are promising some harsher questions.

But two of Judge Alito's supporters who participated in the murder boards, speaking about the confidential sessions on condition of anonymity for fear of White House reprisals, said they emerged convinced that his demeanor was a political asset because it gave him an Everyman appeal.

"He will have a couple hairs out of place," one participant said. "I am not sure his glasses fit his facial features. He might not wear the right color tie. He won't be tanned. He will look like he is from New Jersey, because he is. That is a very useful look, because it is a natural look. He's able to go toe-to-toe with senators, and at the same time he could be your son's Little League coach."

After all these elaborate practice sessions, no one helps the man with his grooming? Or did some stylist tousle his hair and select ungainly glasses and a brown tie? "That is a very useful look" -- it announces that he's the not-Roberts. Would it be mean of us, then, to look critically at the substance of his answers? The same informant -- who has a way with words, right? -- said:

Judge Alito displayed a "street smart" New Jerseyan's willingness to talk back to his questioners. Unlike Chief Justice Roberts, Judge Alito often turned inquiries back on the lawyers who were quizzing him, politely asking them to spell out exactly what they meant, two participants said.

Judge Alito "had no bones about coming back for clarification," the same person said, adding that the judge sometimes stumped the legal experts acting in the roles of senators and suggesting that he could pose an even greater challenge to actual senators reading from staff talking points.

Crafty! This is an excellent technique. Lawprofs use it to avoid elaborate answers. It's a good way to avoid confusing and boring listeners. It helps students mobilize their reasoning powers and practice speaking in the professional mode. With Senators, the goal is less beneficent. I'm sure they/their staff are reading this article and feeling intimidated, vulnerable. What they should do now is hone their questions. But is there any hope the Senators will give up their ridiculously verbose questions? They must preen. And how will the usual preening look when the man in the chair is from New Jersey, with ill-fitting glasses and a rumpled suit, and decades and decades of honing his skills as a prosecutor and a judge.

There's always the hope Alito will blow his cool:

Some Democrats, however, say Judge Alito's less-polished style may also be a vulnerability. Two Democratic aides briefed on his meeting with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that when the senator pressed him about an opinion he had written involving the regulation of machine guns, Judge Alito grew defensive - something else Chief Justice Roberts never did. The aides, speaking anonymously because the meeting was private, said the episode led them to hope he might lose his cool in front of the committee, as well.

In other words: "a 'street smart' New Jerseyan's willingness to talk." Why must everything always be cool? We have some real issues and disagreements. Let's cut through the blather and really engage for a change. What would this defensiveness be? I'd guess, for example, about the machine gun case, that Schumer led with the usual policy talk about gun control and the usual self-serving insistence on endless congressional power, and Alito insisted on nailing down the actual doctrine as expressed in the Lopez case and as duly interpreted by a lower court judge one year later. If he did that with questions to Schumer, designed to make Schumer reframe his question as one appropriately put to a judge, I'm sure there was some loss of cool in the room.

Bring it on! I'm so ready to blog that.

IN THE COMMENTS: OhioAnne writes astutely:

Interesting choice of words made in the article.

People participating in the administration meetings spoke anonymously "out of fear of White House reprisals," but Schumer"s aides spoke anonymously because "the meeting was private."

No chance that the White House aides spoke anonymously because the meeting was private and Schumer's did because of fear of reprisals from him?

Any chance at all that both sets of aides spoke anonymously simply because they knew they were being unprofessional by failing to adhere to confidentiality restrictions?

UPDATE: Scott Shields at MyDD calls the linked NYT article "one of the most brazen examples I've ever seen of the media rewriting Republican talking points." What's gotten under his skin?

Alito's Republican handlers are pushing this silly "Everyman" narrative in an attempt to manage public expectations. Oh, he's not being combative -- he's just a Jersey Everyman. But is that really what people want in a Supreme Court nominee?...

I have no idea what Alito's confirmation hearings will look like. But the Republicans who do seem to think it's not going to be pretty. After such a clean confirmation with Roberts, messy hearings for Alito do not bode well. "Everyman" or not, it sounds like Alito's in for a bumpy ride.

It sounds to me as though Shields is just trying to keep the anti-Alito folks fired up and resents any positive press (especially from the newspaper he thinks he ought to be able to count on to keep up the heat). And this press isn't even that positive.

"Honestly, a lot of my friends like Iraq. It's not as bad as people say."

Here's a nice story from the NYT about a young woman who joined the Army. It begins:

When she signed up for the Army in 2004, Katherine Jordan had little to say about war. Asked about Iraq at the time, she said she was far more concerned about the rigors of basic training and more focused on the fear that she might wind up here, in her hometown of 1,000, never amounting to much.

The local recruiter made her parents, Byron and Mary, feel comfortable, too, they said. They hoped the conflict in Iraq would fade away by the time their only child finished training, Mr. Jordan said back then, on the same afternoon that his freckle-faced daughter marched across the Lyndon High gymnasium in flip-flops to collect her diploma. "We don't think she is going to be in a battle zone," he said that day.

Reading those first two paragraphs, I felt this was going to be one of these pieces about how the military hoodwinks young innocents, but it isn't at all. Jordan and her parents come across as solid, intelligent individuals who know what they are doing and have good values.

UPDATE: Ranting Profs takes a similar view of the article and attracts a first comment that had me shaking my head and thinking of how to rephrase the famous Kennedy quote. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask who other than you can do something for your country.

It's back!

Underneath Their Robes!

ADDED: Now, could Eggagog please come back too?

Audible Althouse #29.

The New Year's Eve podcast, recorded late yesterday afternoon. (You can stream it right on the computer here, and you can subscribe to the series here -- or look for it on iTunes.) In this, the 29th podcast, which is about an hour long, I look at the quotes I collected from 2005 and go into a lot of detail about the Camille Paglia one that I heard in person, with some new detail. I talk about my prediction for the Supreme Court in 2006, and that connection between happiness and virtue.

Sorry I didn't put this one up at about 6 p.m. yesterday when I finished it, but I maxed out on technical things, and there was an eve to attend to. Finally, I managed to solve my problem. Adjusting the bit rate or some such thing that I still don't understand...

Podcast troubles.

Sorry, I had to take the new podcast down. I've got a technical problem with it that I can't seem to overcome. Not the way I really want to spend New Year's Day!

MORE: The problem is that the file size is coming out much too large, around 50 MB instead of 10. I'm using MP3, and I've set it to the lowest quality and to mono. I can't think of anything else to do!

UPDATE: Problem solved... I think.

NYT Public Editor calls NYT explanation of its decision to report on the NSA link "woefully inadequate."

Byron Calame writes:

For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making....

At the outset, it's essential to acknowledge the far-reaching importance of the eavesdropping article's content to Times readers and to the rest of the nation. Whatever its path to publication, Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Keller deserve credit for its eventual appearance in the face of strong White House pressure to kill it. And the basic accuracy of the account of the eavesdropping stands unchallenged - a testament to the talent in the trenches.

So Calame begins with an uncritical assumption: The Times did the nation a great service. His problem is with the explanation for the one-year delay in reporting the link:

Protection of sources is the most plausible reason I've been able to identify for The Times's woeful explanation in the article and for the silence of Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Keller. I base this on Mr. Keller's response to me: "There is really no way to have a full discussion of the back story without talking about when and how we knew what we knew, and we can't do that."

Taken at face value, Mr. Keller seems to be contending that the sourcing for the eavesdropping article is so intertwined with the decisions about when and what to publish that a full explanation could risk revealing the sources. I have no trouble accepting the importance of confidential sourcing concerns here. The reporters' nearly one dozen confidential sources enabled them to produce a powerful article that I think served the public interest.

With confidential sourcing under attack and the reporters digging in the backyards of both intelligence and politics, The Times needs to guard the sources for the eavesdropping article with extra special care. Telling readers the time that the reporters got one specific fact, for instance, could turn out to be a dangling thread of information that the White House or the Justice Department could tug at until it leads them to the source. Indeed, word came Friday that the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the disclosure of classified information about the eavesdropping.

But none of that explains why the report was ultimately published, Calame observes. He's interested in knowing two things: whether the news could have been revealed back when it could have affected the presidential election and the connection to the publication date of James Risen's book "State of War."

2006!

Happy New Year. It looks just lovely so far from here. I hope '06 is off to a good start for you too.