By Marcia Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Sometimes it's not the words that tell the story. Sometimes it's a cigar.
During yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr., there were words aplenty, thousands of them, spoken for nearly three hours. There were words of praise and condemnation, expressions of great confidence and deep doubts, incriminations and recriminations, all delivered with rock-hard partisan sincerity. There were moments of passion and humor, and, at times, even moments of eloquence.
And then there was the cigar.
It was fat and brown, and when it wasn't clutched between the fingers of Bill Reynolds, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter's chief of staff, it was tucked -- unlit -- squarely in the left side of his mouth, or being delicately finger-twirled between his lips. Despite all the speeches in that ornate, wood-paneled room, it was his cigar that was sending the true message of the day.
This legislative "minuet," as Reynolds's boss, the Judiciary Committee chairman, described the confirmation process at the start of the Alito hearings -- was just about over. The dance was done but for a few formal steps. It was time to pass the cigars and pop the corks -- and -- oh, yeah -- somebody should count the votes.
Yesterday, those votes fell strictly along partisan lines, and that meant 10 to 8 in Alito's favor. Now the nomination will go before the full Senate, where the balance of power is tilted in the GOP's favor, 55 to 44 (with one independent). Yesterday's committee outcome was no surprise, and the vote before the full Senate won't be, either.
Specter started yesterday's meeting acknowledging such.
"I don't believe . . . that there is a great deal of suspense as to what's going to happen," he said as he pleaded with his colleagues for brevity, saying he was limiting himself to five minutes and that he hoped others would follow his lead.
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the committee, heard Specter's call for brevity but said he didn't know if he could heed it. He had much to say at "this critical time in the nation's history."
Calling Bush a divider and not a uniter, he criticized the president for not sending a nominee to the Senate who might have been "someone who would have the support of all Americans." Leahy was one of three Democrats on the committee who voted for Chief Justice John Roberts in September, and one of 22 Democrats who voted to confirm the chief justice on the Senate floor.
But yesterday was different. "This is a time in our history when the protections of Americans' liberties are at risk," Leahy said, focusing his remarks on the issue of executive power and his belief that the Bush administration is illegally grabbing power under the cover of the war on terrorism.
"This is a critical nomination, one that can tip the balance on the Supreme Court radically away from constitutional checks and balances and the protection of Americans' fundamental rights."
Utah's Orrin Hatch set the tone for his Republican colleagues. The GOP strategy had not changed from the hearings themselves: praise Alito's "outstanding record" as a jurist and shake a finger of shame in the face of his critics. Democrats, Hatch and his colleagues said repeatedly, were destroying the bipartisan tradition on confirmations with their partisan politics.
"Observers of what the judicial confirmation process has become in the last several years might have a hard time remembering that fair process," Hatch said. "Where were the filibusters? Where were the litmus paper and the scorecards? Did people tally up Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg's past appeals court rulings and, on that basis, warn that she would not give certain groups a fair shake in the future?"
And so it went. One by one, the Democrats repeated concerns about a Bush power grab and a judge they say is too deferential to big government and big business in his rulings.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) was uncharacteristically restrained in the length of his remarks. He voiced his concern that Alito was insensitive to the subtleties of today's problems of discrimination. Alito "is not someone who looks into the shadows" when it comes to ferreting out such forms of bias, he said.
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, like his Republican colleagues, pointed to the outstanding recommendations that Alito has gotten from the American Bar Association and the number of people who had come to testify on his behalf. He wanted to know how someone so respected could come under such attacks.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) had an answer.
It's not just qualifications that matter, she said, because "legal philosophy and personal views do play a role on the Supreme Court." And, she said, these are polarized times.
Last, Feinstein addressed the issue on which so many thought this nomination would rise or fall: abortion rights.
"If one is pro-choice in this day and age, one cannot vote for Judge Alito."
But it was Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who always seems ready with a quip, who let it all hang out.
"I guess there are 18 ways of saying the same thing," he said, eliciting one of the few moments of bipartisan chuckling, "broken into two different categories."
Look, he said: "What did you expect President Bush to do when he won?" These are the spoils of victory. Clinton, after all, got his picks.
And if the Democrats think they're going to use the issue in the election, he taunted, "go ahead, we'll clean your clock."
But Richard Durbin of Illinois, the last Democrat to speak, had a few jabs of his own.
"We were supposed to be meeting on the nomination of Harriet Miers," he said.
Supporters and opponents of Alito stood in the back of the room watching. They had their red stickers pasted to their lapels, for Alito and against, standing side by side. They stood for three hours straight, watching as if the outcome were an unanswered question. Later, Alito supporters condemned Democrats for their dissent. And the judge's opponents praised the Democrats for their strong speeches and their unity.
It isn't over until it's over, they said. The battle moves to the offices of the moderates on both sides who might be swayed, whether they are Democrats in red states or Republicans who support abortion rights.
But the numbers are the numbers. And after the vote, our cigar man was down the hall listening to his boss give a news conference.
So what was up with that cigar, he was asked. After all, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
"It's clearly a bad habit," he said. "Something I need to quit."
View all comments that have been posted about this article.