The Democratic Temper

Reflections on today’s politics (and yesterday’s)

President Reagan and Judge Bork in the Oval Office, July 1987 (White House Photographic Collection)

In olden times, a tweet was limited to 140 characters. Then, in 2017, the limit was raised to 280. A lot of people were opposed to this change—thinking it would ruin Twitter. People are naturally conservative (in a non-political sense). They kick against and fear change (not unreasonably). In any event, the ceiling was raised to 280 and everything was fine.

(The one time I met Jack Dorsey—a co-founder of Twitter—we discussed this. How blasé everyone was about the 280-character limit, once they had a day or two to get used to it.)

These days, if you have a blue check mark, you can write as much as you want, I believe. In any case, you can spill over the 280-character limit. (I don’t test it much.)

Last Tuesday, I jotted a little tweet—a longish tweet, actually. I was not sure about pressing “Send,” or whatever the word is. Even in a longish tweet, you can’t say everything, and your words are subject to misinterpretation. I thought, “What the hell. I can always delete my tweet. I just want to get this thought off my chest.”

Here’s what I wrote:

My inclination was to delete the tweet, because the subject of that tweet should really be an essay. It deserves some comprehensive, or at least extended, treatment. But, fairly quickly, some people retweeted and praised the tweet, and other people retweeted and scorned it. A deletion would have been ... awkward (and displeasing to both praisers and scorners).

I was stuck with it. Which was fine, because I wrote it, and meant it, and mean it.

A number of people reacted as follows: “Nordlinger is saying that Democrats are responsible for Trump and Trumpism!” I believe that Republicans are responsible. (They have nominated Donald Trump for president three times in a row. Never before had Republicans nominated someone for president three times in a row.) I also believe, however, that Democrats have some “self-reflecting” to do.

(Let me walk down Memory Lane: In the summer of 2009, months after he had been sworn in as president for the first time, Barack Obama told U.S. Jewish leaders that Israel needed to “engage in serious self-reflection.”)

You know what prompted my tweet last Tuesday? I had read a piece by Gregg Nunziata about Emil Bove—whom Trump nominated for the Court of Appeals. Republicans, naturally, confirmed him. Bove is spectacularly, outrageously, unfit.

And I could not help thinking of Bob Bork (a friend of mine, I should say).

Bork could legitimately be criticized, and he was. But, for heaven’s sake: student and protégé of Ed Levi (at the University of Chicago); outstanding faculty member at Yale; solicitor general; distinguished Court of Appeals judge ...

Gimme a break.

Now, I realize that Democrats rejected Bork for the Supreme Court, and that Republicans put Bove on the Court of Appeals, which is less important (while still a lifetime appointment). I also realize that President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations have been solid—Federalist Society types. (This is solid from my point of view.)

Trump II may be different, however. Last May, our president wrote,

I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations. This is something that cannot be forgotten!

Here is my main point: In a democracy, there must be give-and-take. Some compromise. You win some, you lose some. And you ought to accept the best from the other side. If you’re a liberal and the other side nominates Bork—for heaven’s sake. The guy was gold-plated. Save your fire for the Boves.

Bob Bork loved the United States and its constitution (a charter he knew intimately). You think that’s true of Bove & Co.?

Some of my critics have said, “What about Garland!” Good question. Merrick Garland was kept from being on the Supreme Court by Republican senators. But no one, to my knowledge, said he was unfit. He was obviously fit. The blocking of him was purely (or impurely) political.

Bork, they said was unfit!

Justice Scalia died on February 13, 2016. That very day, the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said that the Senate would not consider any nomination from President Obama. Republicans were waiting to see how the election turned out—the presidential election of 2016.

This had nothing to do with Garland, as a man and as a judge. (Garland was then sitting on the Court of Appeals; he would be attorney general in the Biden administration.) This was simple, and constitutional, obstruction.

(I didn’t like it, for the record.)

Amid the fuss that my tweet kicked up, I heard from a brilliant academic, who is renowned in more than one field and who is neither right-wing nor left-wing. If anyone can be said to occupy the “sensible center,” it’s he.

He said,

I agree that the Democrats’ rejection of liberal-minded conservatives played a role in our current predicament. We live in a plural democracy. If right of center and left of center fight with no quarter, then we wind up being ruled by the extremes. It’s so irritating.

That is perfectly said: “If right of center and left of center fight with no quarter ...”

I return to Obama’s phrase, “serious self-reflection.” Can Democrats be pleased with what they said about Reagan, Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, and Romney? About William F. Buckley Jr., George F. Will, and other conservative writers?

For years, I was damned as a “racist,” a “fascist,” and all the rest of it. Now I sometimes hear I’m a “reasonable conservative.” Thanks a lot, guys. I’m the same conservative I have always been.

How about us on the right? Were we fair in our rhetoric about Clinton (both of them), Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and others? I myself probably went too far, at times.

(I look at Pelosi’s stances on the Kremlin and the CCP and think that she is to the “right” of today’s GOP.)

What matters most, I think, is the preservation of our American republic: our founding ideals, principles, and structure. And if you are in favor of that—by gum, you are my ally, and we can fight about the tax code or what have you in our spare time.

Let me end where I began—with tweets and their character limits. In June 2017, Roger Scruton, the British philosopher, wrote a piece for The Spectator about our “post-truth” world. Talking about the new American president, he said,

This extraordinary person, whose thoughts seem shaped by their very nature to the 140 characters of a tweet, makes no distinction between the true and the false and assumes that no one else makes such a distinction either.

There could hardly be anything more important than that distinction.