Word: breyers
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With those words ended another tortuous episode of indecision in the Clinton White House. Though few who know Stephen Breyer doubt his brilliance as a jurist, the President seemed to lack any compelling reason to prefer him. A Babbitt nomination would have gone further to satisfy the President's stated desire to put someone on the court who had real-world experience as a consensus builder. Arnold, who was once Clinton's law professor, was the choice closest to the President's heart...
...there was any single advantage that Breyer had in Clinton's eyes, it was that he would stir little controversy and consume little of Clinton's dwindling store of political capital in the Senate. Above all, the President doesn't want a messy confirmation fight. On that score Breyer, a onetime chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will vote on his nomination, can't be beat. In fact, he has the support of such ideological opposites as Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy...
Still, the President hadn't been all that comfortable with Breyer when he considered and rejected him last year for the Supreme Court seat he eventually offered to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In a face-to-face meeting at the time -- which took place just days after Breyer had suffered two broken ribs from being struck by a car while riding his bicycle -- Clinton found the judge to be "stiff and a little too eager," says a White House official involved in the selection process. "He also came across as very much of an intellectual ! who flits from issue to issue...
...days between the time Justice Harry Blackmun announced his retirement and the Breyer choice last Friday, Clinton appears to have decided, and then changed his mind, over and over again. Each time, he or his top aides leaked his apparent preference with greater and greater certainty, only to pull back at the last minute. Soon after Clinton's first choice, Senate majority leader George Mitchell, announced that he didn't want the job, debates within the Administration turned on whether to seek an appointee who could forge coalitions on a divided court or to find a suitable black, Hispanic...
...early last week it was clear that Clinton had reduced the field to Arnold, Babbitt and Breyer. Each had drawbacks. For Arnold, it was his health. He is under treatment for lymphoma, a form of cancer. He had also raised the suspicions of some women's groups with two of his opinions on the bench, one that upheld a parental-consent statute regarding teen abortions and another that permitted the Jaycees to exclude women. With Whitewater still an unresolved issue, there were also rumblings in the Senate about the propriety of the President bringing to Washington another of his friends...