I’ll toss a name out there for President Obama to consider for the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Joseph Biden.
The vice president told Rachel Maddow last night that he has “no interest” in serving on the court. The MSNBC host had asked him directly if he’d consider the appointment if it were offered. He has “no interest.”
Is that a blanket, categorical refusal to serve? No. It isn’t. It means, more or less, the same thing as when a politician says he has “no intention of running” for a particular office.
“No intention” can be parsed to mean that “no intention … at this moment.” So, when a politician says he or she has “no interest” in a particular job, one can possibly suggest that the pol is speaking in the present tense.
BidenĀ predicted thatĀ Obama will pick a centrist. He said the president won’t likely pick a flaming liberal jurist in the mold of William Brennan to fill the seat vacated by shocking death of archconservative Justice Antonin Scalia.
He’s also said that a nominee should have GOP support.
Hmmm. Let me think. Who might that be?
Oh, how about the vice president? He’s got many Republican friends in the Senate. He’s proven his ability to work well with GOP lawmakers. He once chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee.
My hunch is that he’d be more of a moderate than a flamer.
OK, he’s also pretty long in the tooth. He might not want to stay in the public eye. The vice president has had a long public service career — and he’s just lost his beloved son, Beau, to cancer. Not only that, the president has given him a task to lead the effort to find a cure for the killer disease.
However, as a fan of the vice president, I happen to think he might be one court candidate who could pass senatorial muster.