Bush's Supreme Challenge
With a court retirement likely, Al Gonzales is a Bush favorite. But is that enough to assure his confirmation?

Even for a White House in which staff members pride themselves on being low-key, Alberto Gonzales is inconspicuous. The flashiest thing he has done recently is briefly regrow his mustache. And yet the modest, Harvard-educated lawyer has a riveting story. The son of migrant workers in Texas, he grew up in a house his dad built, sharing two bedrooms with seven siblings. Even the town's name was Humble. Gonzales, 47, has all the traits of the people George W. Bush brought up from Austin–loyalty, discretion and self-effacement–but his personal history is what really captures the President.

Bush has an almost mystical faith in his ability to take the measure of people by looking them in the eye. Within the next few months, he may be measuring some candidates for a long black robe. It is almost certain that by the end of June, when the Supreme Court adjourns for summer recess, at least one Justice will have announced his or her retirement. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 79, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 73, have expressed a desire to leave. Rehnquist has serious back trouble, and O'Connor would like to return to Arizona with her husband. Both want a Republican President to name their replacement. Then there's the wild card, John Paul Stevens, 83, a liberal who is likely to stay but is the court's oldest member.

Among the many names floated for the post, no candidate has the President's trust like Gonzales, who currently serves as White House Counsel. But the irony is that Bush may have a harder time selling his first choice to his allies than to his antagonists. Democrats, who are locked in a pitched battle with the White House over lower-court nominations, fear rejecting the first Hispanic nominee to the high court would play badly with Hispanic voters, whom the Democrats are eager to win over.

For conservative Republicans, however, Gonzales is not even on the top 10 list. They crave a Justice who is strict and outspoken on core conservative issues, namely abortion and affirmative action, and for them Gonzales is too much of a cipher, perhaps too moderate.

So what's the problem with unassuming Al? Pro-life advocates believe that if the right jurist replaces either O'Connor or Stevens, the court will finally have a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established the right to have an abortion. Though Gonzales' views on the matter are not known, opponents cite his vote–and the concurring opinion he wrote–as a Texas Supreme Court judge allowing a girl to use a bypass provision of a state parental notification law to get an abortion.

The judge's defenders argue that he has had a strong hand in many issues that have pleased the Republican base: the order setting up military tribunals to try suspected terrorists, the fight with Congress over releasing information about Dick Cheney's energy task force and ending the American Bar Association's role in rating potential judicial nominees.

Ultimately, what Gonzales has going for him is that Bush has looked him in the eye for years and liked what he has seen. He also seems to like what his support for Gonzales seems to say about himself: that the aristocratic President is an egalitarian guy capable of rewarding up-by-the-bootstraps achievement. All this may be important enough to Bush that he's willing to take some political heat for his loyal pal.

—from TIME, May 26, 2003

Questions

1. How might the blocking of Al Gonzales's nomination hurt the Democrats?

2. Why might Republicans oppose the nomination of Al Gonzales to the U.S. Supreme Court?