FIVE = = = A WAY OUT AND A FIRST STEP FORWARD

Growing up I was admonished more than once:

• “Don’t do anything you would be embarrassed to read about if it appeared on the front page of the newspaper.”

Of this life lesson I offer our senators a slight adaptation: 

• “Don’t do anything in the Senate that you’ll be embarrassed to be a part of when it appears in the history books.” 

We are fast upon a moment that will have lasting consequence regardless of which diverging road we take in this yellow wood. The choice is not, in its larger sense, who shall be or who shall name the next Justice. It is rather a declaration, one way or the other, that the United States Senate is fundamentally a body that values its integrity as a whole more than its members value their particular agenda. Do the ends justify the means, or do fair play and ethical conduct lie safely beyond sacrifice to partisan objectives? Are the words “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW” chiseled in the stone of an institution the Senate is sworn to support and defend, or are they the windblown dust of an empty promise carved like graffiti on the conscience of the nation?

1679 days lie between our loss of Justices Scalia and Ginsburg, who by all accounts disagreed passionately and frequently in matters of law but who were nevertheless bound by genuine friendship for one another and for the ideals of the Court and the country they served. How is it that each of their successors could be named by a President who may well serve but 1461 days? There can be no explanation our descendants would want to read, and no senator who would be willingly associated with it.

The logic is clear and unassailable: the manner in which the Scalia vacancy was filled and the manner in which the Ginsburg vacancy would be filled as proposed are irreconcilable. One or the other must be flawed. As the Scalia vacancy cannot be undone, the sole available remedy is to address each vacancy in the same manner, thus to defer action on the Ginsburg vacancy.

In Hamilton’s climactic scene, time slows to a barely perceptible crawl as Alexander contemplates his fate and the bullet creeps toward its place in history. We are in such a scene in our own play, writing it as we go. In our play the shot was fired in the spring of 2016 following the loss of Justice Scalia. It has taken over four and a half years and the loss of Justice Ginsburg to reveal the plot, to meet this moment. What fate will it bring, what choice shall be made?

The bullet has been fired. All that is left is to decide, recognizing vaguely yet unmistakably what hangs in the balance, whether or not to step out of its way.

[Next Essay, An open letter to every senator]

[What can I do?]