Likelihood of Success

Sotomayor agonistes

May 4, 2009 Americana, Heart and spirit

On my Princeton lawyers list there was a bit of a dustup late last week when some excited participants started talking about the prospect of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a fellow alumna, being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama.  It started with one of the participants breathlessly reporting the news; the inevitable comment from one of the inevitable troublemakers, who does not happen to be a lawyer, came next, and — well, you have to read it yourself.  First, the report, then the response from “Terry”:

>>Robert Alumnus ’69 S77 wrote:

I’m pleased to see discussion suggesting that among the most eminent of Princeton lawyers is  being considered for the Supreme Court seat to be vacated by Justice Souter. Hon. Sonia Sotomayor ’77. What a privilege it has been to know her, and what a fine candidate I know her to be!

Congratulations to my classmate Robert! I have made a late new year’s resolution to make a big deal out of statements of opinion masquerading as statements of fact and HE IS MY FIRST BIG DEAL since I made that resolution.

I am SO fed up with politicians, editorialists, tv talking heads, CSPAN guests, congressional committee panelists, and everybody else who is making evaluative assertions instead of making empirical assertions and letting ME make my own evaluations of the facts.

So, Robert, what makes you “know” that she’s a “fine” candidate?

Or would you prefer to modify your post to say, “Hon. Sonia Sotomayor ’77 has said and done a lot of stuff that comports with my values, prejudices, and political agenda”?

Well, Terry the troublemarker did have a point, but he didn’t put it very collegially.  And our list is kind of collegial.  I actually got a big kick out of this line in response from the exasperated class of ’69-er:

You are, as usual, right. I like Judge Sotomayor. I like her demeanor. I like her intelligence. I like the way she goes to the core of the issues to seek to do justice. But that’s only me, Terry, and surely the pro se bar has a better perspective, to which exposition I certainly look forward.

Regrettably, he later apologized for his line about “the pro se bar,” which I thought was great.  Frankly I was quietly following the whole thing because I don’t know much or anything about Judge Sotomayor (sorry, Instapundit – this didn’t help; it really is a hatchet job), until this one from a third alumnus who is a frequent and articulate contributor got me:

I immediately alerted all my classmates since very few of us in my circle knew her. We are all pulling for her nonetheless!

And I never knew this classmate I am strongly biased  in favor of [is] someone who went  through the same experiences at the same time and place I did.

This certainly stands for a lot of sociological phenomena all in one place.  The one that hit me, though, was the last idea:  I support Sonia Sotomayor because she’s “one of us” — “someone who went  through the same experiences at the same time and place I did.”

This claim is a little odd considering that “very few” in his circle knew her, but maybe for that very reason it bespeaks an interesting group identification which would never have occurred to me, except perhaps from the smoking room of some old-fashioned white-WASP-men only private club which the Princeton of 1969 most assuredly was not:  A candidate inherently has merit because she “went  through the same experiences at the same time and place I did.”

I wish I had the energy to parse out why I find that phraseology so troubling, and a little weird.  I do know that I am all in favor of giving my fellow alumni all kinds of assistance when I can, because of our shared affinity.  Is it because we had shared experiences at the same place?  Almost never, and certainly never at the same time.

But that is, I think, it.  It is that time — 1969, and the four transformative, subversive years that preceded it — that America’s Greatest Generation’s Darlings continues to consider the extra-special-est of all time.  My guess is that the place, Princeton, is a sweet coincidence but secondary to both the time and “the experiences” that makes that generation that so prides itself on itself, and on that unique moral legacy it bequeathed to western civilization at “that time” through “its experience,” that so inherently justifies one of their own to power.  It is the Clinton Generation, who  invented Peace and Love and brought them both to Southeast Asia and a Planned Parenthood near you.

And that phenomenon — that unique group identification based on collegiate solidarity during the late 1960′s — just is what it is.  As I said, I don’t feel too comfortable with it, though it hardly constitutes a reason to oppose Judge Sotomayor.  Almost every candidate, after all, will be one of Them.   This is notwithstanding our post-Woodstock White House couple, regarding one of whom I could say, under this formulation, that she “went  through the same experiences at the same time and place I did” — whereas in fact, despite being at the same place at the same time, she did not have the same experiences at all.  Still, at least Barack and Michelle Obama are not … one of Them, those infinitely self-regarding baby boomers who, from where I’m sitting, have mucked up so very much and yet whose reflection always appears crystalline.

But this honest email from a passionate fellow alumnus, whom I only wish well personally, reminds me that we’re not even remotely through with Them yet.  Not even close.