A Justice for all

With John Paul Stephens retiring soon (and I’ll be the first to admit that the band embarrassed itself with every appearance after John Bonham’s death), Obama has another left-of-center seat on the Supreme Court to fill.

Every interest group in the nation has its nose up the president’s ass right now, reminding him there’s only two women on the 9-person Court but roughly 50% of Americans who are women. Other than elderly white guys, everybody else is under-represented on the court too, from minorities to the mentally-challenged to left-handed chainsaw jugglers from Oscaloosa.

But as the photo at the top of this piece suggests, this column isn’t aiming to promote racial equity, Kentucky circus acts or former Alaska state officials.

I’m all about Mr. Justice Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’ll come clean, since nobody reads blogs anymore anyhow. My Christmas Island has been located in California for the better part of the past twenty years. Like the governor, I, too, have come to think of this state as home. The first place I’ve thought of as home, through many moves, since the town I was born and raised. I think when most people hear Arnold bellow about how great the state of California is, they cringe, thinking it’s all part of some crass political calculation. But when I hear it, I think, “You’re damned right it is!”

Our governor was on the Jay Leno program last week, I’m not sure why. He didn’t seem to be there with a product to sell. Maybe he still feels he owes Leno, from whose show he initially announced his candidacy, what seems like so long ago now. (I came to the conclusion that the appearance was probably a stealth-launch of his impending post-governor media offensive, again using Leno’s show as his platform, but that’s just idle conjecture.)

And I thought again, as I have so frequently in the past, I want to see this guy on the Supreme Court!

Look at it from Arnold’s perspective. What’s he going to do when he’s termed-out, as he soon will be? He can’t really go back to making gazillion-dollar action movies and he can’t actually act (as Leno so ungallantly pointed out); almost anything other than governor or box-office king would be a step down, a humiliation. He’s probably looking at following in Bill Clinton’s footsteps, in terms of a post-government career. Sit on a bunch of boards of this and that, advocate his favorite causes, put his face in front of the cameras doing well-meaning and/or dignified things as often as possible.

That would be a good life, but not great, and our governor is wired for great. He readily admitted on the Leno show that if he was Constitutionally entitled to, he would “absolutely” run for President.

A seat on the Supreme Court is the only step-up for Arnold at this point in his career, and lest you think I’ve forgotten about America in my zeal to shove Arnold down your throat, I think he would be a brilliant pick.

The pundits and the TV talking heads have all been talking about how the president and his team are considering appointing a non-judge/lawyer, somebody with real-world experience. Who better than an immigrant (at a time when immigration issues are hitting the boiling point) who has actually lived the American dream? From the son of a former Nazi (generally considered to be an insurmountable stigma), to the biggest box office star in the world to governor of one of the nation’s greatest states—his résumé is literally unparalleled. You couldn’t make this story up.

He brings the perspective of the penniless émigré fresh off the boat as well as the Fat Cat in the executive board room. He has lived almost a parody of the idealized, rags-to-riches American success story; it’s like a Frank Capra script as filmed by Ronnie Howard. He gets the rich girl from the upper-crust society family in the end and still gets to smoke his stogies in a tent pitched in the back yard for that specific purpose. He’s Everyman, blown up to fill a Cinemascope® screen.

And now that he has government experience, it would help make up for his lack of legal expertise. That’s what staff is for anyhow, the same way it must have been at first in Sacramento.



Plus, he’s a RINO, so appointing him would help scratch Obama’s ridiculous, ill-fated bi-partisan itch. Seriously, with Schwarzenegger terming-out at about the same time as Stephens is retiring... It’s serendipity. Plus he would sail through the confirmation process—we Americans forgive our celebrities almost all, and Arnold’s never crossed a line that’s tripped him up yet. CSPAN would have better ratings than Fox News that day!

A Democratic-appointed, Republican legal immigrant sitting on the highest court in the land just when the anti-illegal-immigration shit is hitting the fan; the TV-movie will practically write itself.

And I think he’d do with his justiceship the same thing he’s done with every other step in his unlikely career—confound his critics and exceed expectations.

We could do a lot worse in a Supreme Court justice, and regrettably, that isn’t just idle conjecture.