Alito scores on a fumble by Democrats

By Michael Goodwin
New York Daily News
To understand the pain liberals felt during the Samuel Alito hearing, imagine yourself a die-hard fan of the New York Giants. You were revved up for Sunday's playoff game, confident Big Blue would smash the Carolina Panthers. By the first quarter, though, it was obvious Carolina was a far better team. When a TV announcer said Carolina was good enough to go to the Super Bowl, you got the point. The hometown hype was just that. The scoreboard confirmed the misery, with the Giants shut out 23-0.
Ditto for the Democrats.
The Supreme Court game's not over, but my scorecard after the first half of the hearings has Alito way ahead. Calmly, concisely and in a rumpled, everyman manner, Alito tackled the Democrats' most hostile questions. He had help from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who took turns praising him and feeding him leading questions so he could put his actions in a favorable light. But it was his responses to hostile charges by Dems where we glimpsed his conservative and fair legal mind and a measure of humility so lacking in his interrogators.
When the windy senators rested their pie holes enough to let him speak, Alito made news by promising he would keep "an open mind" on abortion. On whether Roe v. Wade would be overturned, he gave many pro-choice Americans comfort when he said "the presumption is that the court will follow its prior precedents." But he added that past rulings are not "an inexorable command."
The questions were based on two main sources: a 1985 job application form for the Reagan Justice Department and rulings during his 15 years as a federal judge. Because some language on the 1985 form is snidely partisan, and too president-centric, Alito was wise to show contrition. When he said an earlier phrase about Oval Office power was "inapt," it was something of a game-changing moment. In the context of the liberal uproar over the Bush administration's secret monitoring of phone calls, the answer, along with others about checks and balances, robbed the issue of "gotcha" potential.
Facts of the case
So, too, did his explanations of his decisions. While Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., tried to portray his rulings as evidence of a sweeping anti-liberty philosophy, Alito kept coming back to the facts of each case. If nothing else, the hearing illustrated how political ideologues differ from good judges. The former start with the result they want and ignore the facts, while judges like Alito apply the law to facts to reach a just conclusion.
Still, that didn't stop Kennedy from putting on another shameless performance. He huffed and puffed about how Alito had not initially recused himself from a case involving a mutual fund company where he owned shares, as though an innocent young woman drowned. Never mind that he twisted or ignored the key facts, as Alito convincingly demonstrated when another senator let him finish his answers. You know Dems are in trouble when Kennedy takes the lead on ethics issues.
Then again, it could have been worse. One of their chief witnesses, journalist Stephen Dujack, was dropped from the lineup. He was supposed to slam Alito for his membership in a controversial Princeton alumni group, but GOP research revealed Dujack as less than an ideal moralist: He has compared eating meat to the Holocaust.
Oops. Like the Giants, the Dems are being outcoached. And outplayed.
X Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.