MSNBC Hardball - Transcript
MSNBC Hardball - Transcript
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
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MATTHEWS: For the Democratic response to President Bush's press conference today and the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, we turn to the Democratic whip in the U.S. Senate, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, who serves also on the Judiciary Committee.
Many of your colleagues on both sides and a lot of commentators on the radio and in blog sites, Senator, are saying that the president didn't really go for the fences with this one, that he sort of bunted. Why do you think he did that? Why didn't he go for a real conservative, movement conservative, for the court?
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: Well, I think many of us on the Democratic side warned him that if he didn't pick someone who was moderate, he would be in for a fight.
We understand this is a swing seat on the court. Sandra Day O'Connor's position is going to decide a lot of the cases to come in the next few years. And if it turned out to be a Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown, one of the president's previous more extreme nominees, it would have been a fight to the finish.
MATTHEWS: Well, she has become something of a mood ring, then, because, you know, you think she might be, or I guess you're supposed to think, from the president's perspective, you and the other Democrats are expected to think, well, maybe she is a moderate, like Sandra Day O'Connor, someone who switches back and forth between the conservative judges and the liberal judges. And, yet, the president is swearing by this woman to her fellow conservatives that she is one of us.
DURBIN: Well, he has known her for a long time.
But if you are looking for a record, you are going to have to look hard. On another show last night, when Orrin Hatch, when he was challenged as to what Harriet Miers can point in terms of her background to prepare her for the court, he said it was her time in the White House. And so, I said, well, that means we will get to see some documentation, some memos from the White House? He said, of course not. That's privileged information.
So, at this point, unless she is very forthcoming in her answers to questions or there is documentation we don't know about, there is a very limited record to make a judgment on.
MATTHEWS: Are you surprised at this fixation by the president-I shouldn't make it negative-his concern that this be a person who won't change? He said that a couple of times in his press conference.
It's almost like, when we were growing up, your parents would be afraid, if you went to a college, you would turn out to be a liberal. The fear on the part of the president and his conservative base, apparently, is that, if you send a person to the environment of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., they will somehow become lefties.
DURBIN: I think it see it the other way.
I would like to believe that people are open to ideas and open to learn. You know, all of us change our minds from time to time as we learn more things. And I would like to think that life is a learning process, that the longer any person serves on the Supreme Court, the more they come to understand. Look at Harry Blackmun. By the end of his career on the Supreme Court, he said, I'm just going to give up on this death penalty. I have tried so many ways to fix it. It can't be fixed.
You see the same thing with Sandra Day O'Connor, a Goldwater Republican from Arizona who becomes more libertarian toward the end of her career, who really takes an open-minded approach. So, what the president thinks is a virtue I'm not sure I agree with.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you if you think she has that virtue. She was raised Roman Catholic. She ended up an evangelical Protestant. She was raised-or she was a Democrat until fairly recently, before the '90s. Now she is a Republican. She switched parties. She switched religions.
What gives anyone the belief that she is going to stick to her current apparent conservative attitude-conservative attitude on the court?
DURBIN: Well, stay away from her religious preference. That, of course, is very personal to her...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Well, sure, but it's a change.
DURBIN: It is a change.
MATTHEWS: It's in evidence of a person who is open-minded, using your terminology, someone who learns things, develops new attitudes towards things, looks for new direction in life. She seems like, based upon her background, overall, as a person who is searching for something new.
DURBIN: Well, I can't answer that, because I don't know her. I'm looking forward to meeting her for the first time tomorrow and getting to know her during the committee process. But what a limited opportunity each member of the committee will have to understand the background and future of a person who will be on the Supreme Court for the rest of her life.
MATTHEWS: What would she have to do to get Dick Durbin's vote?
DURBIN: Well, you know, what was missing with John Roberts, he had a great legal resume, a terrific mind, a honest person, good temperament.
But I was trying to just get some insight into some personal part of his life to give me an idea of his values. Remember when Joe Biden asked him, as a father, what would you do in a circumstance where your parent is dying, but doesn't want extraordinary medical care?
MATTHEWS: Right.
DURBIN: Can you tell us? And he said, I won't answer it.
And so, time and again, when we just tried to get a glimpse into his values and who he was as a person, he really was too guarded, too cautious, too afraid of his political vulnerability.
MATTHEWS: But isn't that a catch-22 for the other side? If a conservative were to tell you that, even an extremist, I would deny my parents any poison or any dehydration or anything, I would make them suffer through it, wouldn't that discourage you from voting for them, if they were honest?
DURBIN: Well, it-there is some risk involved in this. But let's be honest.
I think a person who is more honest and open and candid, I'm going to be moving toward them, even if I don't agree with them on everything. But when you have one who is so guarded and wants a lifetime position and to decide the basic freedoms of America, the important institution when it comes to our rights and liberties, I really need some insight into what they really think.
MATTHEWS: Remember Robert Bork? He couldn't have been better if he had been on sodium pentathol. And yet most of the liberals-in fact, he lost a majority vote because he was forthright. How do you get it right if you're a conservative? If you're an honest conservative, you are nailed by the liberals. If you not open and forthright, you are nailed as not forthright.
DURBIN: Well...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: How do you win, if you're a conservative, against liberal opposition?
DURBIN: Bork's problem wasn't candor.
It was the fact that he was cantankerous and his views were so
strange. And most people, when they got to hear a little bit more from
him, decided they didn't want him on that Supreme Court. But you look at
other justices who come before the court-or before the committee, I
should say. And whether it's Souter's or Kennedy or others, even Ginsburg
I think, if you closely at her record, she really gave you more of an insight into who she was a person.
They weren't afraid to say, this isn't just a matter of some automatic decision by a judge. You have to put your heart into these decisions from time to time.
(CROSSTALK)
DURBIN: There will be a small percentage of cases where that's necessary.
MATTHEWS: Last question. Does this nominee deserve an up-or-down vote, up or down by the Senate, yes or no?
DURBIN: Well, I think it will reach that point. I believe that nominee will likely come from the...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Would you commit now to letting her have an up-or-down vote?
DURBIN: Well, at this point, it's way too early. Let's wait for the information...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: You are not willing to say that she deserves an up-or-down vote, even because-just...
(CROSSTALK)
DURBIN: I wouldn't prejudge her in either direction. In all fairness, we need to look at her record, listen to her carefully, before making any decision.
MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you very much, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. Actually, I should say, the Democratic whip. He is the number two Senate Democratic whip now-number two Democrat.
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