Watching the two sides (made of various related actors and groups) is both fascinating and disheartening to watch (via the NYT: Wider Fight Is Seen as Alito Victory Appears Secured). On one level, it makes sense, as it is about building support with one’s base and trying to make political inroads into those whose partisan identification wavers election-to-election. As such, it is to be expected in a democracy in an era of mass media, and especially one with an entrenched two party system.

On the other, it is disheartening for two reasons. One, it underscores the degree to which politics is dominated by image, not substance (as is, unfortunately, so much of life).

More frustrating, however, is the fact that is seems so many people live wholly enclosed in their own worlds, unable to see out and incapable of having a true cross-dialogue.

The entire process of “debate” over these nominations is moving in a direction in which I do not think it will be possible to muster the types of votes we used to get (the high 90s for a nominee). There is more political hay to be made from voting against, even when the nominee is going to win and is clearly qualified.

I say that apart from any consideration of the current nominee. The fact of the matter is, given the importance of interest groups and “playing to the base,” a script has developed over time wherein it really doesn’t matter what the facts are, the attacks are going to be pretty much the same. Every nominee by a Republican president is going to be accused of being the vote that will lead to back-alley abortions and will have the specter of the clothes-hanger evoked. That’s just the way it goes.

Further, in terms of commercials and the hearings, we are going to get some attempt to take some item from the past and try to make it the Rosetta Stone that decodes all we need to know about the candidates . In this case it was the whole CAP business, and to a lesser degree the Vanguard Group business. Both of those items, no doubt, will be flogged by various groups via commercials and such until the day that the vote takes place.

The issue of executive power was a legitimate one, and one that I was interested in. I was less persuaded than some as to the dire nature of some of Alito’s work in the Reagan administration, but still thought it was a worthy area of inquiry, even if the process of questioning is such that real answers are rather unlikely to emerge.