Bush Nomination of Roberts Example of Pattern

Ann Althouse points out that by not nominating a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, President Bush was breaking with a precedent from his father. Says Althouse:

George H.W. Bush replaced the first black Justice, Thurgood Marshall, with the second black Justice, Clarence Thomas. He nevertheless insisted that he'd picked "the best person for the job" -- something few people believed. (And I'm not trying to disrespect Thomas. I think he's a fine Justice.) The elder Bush not only created a designated seat and resorted to making hard-to-believe assertions about his action, he also undermined his ability to oppose affirmative action, because the Thomas pick was so widely perceived as affirmative action.

The younger Bush has now chosen not to replace the first woman Justice with another woman. So unlike his father, he is not creating a designated seat on the Court. And in picking Roberts, he actually picked someone about whom it can be said convincingly: He was the best person for the job. And he has not limited what he can plausibly say about affirmative action.

I believe that Althouse has rightly identified a definite pattern in the younger Bush's presidency. I commented in response to her observation:

In spite of the respect that the younger Bush clearly has for his father, I agree with you that he's demonstrated a marked penchant for desiring to distinguish himself from George H.W. Bush.

This can be seen for example, in the pains he always takes to say that he understands the difficulties incurred by some in the economy. This contrasts with what seemed to some indifference to some people's economic hardships on the part of his father, a perceived indifference that gave rise to the Carville mantra for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, "It's the economy, stupid."

In the realm of foreign policy, George W. Bush has clearly stepped away from the "realism" of his father (and of the Republican Party tradition, generally) to embrace neocon activism. The elder Bush felt no desire to move beyond what had been authorized by Congress and agreed to by the United Nations--expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The younger Bush initiated a war to expel Saddam from Iraq itself.

The Roberts nomination, as you say, also shows that the younger Bush is intent or content (or both) to be his own person.

The relationship between these father and son presidents is, it seems, more complicated than that which existed between John and John Quincy Adams. In the latter relationship, the son's admiration was complete and insusceptible to the sort of respectfully critical evaluations that the younger Bush, once a political enforcer for his father, seems to have made. This may also explain why the younger Adams shared his father's fate as a one-term president, while the younger Bush found a way to be re-elected.

Like you, I think, Bush is to be saluted for not feeling compelled to view O'Connor's successor as the holder of "the woman's seat." To some extent, Bill Clinton probably gave him some cover by appointing the Court's second woman in Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But I still think that without Ginsburg on the Court, there's a good chance that Bush would have nominated Roberts, for the reasons you cite.