In the Age of the Internet, it’s no longer clear that there is any value in a Senate hearing to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. By the time the hearing begins, everything about the nominee is already known by everyone involved in the process. No question will be asked to which the answer is not already known.
At this point, the main purpose of a hearing seems to be to produce sound bites for senators who are up for re-election, rather than to change any senator’s mind about how he’s going to vote. This is true in particular for Democrats, who typically announce their opposition to a nominee even before the nominee’s identity is known.
This seems like as good a time as any to set a new precedent for future Supreme Court confirmations. Just announce the President’s choice (which will already have been leaked and endlessly analyzed by the time of the formal announcement), give senate staffers a week to let their senators know which way to vote, and then hold the vote. They don’t even have to travel to Washington for this. They could do the whole thing virtually.
If the nominee is appointed, we’ll have saved ourselves a lot of time, money, and exposure to divisive rhetoric. And if the nominee is rejected, the same will be true as we move on to the next nominee.
Senate confirmation hearings need to be tossed on the trash heap of history, along with other outmoded ideas from previous centuries — like withholding taxes and pre-tax benefits, shipping kids to centralized warehouses where they have access to fewer and lower-quality resources than they have at home, requiring people to ask permission to earn a living, and so on.
As Joe Biden might say: C’mon, man! We’re in the 21st century! Why the hell don’t we act like it?
