Why Obama Should Nominate Barack Obama For The Supreme Court Vacancy

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Why Obama Should Nominate Barack Obama For The Supreme Court Vacancy
The solution to this political problem is staring at him in the mirror.
02/16/2016 01:43 pm ET | Updated 59 minutes ago

  • Ryan GrimWashington Bureau Chief, The Huffington Post
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KATE SHEPPARD/HUFFINGTON POST, WITH IMAGES FROM AP PHOTO/MANUEL BALCE CENETA
President Barack Obama could just nominate himself to the Supreme Court vacancy left by the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia.


WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans have insisted that no matter who President Barack Obama nominates for the Supreme Court, there will be no hearings, no votes, no nothing. But there may be one potential candidate that Republicans would have a hard time blocking: Obama could appoint constitutional law professor Barack Obama.

There's roughly a zero percent chance this'll happen, but here's why it makes sense: Appointing Obama would put the GOP in the position they've desperately wanted to be in since the man was inaugurated. They'd have the chance to vote him out of office. If he's truly as dangerous and illegitimate a president as Republicans say, then this is their opportunity to get him out of the White House by putting him on the court.

The move would also give Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell a chance to virtually guarantee that he remains Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (McConnell would have to persuade his colleagues not to filibuster.) Some of the most vulnerable Republicans would have their 2016 chances boosted by voting to confirm Obama. Sens. Pat Toomey (Pa.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) would be assured re-election if they could peel off a small portion of Democratic voters grateful for the bipartisan move.

With those four alone, Democrats would have 50 votes, a tie that could be broken by Vice President Joe Biden -- who would be all too pleased to cast the deciding vote to make himself president, even if he'd become one of the shortest-serving presidents in history. And Biden, of course, would then name his longtime ally and Senate successor Ted Kaufman as vice president. If Biden happened to meet the same sudden fate as Antonin Scalia did, Kaufman could quickly go about the business of breaking up the banks.

White House aide Eric Schultz, asked if Obama had considered nominating Obama, noted that the president "has said he's not interested in being a Supreme Court justice," citing a New Yorker article by Jeffrey Toobin and a recent interview on Ellen.

Sure, Obama may have said that, but what if the president himself called on him to serve? Wouldn't that change his thinking?

"The press corps is officially unhinged," Schultz suggested


Why Obama Should Nominate Barack Obama For The Supreme Court Vacancy
 
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Potential Supreme Court Nominees

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Flags flew at half-staff at the Supreme Court on Saturday night after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in Texas.CreditZach Gibson/The New York Times


Frontrunners and long shots: Here’s a list of potential Supreme Court nominees to replace Justice Scalia.

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    Judge Merrick B. Garland in Washington D.C. in 2008. Judge Garland, 63, attended Harvard, where he graduated first in his class.CreditCharles Dharapak/Associated Press
    Merrick B. Garland, 63
    Chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He attended Harvard College, where he graduated first in his class. He earned his law degree in 1977 from Harvard Law School. He has often been mentioned as a leading contender for a nomination to the Supreme Court.

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    Padmanabhan Srikanth Srinivasan on Capitol Hill in April 2013. He is a circuit judge of the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
    Padmanabhan Srikanth Srinivasan, 48
    A judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was nominated by PresidentObama and confirmed to the federal bench by the Senate in May 2013 by a 97-0 vote. Before joining the bench, he was the principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, during which time he argued 25 cases before the Supreme Court. He was also a lecturer at Harvard Law School. As a lawyer, one of his most high-profile cases was the defense of Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron executive, in his appearance before the Supreme Court in Skilling v. United States. Mr. Srinivasan was born in India and migrated with his family to the United States in the late 1960s when his parents took teaching jobs in Kansas — his father as a professor of mathematics at the University of Kansas and his mother as a teacher at the Kansas City Art Institute. Mr. Srinivasan is a graduate of Stanford University. He earned a law degree and a master’s degree in business administration in 1995 from Stanford Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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    Patricia Ann Millet at the White House in 2013. Ms. Millet, 52, is a judge of the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. CreditManuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
    Patricia Ann Millet, 52
    A judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Her nomination in 2013 by Mr. Obama (to fill the seat vacated by John G. Roberts Jr. after his elevation to the Supreme Court) was one of three nominations caught up in a Senate debate over the use of the filibuster. It took the Senate nearly seven months before confirming her on a 56-38 vote. Before joining the Circuit Court, she headed the Supreme Court and appellatepractices at the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld. She also worked as an assistant to the United States solicitor general. She has argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court. Ms. Millett is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and earned a law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1988.

  4. Jacqueline Nguyen, 51
    A judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She was nominated by Mr.Obama and confirmed in May 2012. She is a graduate of Occidental College and UCLA School of Law. After working in private practice for several years, specializing in civil litigation, she worked as an assistant United States attorney in the Central District of California. In 2002, she was appointed by Gov. Gray Davis to the Superior Court of Los Angeles County and servedthere until she joined the federal Circuit Court. At 10, Ms. Nguyen fled to the United States with her family after the fall of the South Vietnamese government in 1975.

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    Attorney General Kamala D. Harris of California in 2015. She is the first African-American, Asian-American and woman to hold the job. CreditJae C. Hong/Associated Press
    Kamala D. Harris, 51
    California attorney general, an elective post she has held since 2011. She is the first African-American, Asian-American and woman to hold the job. Before her election to statewide office, she worked as a deputy district attorney in California, and between 2000 and 2011, she was twice elected district attorney of San Francisco. Ms. Harris has declared her intention to run for the United States Senate to replace a fellow Democrat, Senator Barbara Boxer, who has announced her retirement at the end of her term in 2017. Ms. Harris is a graduate of Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

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    Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey in July. Mr. Booker, 46, who was sworn into office as New Jersey’s junior senator in 2013, earned his law degree from Yale Law School. CreditZach Gibson/The New York Times
    Cory Booker, 46
    A first-term Democratic member of the United States Senate. He was sworn into office as New Jersey’s junior senator in 2013, after serving as mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013. Mr. Booker, who is African-American, attended Stanford University before winning a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He earned his law degree from Yale Law School.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-nominees.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
 
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