Fresh air from Capitol Hill

The Senate Judiciary Committee held their vote yesterday on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Most Republicans on the Committee voted "no" by proxy, but one, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, voted "aye" along with a heavy dose of perspective. Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank, whose daily Washington Sketch article gives readers a fly-on-the-wall account of some of the more mundane happenings in the District, provided the details.

Graham stated, "I think there's a good reason for a conservative to vote yes, and that's provided in the Constitution itself." He then read aloud from Federalist Paper #6, written by Alexander Hamilton: "The Senate should have a special and strong reason for the denial of confirmation," such as "to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from family connection, from personal attachment and from a view to popularity." Graham said Kagan "has passed all those tests" envisioned by the Framers, then he challenged his colleagues: "Are we taking the language of the Constitution that stood the test of time and basically putting a political standard in the place of a constitutional standard? That's for each senator to ask and answer themselves."

After his speech, Dick Durbin (D-IL) weighed in with equal sensibility: "During the course of his statement, I reflected on some of the things that I have said and how I've voted in the past and thought that perhaps his statement suggested there was a better course for many of us to consider in the future."

Some additional excerpts from Graham as outlined by Milbank:

First he read from a letter written by conservative legal scholar Miguel Estrada, a George W. Bush nominee blocked by Democrats in 2003, stating that Kagan should be "easily confirmable." He then read from a letter Kagan wrote recently containing similar praise for Estrada. "That gives me hope," Graham said, that people of different "legal philosophy and political interaction can at the end of the day say nice things about each other. . . . I think it would make a lot of Americans feel better if we could react that way ourselves a bit."

"Seventy-three of the 126 Supreme Court nominations," Graham continued, "were done without roll-call votes. Something's changing when it comes to the advice-and-consent clause. . . . The question I have for the body: Are we living in an age of legislative activism where the words haven't changed in the last 200 years, but certainly the voting patterns are?"

He reminded his colleagues that "no one spent more time trying to beat President Obama than I did, except maybe Senator McCain." But "President Obama won," he said, and "the Constitution in my view puts a requirement on me as a senator to not replace my judgment for his, not to think of the 100 reasons I would pick somebody differently or pick a fight with Ms. Kagan."

"Objectively speaking, things are changing, and they're unnerving to me," Graham's lecture continued. It is, he said, "our obligation to honor elections" -- an obligation that led him to vote "yes" for Kagan. "It would not have been someone I would have chosen," he said, "but the person who did choose, President Obama, I think chose wisely."

I suspect this account will not get much attention, but it should. Senator Graham has taken a bold step that I truly hope does not bite him in his 2014 re-election bid. For now, I'm going to enjoy a welcome breeze coming from the general direction of the Capitol.