Goodbye Nino

There have been many wonderful tributes to Antonin Scalia and I would be hard pressed to best any of them here. Scalia was the most brilliant, incisive, and colorful American legal minds of my lifetime.

Passionately devoted to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Scalia endeavored to discover what the Founders intended those words to mean.  To Scalia, two things were true.  Words had meaning, and the Founders chose certain words carefully and deliberately.   The coming together of the Founders was a unique event in human history and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was a document like no other before or since—circumscribing the role of government in our lives and declaring certain parts of our lives off limits to government power.  He viewed the Constitution almost as a sacred text.  In addition to possessing a mind of enormous intellectual power, Antonin had wit, charm, color, and a basic humanity that is so rare in public life.  His deep friendship with his intellectual nemesis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was an example for all of us in these politically charged times.  He was consistently rated the funniest justice—objectively by someone who tracks those things—eliciting more laughter than any other justice by far (I do think Clarence Thomas is at or near the bottom of that category).

I was fortunate enough to hear Scalia speak in person at the Union League Club in Chicago a couple of years ago and meet him in person.   Meeting one of America’s great minds of  past 100 years was certainly an exciting moment for me.  He did not disappoint.  He was warm, engaging and funny as hell, poking fun at some of his fellow justices that “couldn’t apparently distinguish between a penalty and a “tax.”  Scalia was a great gift to America who steadfastly defended one of mankind’s most sacred documents.

It isn’t a surprise, then, that President Obama elected to skip Scalia’s funeral in a very public display of nonattendance.  His Press Secretary offered no excuse,  and declined to even say whether he was going to play golf instead.  Obama uses these events to make statements.  This was not simply a matter of overscheduling.  As head of state, Obama has an obligation to attend ceremonies of significance and gravitas.  He is our representative in these matters.  Missing the funeral is a statement to the American people and to the entire world.  His attendance matters.

Obama has used the stature of the presidency and his presence to make statements throughout his presidency—to declare which people are worthy of his time and which are not.  Thus, he dashed off to hold the cartoonish “beer summit” when he thought Henry Louis Gates was treated unfairly by the Cambridge.  He scrambled out of town to a fundraiser and to meet with Jay-Z and Beyonce after his ambassador and 3 others were murdered in Libya.  He made a showy public appearance at a mosque in Baltimore.  And as if to underscore his contempt for Scalia, in the days immediately preceding his funeral, he announced that he would be traveling to Cuba to meet with the Communist thug Raul Castro—the embodiment of regime that Scalia undoubtedly reviled.

He has done this before to evidence his contempt or indifference.  He snubbed other European heads of state in their march against terrorism in Paris following their terrorist attacks (refusing to stand in solidarity with other European allies against barbarism, and then followed with a meek statement calling it a “setback.”).  He blew off Margaret Thatcher’s funeral as well—a woman, who, along with Ronald Reagan, steadfastly stood against Communism and changed the course of history.

Other commentators have criticized him for being petty and petulant in skipping Scalia’s funeral.  I see it as part of a much larger pattern.  These incidents are statements of inner conviction and ideology.  He burns with disdain for leaders like Thatcher and Scalia and their ideals.  To Obama, they do not even deserve the respect of his presence in the final celebration of their lives. 

No, these events are not independent occurrences.  They are powerful statements about the inner Obama and his core belief system. 

Imagine, for a moment, if Obama had attended the funeral and had either delivered the eulogy himself or made a sincere, magnanimous public statements that displayed his respect for Scalia, the Court,  and the Constitution that began something like this, “I sometimes had views that diverged from Justice Scalia, but I respect and admired his intellect, his wit and humor, and his unwavering devotion to the Constitution and to America.”  Imagine what a PR bind he would put  Mitch McConnell in. 

But that's not the path he chose.  That's not who he is.