Coats Sees Kagan, Miers Link
Dan Coats is all too familiar with the rigors of the confirmation process for Supreme Court choices, having served as the so-called "sherpa" for President George W. Bush's second attempt to fill a seat. Coats ultimately helped navigate Samuel Alito to the bench, after seeing the previous choice, Harriet Miers, withdrawn.
Elena Kagan heads to Capitol Hill today for her first "courtesy calls" with the senators who ultimately must will decide her fate. Coats, now running for to reclaim his former seat, said Tuesday she faces a similar challenge to the one Miers faced five years ago.
"She has very little record, and so unfortunately it's more of what she says, not more of what she has done," Coats told RCP in an interview Tuesday. "The irony is that Harriet Miers, the original appointee, was soundly criticized for not having a record with which to judge. ... It's ironic that the same Democrats who were trashing Harriet Miers for not having judicial experience are saying it doesn't matter."
It was criticism from both the left and right that doomed the Miers nomination, made when Republicans still had a majority in the Senate. Coats still argued there were similarities, saying in each nomination there was a woman "of substantial personal experience and not judicial experience." He declined to indicate how he might vote on Kagan if he were in the Senate today, saying he won't have access to the same information others will have. But he signaled that his philosophy on voting would be different now than it was when he did serve, voting in 1994 to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
"This whole idea of, 'Well the president has the prerogative of choosing who he wants,' ... I think those days are over," Coats said, pointing to an attempt to filibuster the Alito nomination. "I saw them trash Alito. If that's the game they want to play, that's the game we'll have to play."