Bush's Supreme Court choices may change course of nation

With the selection of John G. Roberts Jr. as the 17th chief justice of the United States and the nomination of Harriet E. Miers for associate justice, President Bush's presidency has the potential to be defined by a decades-lasting conservative shift in the Supreme Court.

And Bush may have the chance to name two more Supreme Court justices in the remaining three years of his second term.

In the long term, the type of justices Bush has selected and will continue to select if given the opportunity — well-qualified, traditional conservatives who believe in judicial restraint rather than judicial policymaking — may do more to change the course of our nation than the presidency and Congress combined.

Shorter-term effects already are being felt. There are four political, cultural and legal issues upon which Bush's nominations have placed an indelible mark:

• Elections matter: Democrats groaning about Bush and the GOP Congress will not override the fact that Republicans have won the past two presidential elections and the past five congressional elections. But for the missteps of Al Gore and John Kerry, and the agenda-less campaigns run by congressional Democrats, Roberts would still be sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Miers would be an attorney in private practice.

• Liberal branding (again): One of the main problems national Democrats have is that the activist wing of their party is wedded to the failed ideology of liberalism. Despite the best efforts of such centrist Democrats as Indiana's Sen. Evan Bayh, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, to lead the national party away from the tenets of loopy liberalism, the far left was at center stage throughout the Roberts hearings, and we can expect to see them again with Miers.

Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Charles Schumer of New York and Joseph Biden of Delaware alternately blustered and bullied their way through the Roberts hearings and painted their party squarely back in the left-of-center bull's-eye that has cost the Democrats the White House and control of Congress. Beyond their ideological missteps, these lefties also were, to put it plainly, jerks. Kennedy was rude, and Biden was visibly irritated when Roberts interrupted Biden's questions with answers.