President Duncan emerged from a side door and strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House; trailing him were alias Starsky and Hutch, his nominees to the Supreme Court. All three met with a racket of applause from staffers, party leaders, and members of Congress that overwhelmed the collective gasp from the press.
Starsky was forty-two-year-old Judge Phillip Sanford from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Hutch was thirty-nine-year-old Judge Julian Heller from the Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Landon Meyer watched on television from his Dirksen Building office. He smiled as the cameras panned the audience, the faces of the White House press corps, feeling themselves the victims of a mechanized assault, transforming from shock to awe. He understood what they thought they were seeing: two white males who melded the extremes of their personal religion and their personal politics into a determination to remake the country in their judicial image.
But that wasn’t what Landon saw, and what he knew to be the truth: Their religion was the country’s religion and their politics were those of the Founders, and it was the melding of the two that had once shaped a great nation and would do so again. He remembered the last political discussion he had with Gage up at his cabin, wondering aloud why conservatives had stopped reading American Christians like James Fenimore Cooper and had turned instead to foreigners like the Russian atheist Ayn Rand and why they were blind to how it distorted their thinking and caused them to bow to a metaphorical Atlas instead of to a real God. These two new justices would restore both the law and the culture.
Landon refocused on the screen. He found himself worrying that Duncan would engage in a rant that would expose the desperation that had characterized their meeting in the Oval Office. But he didn’t. His comments were standard and respectful toward the constitutional process of confirmation, treating the coming hearings as part of a legislative flow, not the flash flood Landon knew it would be.
Neither the president nor the nominees answered questions. The two offered obligatory thanks to the president and appreciation for the support they’d received from their wives and colleagues, and then stepped back in turn.
It was over in three minutes.
Landon’s cell phone rang. It was Brandon.
“Turn to NBC,” Brandon said. “James Bissell just keeps repeating the same thing over and over. It’s hilarious.”
Landon changed the channel.
“A gauntlet has been thrown,” Bissell was saying, “President Duncan’s entire legacy hangs in the balance.”
Landon knew those words would echo for a generation.
“It’s not clear to me how the Democrats can oppose nominees they confirmed less than a year ago-but they will because they have no choice. It’s as if the president laid a trap back then, only to spring it now.”
“Did you hear that?” Brandon said. “Laid a trap. Duncan couldn’t lay a trap without lopping off an arm. Congratulations, Landon. Brilliant move.”
“The next step,” Bissell continued, “is the Senate Judiciary Committee. Landon Meyer is the chairman. I have no doubt he was consulted in advance, but still, the task of moving these nominees through to confirmation will give him the fight of his career.”
An inset box appeared on the screen showing a reporter standing with the White House behind him.
“It makes you wonder, James, whether Justices Martinez and Fairstein are sitting in their living rooms wishing they hadn’t decided to retire. If confirmed, these two nominees will roll back nearly everything they’ve accomplished in the last thirty-years. It’s only a question of how long it will take.”
The reporter paused, then skimmed his notes.
“You also have to consider what effect this will have on Landon Meyer’s campaign for the presidency. He may win this battle for President Duncan, but lose his own war for the top job.”
“It’s hard to say. New Hampshire is still months away. That’s a lifetime in American politics.”