Author Heilemann in '10: Garland is Obama's "best progressive hope" to tilt SCOTUS left

While analyzing the field in 12010--the last time there was a Supreme Court vacancy--author John Heilemann in New York magazine saw the man President Obama nominated this morning to succeed Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland, as "the best progressive hope."

Concerning the third front-runner, however, there has been precious little hubbub. The candidate in question is Merrick Garland, a Bill Clinton appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Garland is well known, well respected, and tremendously well liked in Washington legal circles; even Republicans have nice things to say about him (which has both advantages and disadvantages, about which more shortly). Yet Garland also happens to possess certain qualities that are, shall we say, politically suboptimal. He is white. He is male. And he's 57 years old—compared with, say, Kagan, who at 49 offers Obama a chance to leave his mark on the court for perhaps an additional decade.

Three strikes and Garland’s out, you say? Well, you may be right. But that would be a real shame—because the case for making him one of The Supremes is, in fact, compelling. For Obama, who is said by some of his advisers to be more keen on finding a liberalish version of John Roberts than a hard-left incarnation of Antonin Scalia, Garland's juridical rigor, even temperament, and intellectual firepower should be attractive. And although he is more centrist than many of the other short-listers, his consensus-building skills might make him, paradoxically, the best progressive hope for staving off the court's ever more conservative tilt.