Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990 TAG: 9007220098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Bush held a 75-minute meeting Saturday morning with top aides to discuss a decision that many describe as a watershed in his presidency, a signal of whether he will abide by the conservatism of the Reagan years that has so dramatically altered the court on issues from civil rights to abortion.
"I'm going to try to make this determination as quickly as possible," the president said aboard Air Force One later Saturday as he left for Newport News. "The process is moving."
Bush said "some names" of potential nominees had been discussed in his 8 a.m. meeting with John H. Sununu, the White House chief of staff, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel.
But the president added that no selection had yet been made. Aides said he hoped to have a new nominee on the bench when the court begins its next session in October.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats were calling on the president to consult with the Senate, choose a consensus nominee and avoid another struggle like the one involving President Ronald Reagan's 1987 nomination of Robert Bork, who was rejected by the Senate.
"He has to ask himself how he wants history to judge him," Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said of Bush.
"Not since the New Deal has the president been offered such an opportunity to shape the course of the country."
Some members of the committee predicted that it would be September, after Congress returns from its August recess, before hearings on any nominee could begin.
The Bush administration is considering about 15 candidates, administration officials said.
Neither the White House nor the Justice Department received advance notice that Brennan was resigning, but officials at the Justice Department, with the approval of the White House, had already started a quiet process of assembling possible nominees to the court, knowing that the advancing age of several justices meant that a vacancy was possible at any time.
The selection process will be supervised by Sununu, Gray and Thornburgh.
A small team at the Justice Department is responsible for sifting through the backgrounds of the possible candidates, while other officials at the White House will offer political advice to the senior officials heading the selection process.
"I'm going to put up the person that I think is best qualified, and if that causes controversy, so be it," Bush said on Friday night, hours after Justice Brennan's resignation.
"I find that to move things foward, you've got to take a little heat on controversy from time to time."
But the president added, "I'm not predicting a controversial nomination."
The most likely flashpoint is on the issue of abortion, which has polarized the nation's politics since the Supreme Court decision a year ago in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, which gave states new latitude to restrict abortion.
It is a particular problem for Bush, who has adopted a staunchly anti-abortion stance in recent years but whose party is increasingly divided over the issue.
Bush and top party strategists have tried to ease those divisions in recent months, stressing that the party is a "big tent" that can accommodate differing views.
"The Democrats will try to use this to terrify millions of women on the issue of abortion," an administration source said, "since anyone we nominate will arguably vote to overrule Roe v. Wade." Brennan was among the dwindling number of justices supportive of Roe.
Brennan's departure, warned Kate Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, "may be the death knell for the right to choose in America." She said that unless Bush selects a candidate with "unequivocal support" for Roe, abortion-rights advocates will launch a campaign similar to the one that helped defeat Bork's nomination.
But anti-abortion groups, an important constituency for Bush, were equally vehement that the president's pledge to choose a nominee who is a "strict constructionist" means that the candidate must be opposed to Roe.
by CNB