Go Ahead And Bet The Ranch

CBS' Andrew Cohen Predicts Roberts Will Be Confirmed

(CBS/AP)  With apologies to Tom Hanks (and the writers of "Forrest Gump"), picking a Supreme Court justice is like opening a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. Indeed, part of the grand drama of the process upon which we are about to embark is the notion that the wisdom of the choice only will become known after time, perhaps a great deal of time, perhaps even a generation from now.

These sorts of decisions by a president thus are not just political and legal decisions for the short term; they are decisions with impact that may resonate through decades, even centuries.

Today we still talk about the Dred Scott slavery case. We still talk about Brown v. Board of Education. We still talk about Chief Justice John Marshall and the case of Marbury v. Madison, which sent the federal judiciary upon its way as an independent branch of government. And 100 years from now, if we don't blow ourselves up, our descendents will talk about Bush v. Gore and Roe v. Wade.

To Roberts, who argued before the High Court 39 times before applying for this job, now falls this cumbersome mantle of history, perspective, continuity, precedent and responsibility. Upon Roberts, a former Supreme Court law clerk already steeped in the Court's lore and lure, now falls the weight of the ages and with it the burden of making rules the rest of us must live by.

It's a job that goes well beyond the political power, prestige, and beliefs of the man who offers it. By making his choice, one of the most important he'll ever make as chief executive, President Bush now has largely ceded control over the outcome. Sure, his operatives now will plot with their supports to ensure Roberts' nomination. But the President now has lost control over the candidate himself.

Once Roberts is affirmed, he no longer can or will be beholden to the man who gave him the job. He will be his own man, free to chart his own path through the thicket of the law.

Indeed, the nation needs him to grow into his job; needs him to cut the very ties that got him to where he is today. Becoming a Supreme Court Justice may mean never having to say you are sorry. But it also means you have have to strive to rise above the political froth that churned out your name in your time.

Roberts may be precisely the sort of Justice that President Bush hopes he will be. Or he may be another David Souter, Anthony Kennedy or Sandra Day O'Connor, all of whom were less (or more) than their patrons bargained for.

The irony, of course, is that disappointing the guy who gave you the job doesn't necessarily mean you end up being a disappointing Justice. Just ask Lady Justice herself, the soon-to-be-departed Justice O'Connor, who rides off into the Western sunset as popular and revered as ever despite a recent string of rulings that would have popped President Ronald Reagan's hair out of place.

Remember that nice tee shot by President Bush, the one that started off just to the right of the fairway? Well, over time, those shots have a way of bending back to the middle before they are done.

So the end game has begun. Between now and early September political artists of varying degrees of skill and sense will try to create their own portraits of Roberts. He will be cast as a sinner and a saint, a dupe and a foil, a cop-out and a fail safe. He will be all of those things to all of those people and in the end, none of it will matter.

Soon enough, before the first Monday in October, Roberts will almost certainly become part of the Gang of Nine, the most exclusive and powerful working group in the country. He will be accountable to no one and nothing, save his own conscience. He will hold with his vote the power to change the lives of millions of people. He will be given a trust that few have held and even fewer have earned.

The late, great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once said of the Constitution "it is an experiment, as all life is an experiment." The "experiment" that is John Glover Roberts, Jr. begins today, the first day of the rest of the young judge's life.