History with Obama

Did you know that one-third of all U.S. presidents have appointed a Supreme Court justice in an election year, the final year of their term?

Examples: George Washington appointed two; Thomas Jefferson appointed three; Andrew Jackson appointed two; Benjamin Harrison appointed one; Grover Cleveland appointed two in his final year in office; Franklin Roosevelt and William Howard Taft both appointed one justice; Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower made election-year appointments. Even Richard Nixon made two appointments, in 1972, while running for re-election.

A total of 21 justices were appointed by 14 presidents during presidential election years. A half-dozen did so after their successors had been elected, according to a Washington Post article written by Barbara A. Perry. So, why is President Obama treated differently than these presidents?

The answer lies in the hands of the Party of No. So what if they succeed in their stall tactics? Do we really want a Donald Trump appointment to the highest judicial post in the land?

To quote one of our nation’s most prestigious presidents, James Madison, who has often been called the “Father of the Constitution”, the legislature “were not judges of the requisite qualifications” for jurists.

Steven Brown

Kellogg, Idaho