Op-ed: Hey, maybe Obama should pack the Supreme Court

Here’s what now qualifies for publication in the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I have to say, of all the lefty opinion pieces I stumble upon that veer into pure fantasy, the ones involving POTUS and SCOTUS are my very favorite. The thought of taking a brush to the constitutional canvas seems to bring out the artist in them. I thought it’d be months before we topped that WaPo piece calling on The One to, um, appoint himself to the Court, but here we are not two weeks later and darn if the bar hasn’t already been raised.

I figure we’ll be seeing “Obama should have veto power over the Supreme Court” pieces by, oh, mid-April. (Say, isn’t that … a tea-party idea?)

This may come as a surprise to some people, but the U.S. Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court…

So if nine justices is not writ in stone, the embattled President Obama should deal with this hostile conservative/reactionary court by adding three members.

The court’s recent controversial decision equating corporations with individuals turned an already overly money-influenced campaign system into a veritable free-for-all of propaganda for corporate and vested interests. It was met with criticism by most legal scholars, praised only by corporate mouthpieces…

Had Roosevelt needed his court-packing plan, he would have had to do a better job of winning over the public. Secrecy undermined the proposal, including the president’s failure to bring Democratic leaders into his confidence before a news conference announcing the plan. Kentucky Sen. Alben Barkley complained that Roosevelt was a “poor quarterback” on the court plan.

That’s an easy enough mistake for Obama to avoid. He can easily be a quarterback for change on a court that will give the president continued grief as he tries to implement his agenda.

There are a million ways to goof on this — the electoral consequences in November, the precedent it would set for a Republican Congress, the sturm und drang of Reid trying to marshall 60 votes for it, the comic spectacle of Captain B+ trying to sell it in those nine swing states where he’s now underwater. But instead of the easy points, here’s a thought experiment. Eyeball the list of Senate Dems and ask yourself: How many votes could Reid get? Bernie Sanders would go for it. Boxer might if it weren’t an election year. Burris? Sure, why not? Durbin is iffy. Feingold and Schumer are tempting, but they consider themselves constitutional experts and might not want to mess with the Court. Sherrod Brown, Franken, and Leahy are left enough that they might at least think it over. Specter will vote for almost anything Obama tells him to at this point, so he’s a maybe. Anyone else? Come on, we can get 10 votes even for something as moronic as this.

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