Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum offered a defense of Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday, arguing that “with all things being equal, there are lot worse people you could have picked.”

Speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt, the former US Senator from Pennsylvania said that he would have preferred that President George W. Bush, who nominated Roberts, have nominated John Michael Luttig to the Court. Still, he contended that Roberts “has not been a disaster.”

“John Roberts has not been a disaster as a Supreme Court justice,” Santorum said. “Let’s just be honest. He’s no David Souter. So I mean, with all things being equal, there are a lot worse people you could have picked, and George W. Bush didn’t do a bad job in picking Justice Roberts. He could have done, obviously from these cases, could have done a little better job. But you never, you can’t know for sure how everybody’s going to deal every case.”