Gosh, Senator Cleaver, your questions are so insightful and interesting that I wish this confirmation hearing could go on forever!
Unless a nominee is a complete idiot, he (or she) will be incredibly polite during his confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate. It is hardly the place to display a Fonzi (Happy Days) attitude. However, Dana Milbank in the March 21 Washington Post suggests that the politeness demonstrated by Neil Gorsuch during his confirmation hearing for Supreme Court justice could be insincere thus making him a judicial version of Eddie Haskell from Leave It to Beaver. If you are one of the small handful of people still unaware of Eddie Haskell, he was the young character who displayed insincere polite flattery towards adults to cover up his true smart aleck attitude.
The nomination of Neil Gorsuch presents the Senate with a constitutional dilemma: Is this nation prepared to have Eddie Haskell serving a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court?
The most noteworthy thing to emerge from Gorsuch’s testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee wasn’t his judicial philosophy (conservative), his credentials (considerable) nor even the likelihood of confirmation (virtually certain). What stood out was his aw-shucks, good-golly manner: Gorsuch played a folksy sycophant straight out of the 1950s.
No fewer than eight times he punctuated his testimony with “Leave It to Beaver” exclamations of “goodness” — “goodness, no!” “oh, my goodness!” — and, though only 49 years old, spoke in archaic phrases: “since I was a tot,” “a fair and square deal,” “doesn’t give a whit.”
Missed being Fonzi by a letter! Okay, back to Milbank making the case for Gorsuch as Eddie Haskell:
Gorsuch made groan-inducing attempts at humor (“they haven’t yet replaced judges with algorithms, though I think eBay’s trying”) and proffered self-deprecating demurrals: “I don’t want to waste your time. . . . I can’t claim I’m perfect, but I try awful hard. . . . I wouldn’t count myself an expert.”
...It’s a good bet that Gorsuch, once he has charmed the grown-ups and secured confirmation, will, like Haskell, reveal himself to be a rascal and cause all manner of mischief on the court with abortion and gun rights, money in politics and presidential power.
For Milbank, being a "rascal" and causing "all manner of mischief" is interpreting the U.S. Constitution as it was written, not as the liberals want it to be.
His exaggerated eagerness, his hearty guffaws at the senators’ jokes and his constant solicitude (“I’m happy to answer another question, entirely up to you”) suggest that maybe — just maybe — he was saying what needed to be said.
The bottom line is that Milbank is upset because Gorsuch has the common sense to be polite at his hearing which somehow makes him an Eddie Haskell in the author's "Leave It to Beaver" vivid imagination.
