Well, not in the sense that they'd suggest a Republican President should appoint him. But if a Democrat's going to have someone run the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, then Sunstein's the guy they'd like to have:
On January 8, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein would be nominated to run the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It was a surprising choice for a job, created in 1980, that monitors and manages the federal government's regulatory apparatus. And it was welcomed as an olive branch from an incoming Democratic president to conservatives and libertarians.
"[Sunstein's] writings on regulation and the herd mentality deserve a voice in the incoming Administration," the newspaper's editorial board wrote, in one of vanishingly few positive assessments it has given Barack Obama's White House. "Mr. Sunstein brings important qualifications to [the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs], and Mr. Obama has made a savvy choice in putting him there." The editorial's headline emphasized just what a happy surprise the appointment had been: "A Regulator With Promise - Really."
So, the WSJ editorial board loved him. But GOP senators, not so much (three of them placed holds on his nomination), not to mention Glenn Beck.
Weigel's piecehas lots of bits and pieces about things that set different folks off. But the fact that Beck asked his audience to send him anything they had on Sunstein made me think of the following, from Cathy G in late August of last year:
As I've often said, although I strongly support Barack Obama and believe it is vital that he be elected president in the fall, his politics seem to me to be far more centrist than they are liberal, and I don't believe he's a reliable ally for progressives. One the reasons is I believe this to be true is the people he surrounds himself with. Take, for example, Cass Sunstein, whom Matt Stoller has described as "an important influence" on Obama (also, Sunstein is married to Samantha Power, who has been one of Obama's foreign policy advisers). Sunstein, a prolific legal scholar who teaches at Harvard, probably has as good a shot as anyone as being named to the Supreme Court, should Obama become president.
Well, maybe not anymore. But I ingress. There's a lot of sharp comments in DeLong's piece, go read them all, but a major point is his suckage related to his Supreme Court ambitions:
The thing I find most disturbing about Sunstein is how he always seems to go out of his way to make nice to the right.... I think Sunstein is an extremely ambitious man who basically would run over his own grandmother for a seat on the Supreme Court (well, he'd think seriously about doing so, anyway). Seeing how powerful the right wing has been in this country (at least until recently), especially regarding the courts, Sunstein must know that if he wants to be a Supreme Court justice, it would help if he were cosy with the right and accepted many of their basic ideas (such as judicial "minimalism," which he has advocated), albeit with a more centrist spin. It obviously would also help his popularity with the right if he were to refrain from bruising conservatives' tender feelings by pointing out such inconvenient truths as the fact that the current administration is a pack of dangerous, despotic war criminals.
And the fact that it extends all the way to heaping praise on the Federalist Society:
When I had him as a professor for my labor and employment law class, Sunstein steered clear of politics and his ideology wasn't easy to discern. I did know he had a reputation for being a liberal, though -- which is why I was startled at remarks he made during one campus event. I can't remember what it was about, exactly, but I do remember that the Federalist Society -- the ultra-conservative legal group dedicated to jampacking the courts and the federal bureaucracy with their own and fighting off liberal nominees and liberal ideas by any means necessary -- was hosting the event, and Sunstein, I believe, was introducing the speaker. In his introduction, shamelessly sucked up to Federalist Society. It wasn't just the usual polite "thank you for organizing this event" kind of thing -- Sunstein went on and on about wonderful the Federalist Society was, and how much they'd improved the tone of the debate and nurtured the discussion of "ideas." He also defended them from what he'd said were unfair attacks by liberals, and I think he may have even said something to the effect that they really weren't all that conservative.
I was shocked and appalled. Here was a man I greatly respected as a teacher, who was saying things that were breathtakingly shallow and naive -- either that, or they were baldfaced lies. I must say, it left a really icky taste in my mouth. At that moment, to me, he forever became the legal world's equivalent of Alan Colmes -- the conservatives' favorite liberal, because he accepts their terms of the debate and has no compunction about kissing their asses with the utmost enthusiasm, the honor of liberalism, or his own self-respect, even, be damned. Either he has no clue how dangerous and destructive these right-wing extremists are, or he doesn't care. And I'm not sure which is worse.
No wonder the WSJ loves him!
And the fact that Glenn Beck wants to destroy him?
And the possibility that this is only the upcoming previews of a bloody internecine civil war among conservatives?
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