Flying Pigs!

And you all think I'm idealistic. You simply must read Ron Brownstein's column in the LA Times today, in which the indefatigable proponent of (most) things centrist suggests that the president should follow the lead of a few of his predecessors (Lincoln, FDR, Wilson, Taft and Truman among them), and reach across the political aisle for his second Supreme Court appointment.

Clearly Brownstein's been spending too much time in the LA sunshine.

I don't disagree in the slightest that picking a centrist Democrat would benefit the president in the eyes of some (including myself) - as Brownstein writes, "Bush may find such discontent an acceptable cost for reaching out beyond his core coalition to independent and moderate voters who have soured on him so much in recent surveys that independent pollster John Zogby says Bush now 's president of the Republicans' alone."

But I think the president's probably more likely to put Barney on the Court (or Jacques Chirac, to use Brownstein's example) than a Democrat. It would be a nice gesture (the Democrat, not Barney), and would benefit the country, the party, and the Court without a doubt. But it's not going to happen.