Media elites got John Roberts all wrong because they refused to see the Republican Party for what it is.

This week’s Supreme Court oral arguments in Louisiana v Callais, which the court’s MAGA justices appear poised to use to eviscerate what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, got me thinking about Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation hearings in 2005 and about how badly America's media elites misjudged not only Roberts but much more basic questions about how we should think about the Supreme Court. And, above all, about how they missed the defining reality of modern American politics: The Republican Party's cruel authoritarianism.

John Roberts has been deeply hostile to the Voting Rights Act since his early-career work as a lawyer in the Reagan administration, when he wrote a series of memos about the VRA that led colleagues to describe him as a “zealot” with “fundamental suspicions” about the landmark civil rights law. Those memos were the basis for questions from Sen. Edward Kennedy and others during Roberts' confirmation hearings, during which Roberts repeatedly proclaimed his respect for the Voting Rights Act and insisted the memos were merely the work of a low-level staffer who was just doing his job of articulating policy positions he had nothing to do with formulating. As Take Back the Court recounted this week, some saw through Roberts' ruse, most notably the civil rights icon John Lewis, who testified before the Senate in opposition to Roberts' nomination:

REP. JOHN LEWIS: In 1965, Jurist Roberts was only 10-years-old. He may be a brilliant lawyer, but I wonder whether he can really understand the depth of what it took to get the Voting Rights Act passed. The right to vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society. ...

Jurist Roberts’s memos reveal him to be hostile towards civil rights, affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act. ...

All Americans, every race or every religion or nationality, whether they are women or men, gay or straight, or people with disabilities, all of us need equal access to a fair and independent judiciary to assure equal justice under the law. The stakes are higher than ever. We cannot afford to elevate an individual to such a powerful lifetime position whose record demonstrates such a strong desire to reverse the hard-won civil rights gains that so many of us sacrificed so much to achieve. We have come a great distance. We cannot afford to stand still. We cannot afford to go back. We must go forward to the creation of one America.

That was not the view of much of the political and media establishment, and Roberts was confirmed with 78 votes in the Senate, after which he promptly got to work dismantling the Voting Rights Act. Just like a lot of us feared he would. Just like John Lewis said he would.

Two endorsements of Roberts' confirmation from pillars of the media establishment are illustrative not only of the gushing tone with which he was received by media elites but of the spectacularly, disastrously wrong ways these elites perceived the Court and the political parties.

Here's the Washington Post editorial board:^[1]

JOHN G. ROBERTS JR. should be confirmed as chief justice of the United States. He is overwhelmingly well-qualified, possesses an unusually keen legal mind and practices a collegiality of the type an effective chief justice must have. He shows every sign of commitment to restraint and impartiality. Nominees of comparable quality have, after rigorous hearings, been confirmed nearly unanimously. We hope Judge Roberts will similarly be approved by a large bipartisan vote.
...
Before his nomination, we suggested several criteria that Mr. Bush should adopt to garner broad bipartisan support: professional qualifications of the high- est caliber, a modest conception of the judicial function, a strong belief in the stability of precedent, adherence to judicial philosophy, even where the results are not politically comfortable, and an appreciation that fidelity to the text of the Constitution need not mean cramped interpretations of language that was written for a changing society. Judge Roberts possesses the personal qualities we hoped for and testified impressively as to his belief in the judicial values. While he almost certainly won't surprise America with generally liberal rulings, he appears almost as unlikely to willfully use the law to advance his conservative politics.

Needless to say, that has not aged well. But that's in part because it was rotten even at the time. Note the Post's insistence that Roberts met its criteria of possessing an "adherence to judicial philosophy," which seems to have been the paper's basis for concluding that he would be impartial and "unlikely to willfully use the law to advance his conservative politics." Now consider what Roberts told the Senate during his confirmation hearings: "I do not have an overarching judicial philosophy that I bring to every case." Oh. Kind of seems like the Post editorial board, in awe of Roberts' "collegiality," was simply projecting onto him its own preferences, doesn't it?

Now look at what the Post was willing to sacrifice in favor of that "collegiality":

[O]n a number of important issues, Judge Roberts seems likely to take positions that we will not support. His backing of presidential powers, and willingness to limit civil liberties, appear worrisomely large, while his deference to congressional authority relative to the states may be too small. He appears more suspicious of affirmative action than we think the court should be, and his view of certain civil rights protections has been narrow. Given his comments about precedent and the right to privacy, we do not believe a Chief Justice Roberts will be eager to overturn federal abortion rights. But we recognize that he might end up supporting that unfortunate step, as the late chief justice William H. Rehnquist did unsuccessfully.

The Post recognized that Roberts had a "worrisomely large" desire to expand presidential powers and limit civil liberties, viewed civil rights protections to narrowly, and might seek to end abortion rights, but found all those acceptable tradeoffs in exchange for a "collegial chief" justice with a "keen" mind. And so today, thanks in large part to John Roberts, we have a lawless president who enjoys Supreme Court-granted immunity from prosecution for his crimes, the Voting Rights Act is all but gone, the federal government is disappearing citizens off the streets with neither trial nor charges, and states are racing to ban abortion. But Roberts has a ready smile and, I'm sure, is charming at cocktail parties. So we've got that going for us.

On the basis of his collegiality and keen mind, the Post concluded that not only should Roberts be confirmed, he should enjoy overwhelming support from Senators, warning that it would be "dangerous" for Democrats to oppose him:

For this reason, broad opposition by Democrats to Judge Roberts would send the message that there is no conservative capable of winning their support. While every senator must vote his or her conscience on the nomination, the danger of such a message is considerable. In the short term, Mr. Bush could conclude there is nothing to be gained from considering the concerns of the opposition party in choosing his next nominee. In the longer term, Republicans might feel scant cause to back the next high-quality Democratic nominee, as they largely did with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

More than three-quarters of the Senate, including twenty-two Democrats, voted to confirm Roberts. Just 11 years later, Senate Republicans refused to even allow a vote on President Obama's nominee to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, an unprecedented manipulation of the size of the Court that made a mockery of the Washington Post's naive belief that the Republican Party would respond to bipartisanship with anything but a sneer and a power grab.

As bad as the Post editorial was, David Broder's fawning endorsement of Roberts may have been worse. Broder, then a columnist for the Post, was known as the "Dean of the Washington press corps" for his decades of prominence atop the media food chain; his column was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers and he appeared hundreds of times on Meet the Press, back when that still meant something. Broder used his platform and influence to all but declare any opposition to Roberts illegitimate:

The question of whether Judge John Roberts is qualified to be chief justice of the United States has been rendered moot by his performance in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. He is so obviously -- ridiculously -- well-equipped to lead government's third branch that it is hard to imagine how any Democrats can justify a vote against his confirmation.^[2]

Broder's reasoning for declaring opposition to Roberts unimaginable is telling.

"Start with his intellect," Broder wrote. But why should we start there? The Supreme Court is not charged with developing cold fusion. Rather, it decides things like whether we will protect the voting rights of those who have historically been targets of racist vote-suppression laws and whether laws apply to the president of the United States. Those are not questions for which a keen intellect is the primary requirement. And for all his supposed intelligence, those are not questions John Roberts has answered correctly.

"Next, his temperament. He has a quick wit," Broder continued, as if the Senate was deciding who should host The Tonight Show rather than who should be trusted to preserve the liberties Americans have cherished since our founding.

Taking Roberts' word for it, Broder then gushed that "his recent judicial service has deepened his sense of humility." As chief justice, Roberts has been responsible for the scandalous lack of a binding code of ethics for Supreme Court justices like the code that applies to all other federal judges -- and for the even more scandalous consequences of that lack of ethics code. Roberts' apparent belief that he and his colleagues deserve to be unconstrained by such niceties as ethics does not exactly scream humility. Nor does Roberts' declaration, just four years into tenure on the Court, that if the American people “don’t like what we’re doing, it’s more or less just too bad.”

Broder concluded by mocking those who dared criticize Roberts: "This is so far from the caricature of a conservative ideologue depicted by some of the interest groups that their attacks seem absurd. ... If the Democrats are smart, they will not bow to their interest groups but instead will embrace this extraordinary nominee." Keep in mind that when David Broder writes condescendingly of "absurd" criticism of John Roberts, John Lewis had just two days prior warned of the threat Roberts posed to the Voting Rights Act.^[3]

Twenty years on, which seems more absurd? John Lewis's critique of Roberts, or David Broder's hagiography of him?

Before you answer that, consider this actual sentence David Broder actually wrote and allowed to be published under his own name: "Roberts's only problem is that he has set a standard so high, it will be difficult for the next nominee to measure up." I can only assume some generous editor cut the line about Roberts' biggest weakness being that he works too hard.

Note that Broder, like the Washington Post editorial board, viewed the actual decisions the Supreme Court would issue -- that is, the ways the Supreme Court would affect the lives of the Americans it is supposed to serve -- as entirely beside the point. They thought of government as branch of a social club to which they belonged; they valued a quick wit, a disarming smile, and an erudite speaking style. Such questions as whether Black people would have access to the voting booth or women the right to make their own medical decisions were unworthy of such a charming gentleman, and he was right to disregard them on his way into the club. ^[4] But the outcomes a government produces are the whole point of a government in the first place. As America's Declaration of Independence notes, "Governments are instituted" in order to "secure" the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Not to charm pundits with witty banter; to produce desireable outcomes that improve the lives of the people.

Misunderstanding the purpose of government as a social club for their enjoyment has been one core mistake of media elites of the last several decades. Another has been the mistaken belief that the Republican party and conservative movement shared that view of government and politics. This is a large part of how we ended up with a president with whom journalists were desperate to have a beer who lied us into war, and a chief justice whose wit and restraint they adored who dismantled the Voting Rights Act. It's why Ezra Klein, the modern day David Broder, is constantly looking for Republicans -- from Paul Ryan to Charlie Kirk -- to praise: A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Republican party. It is not here to make friends. Nor is it here to engage in a good faith debate over the best solutions to America's problems that reflect our shared values.

The most important thing to understand about American politics over the last several decades – and to have made clear to your audience – is that one of America's two major political parties is deeply authoritarian, with a monomaniacal focus on seizing and wielding power to impose its cruel and corrupt agenda on the rest of us. If you’ve spent your career giving this party the benefit of the doubt, assuming good intentions and good faith, and portraying it accordingly, you’ve been fundamentally, catastrophically wrong about the one thing that has mattered most. Nobody should ever listen to you again. Not everyone is cut out to be a useful and truthful observer of American politics. You are not among them. There are other careers out there to which you are likely better suited.

I know what some of you are thinking: I'm judging too harshly with the benefit of hindsight. Nobody could have foreseen in 2005 that the conservative movement was as hateful and authoritarian as we now know it to be. But it wasn't that hard to see -- and seeing it is the job. 2005 was more than a dozen years after Pat Buchanan's infamous 1992 Republican convention speech opposing "homosexual rights" and declaring "a religious war," a "cultural war," and a "war for the soul of America."^[5] It was more than a decade after Newt Gingrich declared Democrats "sick" "traitors" and "the enemy of normal Americans." The average American can be forgiven for not understanding what the Republican Party was. Political and media professionals cannot.

My former colleague Paul Waldman wrote a piece recently that has stuck with me. When we were at Media Matters together in the mid-aughts, we (mostly Paul, if I recall correctly) spent considerable time demonstrating how the news media kept centering in their coverage of military and foreign policy matters the same “experts” who had been provably and disastrously wrong about the Iraq war. There was nothing this crew could be wrong about that would disqualify them from being treated as wise experts by the nation’s leading news companies. And here, as usual, I’m not talking about FOX News; I’m talking about the New York Times and NBC and CNN and the Washington Post. The point was simple: Why are we listening to these people who keep being wrong about the things that matter most?^[7]

Here's Paul Waldman last month:

We were right. It’s not something you’re supposed to say out loud — “I told you so” is considered uncouth. But it’s true and it needs to be said.

For the last few years — since Donald Trump made clear he was running for president again, through the end of the 2024 campaign — some of us spilled a great number of words explaining why he posed a unique and unprecedented threat to the nation and to our democracy. For that, we got all kinds of scolding, particularly when we argued that Trump was, in every meaningful way, a fascist. ...

Yet here we are. There can no longer be any denying that those who were ringing the alarm bells a year ago were, if anything, underestimating the danger Trump posed. ...

Perhaps I’m sensitive because I remember so clearly how we’ve been here before. In 2002 and 2003, all the Very Serious People in both parties and in the news media knew that the Bush administration had presented an iron-clad case that if we did not invade Iraq then Saddam Hussein would unleash his fearsome arsenal of weapons of mass destruction upon us, so we had no choice. Those of us who said the administration was waging a propaganda campaign full of lies and distortions were dismissed as naïve, foolish, even unpatriotic.

But we were right. Just as we were when we insisted that conservatives were lying when they said they cared about “free speech” and abhorred “cancel culture” on principle. We were right.

Paul concluded: "When the same people who were right before are saying that it’s going to get worse, consider that we might be right about that, too." To that I would add: Please, for the love of what's left of America, stop listening to the people who have gotten this all so wrong for so long.