Mr. Nixon Selects - The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court - Review

National Review, Nov 19, 2001 by Robert D. Novak

Actually, Nixon was not serious about Byrd (though poor Byrd appeared to be), and was interested only in enraging such liberals as columnist Mary McGrory. The president soon decided on an equally unlikely southern choice: Herschel Friday, a Democratic bond lawyer from Little Rock, Ark., who was pushed by fellow bond lawyer Mitchell and, Dean now reveals, Chief Justice Warren Burger. Although Nixon was not in the practice of actually vetting his possible court nominees, Dean was sent to Little Rock to interview Friday. Dean returned to the White House reporting that the prospective justice was "a blank sheet of paper" with no opinions on the issues of the day. "God damn him," Nixon responded. "We're not going to have this. And I'm not going to put a sleeper on the court."

Meanwhile, for the other vacancy, Nixon improbably was searching for a woman. "I'm not for women, frankly, in any job," he said in his tape- recorded ramblings. "I don't want any of them around." But his wife Pat was pressuring him to name a woman and Nixon ruefully conceded that "it isn't a man's world anymore" and that a woman justice could "pick up . . . a half-percentage point" in what he feared would be a close 1972 election. The woman justice would have to be "hard-line as hell," said Nixon. The nominee he wanted was somebody who ordinarily would not have been considered for the nation's highest court: Mildred Lillie, a conservative Democratic state appeals judge in California. "A conservative woman from California," exulted Nixon. "God. That will kill them."

The White House submitted the names of Friday and Lillie to the American Bar Association, whose judicial review committee rejected both as unqualified. That took Nixon off the hook-with Burger for Friday, and with his wife for Lillie. But it was now October 19, and after six weeks of indecision, his promised announcement date was two days away. He quickly turned to Lewis Powell, the distinguished Richmond lawyer who at age 64 previously had been considered too old. For the other vacancy, aides pitched a surprise: Howard Baker, a 45-year-old first- term senator from Tennessee. Nixon immediately agreed, without much enthusiasm. "He isn't the greatest stand-up guy," said Nixon, "but he's young." Howard Baker was stunned when Mitchell gave him the news, and characteristically asked time to think it over. "Apparently," Dean writes, "he was frantically considering his finances, or searching his soul or both." Nixon grumbled that "he just can't screw around forever."

Dean had been quietly pressing the 47-year-old Rehnquist as a possible nominee. Indicating his own standard for a justice, Mitchell said Rehnquist offered "no political positive for the president." Nixon asked: "How the hell could you put just a guy who's an assistant attorney general on the court?" Rehnquist himself listed his disqualifications: "I'm not from the South, I'm not a woman, and I'm not mediocre." But Dean enlisted a brilliant advocate for Rehnquist in White House lawyer Richard Moore, who two years later would contradict Dean's testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. Moore, a 57- year-old white-haired lawyer who often described himself as a father figure in Nixon's young White House, could get Nixon's ear, as Dean could not. He convinced the president when he described Rehnquist as a law clerk to the eminent justice Robert Jackson who had graduated first in his class at Stanford Law School. "It clicked," Dean concludes.