I just had a thought: John Roberts, as Chief Justice, could swear in Bobby McAllister to the presidency in 2041, when Roberts is 85.
I mean, y’know, if TV shows were real.
Category Archives: General
Alive
I was not a happy camper this weekend. Saturday was nice – Matt and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He’d never been before, and I’d been wanting to take him there for a while. I love the Met – it’s like travelling around the world and across history. Ancient Egyptian relics, 20th century art, medieval armor, musical instruments, early American furniture, European paintings – and that’s just some of what we saw. We were there for several hours and didn’t even see every department. I need to go there more often. And since I live in Manhattan now, I really have no excuse not to.
(One of my favorite Met exhibits ever was Art and the Empire City, which appeared five years ago, and which I saw twice. It displayed the art and cultural history of New York City from 1825 to 1861 and included some great paintings of long-gone city landmarks.)
The rest of the weekend, though, I was kind of bummed out. We didn’t do much of anything. I’m not good at doing nothing. I feel unhealthy and guilty if I sit around watching TV, and I was getting cabin fever in the apartment. Matt is usually content not to do much, but I’ve always liked (or felt a pressing need) to take advantage of the city and all it has to offer.
Last night, I came back from a fruitless bookstore trip. I got into the elevator and 11 or 12 loud freshmen appeared out of nowhere and crammed in as well. I just about lost it when I got back into the apartment. (Matt was at a meeting.) The building has been more crowded since all the students moved in last week. But I’m living rent-free in a very nice apartment in a great neighborhood, so I really shouldn’t complain.
Matt and I have different attitudes toward life. Although he gets stressed out about his job and can be hard on himself about short-term things, he doesn’t really worry about the long term.
Me, I worry about more existential things. I worry about death – not dying, but death. I’m not religious and don’t think there’s an afterlife. In the back of my mind there’s always the knowledge that one day I will cease to exist, and that I’m not taking advantage of the short time I have on earth. I’m not sucking the marrow out of life. I don’t know why I have such a cramped view of things. But I do.
How do you people do it? How do you live without these ever-present fears?
There are people out there who are content with their jobs, who are content to do nothing. They’ve either found something they enjoy, or they haven’t but they don’t worry about it. Sometimes I wish I were like that.
But mostly, I just wish I knew what I wanted out of life. But it seems that what I want changes from week to week.
Matt and I talked about all this a couple of times this weekend. He doesn’t understand why I always feel the need to go out and do something. But I see it as taking advantage of the fact that I’m alive. Because I won’t always be.
Roberts as Chief
There’s been way too much news this past week. Between Katrina and Rehnquist/Roberts, I can’t read the newspapers and blogs fast enough. And I’m pissed that The Note has been on vacation for two and a half weeks. Mark Halperin and his staff will have a lot of catching up to do when they return tomorrow.
It’s not totally suprising that Bush has moved Roberts’s nomination to the Chief Justice position. He’s practically in love with Roberts, and he wasn’t going to name someone who wasn’t a white male as Chief Justice, but he wasn’t going to nominate a white male for the second vacancy. So O’Connor’s replacement will probably be someone non-white or female or both.
On the other hand, Bush has never acted in line with political predictions.
Interesting fact: since Roberts is only 55 only 50 years old, he could wind up having one of the longest Chief Justiceships in American history, second only to that of John Marshall. [Update: or even the longest!]
The switch of Roberts to the Chief Justice’s seat changes the dynamics of Bush’s two appointments. As SCOTUSblog writes, “The nomination of a doctrinaire conservative to replace the Chief Justice could have been explained as ideologically neutral for the Court, as the new nominee would not move that seat to the right. Moving Judge Roberts to the seat of Chief Justice, by contrast, opens up again the debate over what Democrats will describe as the ‘O’Connor’ seat — that of a moderate conservative.”
There’s going to be pressure (again) to replace O’Connor with a moderate. But hasn’t that ship sailed? What if Roberts actually turns out to be the moderate of the two appointments? Ugh. It’s still possible.
At any rate, here’s hoping that Chief Justice Roberts will be presiding over Bush’s impeachment trial soon.