Does That 'Liberal' Label Scare Kagan?

Just once I would like a Supreme Court justice to get to the bench before she begins disappointing me.
Alas, Elena Kagan has already had her sad moment. It came last week on the second day of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Alabama’s gift to the Senate, Jeff Sessions, quizzed Kagan about whether she’s a “liberal progressive.”
Her amazing response: “I honestly don’t know what that label means.”
Here we go again. Back in 1995, Kagan wrote an article calling the confirmation process a “vapid and hollow charade.” This week she proved herself right.
Oh, she had some nice moments. In post-Bork America, we allow our judicial nominees to have a personality. So it was okay when Kagan, asked about what she was doing on Christmas Day, responded with a quip about how she, like all Jews, was probably at a Chinese restaurant.
Personality is fine, but philosophy is not. So when it came time to defend liberalism, Kagan punted. A woman who clerked for the late, great Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall went out of her way to tell us that she was a separate and distinct entity from her one-time mentor. No kidding. He would have answered the question about being a liberal.
How did we get here, to this weird moment in American political life, a time when nobody wants to be called a liberal, especially a liberal? It probably started around 1980, when candidate Ronald Reagan tarred Jimmy Carter as a liberal. Sessions tossed “liberal” and “progressive” together, a legitimate move since around the age of Dukakis the “liberals” started shying away from that term and moving toward “progressive.” And the trend certainly continued through last summer’s confirmation hearings, when Sonia Sotomayor steered clear of any such terms. Then she got on the court and began judging things just like a liberal. At the hearings, though, it's been like a book: Smart Women, Foolish Judiciary Committee Choices.
With Kagan, it’s worse. At least for those of us who spend our days on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Some of us are having a bit of trouble believing that Kagan, raised as a Jewish New Yorker in the age of feminism, never got around to defining the phrase “liberal progressive.” If nothing else, she could go back to the Latin roots of the word “liberal,” which would be “libera,” meaning “free,” and navigate from there. She might realize that a liberal is someone who believes in individual freedom and common purpose and the universal rights of men and women, pretty much as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights back in December 1948. That document was the crowning achievement of former First Lady and international heroine Eleanor Roosevelt. She was, in case Elena Kagan has forgotten, also a liberal.
Liberals are victims of their own success. Good liberal ideas have been so accepted in the culture that they’re considered mainstream, not liberal. But Social Security is a liberal idea. So are federally-secured student loans. Housing and food for people in dire need. Unemployment benefits. Overseas, it’s a liberal idea to give aid to our allies. At home, it’s a liberal idea that women should be as free as men to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, although it took the conservative Reagan to first make that happen. Liberals championed the idea that African-Americans should be allowed to vote without paying a poll tax and that gay people should be allowed to get married. Good ideas.
Still, liberals seem ashamed of their heritage or ignorant of it. Liberals should be explaining their successes instead of going into a kind of linguistic hiding. Cause the jig is up anyway. People tend to notice who’s a liberal and who’s not.
All of which makes Kagan’s dance this week so weird and depressing. This is a person who is going to do battle with Antonin Scalia? Granted, confirmation hearings are no longer the place for extended discourse on such matters. That’s how it is. But there must be some middle ground, some way to permit just a little candid talk about judicial philosophy before we hand over a lifetime appointment. Jokes about Chinese food are just not enough.