Opinion: Hey, it was Michelle’s idea

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It’s a good thing there won’t be time for small talk when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stands up on Jan. 20 to administer the oath of office to President Barack Obama. Ordinarily one might think that the two alumni of the Harvard Law Review -- Obama was president, Roberts managing editor -- would glide easily into a reminiscent groove, cheerily comparing notes about professors and pizza parlors in Cambridge. But any conversation might be awkward, because Obama, unlike 22 other Democrats, voted against Roberts’ confirmation.

Worse, if The Washington Post is to be believed, Obama stiffed his fellow Ivy Leaguer by flip-flopping from support to opposition.

The Post reported:

‘It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator -- still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office -- was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. Talking with his aides, the Illinois Democrat expressed admiration for Roberts’s intellect. Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn’t want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.

‘And then [Pete] Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no.’ (Ironically, political calculations may have inclined Obama to condemn a recent decision in which Roberts was in the minority -- the court’s ruling that child rapists can’t be sentenced to death.)

It’s well known that Roberts was surprised when senators he thought were going to support him switched sides. That he was confirmed anyway, with votes from half the Senate’s Democrats, may have softened the blow. And Roberts has the comfort that he is likely to hold on to high office a lot longer than Obama will. Still, it’s just as well that the two men won’t have to chit-chat before Roberts exercises a privilege Obama didn’t want him to have in the first place.