Joe Biden: It's Time to Change the Conversation (Newsweek article)

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Joe Biden: It's Time to Change the Conversation
Jonathan Darman
Newsweek
Jan. 23, 2006 issue

Things the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings taught us about Joe Biden: he has a grandfather named Finnegan, a couple of Ivy League-educated kids, a thing for hats and a love of his own voice. The Delaware senator's verbal excesses were widely mocked last week—in the blogosphere, on "The Daily Show," even on the Judiciary Committee by some of Biden's Democratic colleagues. "I deserved a lot of it," Biden told NEWSWEEK. "I do talk too much."

But Biden says the real problem isn't him, it's Supreme Court hearings themselves. "Any nominee coming up here is so coached," he says, "the process can't work very well." His solution? Scrap the whole dog-and-pony show and go directly to Senate floor debate. "We oughta just go straight to the Senate. That's a much better way to do it."

Critics point out that such a plan deprives nominees like Alito the chance to speak in their own behalf. But Biden, who notes that Judiciary Committee hearings haven't always been part of the confirmation process, says ditching hearings would leave nominees to make their cases in the media, where holding back and being boring won't necessarily fly. "Then would actually write about how they're not answering the questions," Biden says. "You people might get some answers out of them."

Biden wants to sit down with legal scholars in the coming weeks to brainstorm alternative approaches for considering justices. Perhaps, he says, he'll deliver a major speech advocating a new confirmation approach. Another nomination process the senator has to worry about: the 2008 Democratic presidential sweepstakes. He wants the nomination but some say he could have damaged his prospects with the hearings. An aide to a Democratic senator, who asked not to be identified because he was being critical of a colleague of his boss, says the public will now think of Biden as "a blowhard among blowhards" in the Senate. Biden admits that he "needs to work on" his speaking discipline but thinks criticism of his Alito performance won't reach far beyond the Beltway. "If my Achilles' heel has to be 'I talk too much,' versus 'I'm a womanizer' or 'I'm dishonest' or whatnot, it's fine, I set myself up for that."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10857677/site/newsweek/