Mocked and Scorned, Solicitor General Wins

02 July 2012 |permalink | email article

The First Call President Obama made after learning that the Supreme Court had upheld his health care law was to his solicitor general, Donald B. Verrilli Jr., much maligned for his at times rocky performance during the oral arguments in March.  For Verrilli it was sweet vindication. His face was grim as Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. explained why the court had rejected the government’s primary argument that the commence clause of the Constitution empowered Congress to impose a mandate on individuals to obtain health insurance. The questioning from the justices in March had been brutal, even by the combative standards of the court. He was cut off 180 times during the three days of argument on national television, interrupted after speaking for ten seconds or less more than 40 percent of the time. He believed that his argument that the penalty for not obtaining health insurance was a tax and not a forced purchase Afterward, legal commentators mocked him and he was lampooned by Jon Stewart. Afterwards, he said “there is definitely bad publicity. Being on the wrong side of a Jon Stewart monologue is bad publicity.” The most interesting mea culpa came from Jeffrey Toobin, a CNN legal commentator, who issued some of the harshest criticism of Verrilli. Toobin apologized on the air Thursday after the decision was handed down. “This is a day for Dan Verrilli to take an enormous amount of credit, and for me to eat a bit of crow, because he won, and everybody should know that that argument was a winning argument, whatever you thought of it,” Toobin said.

Country First

“There are two lessons from the Supreme Court’s 5-4- decision to support President Obama’s health care plan: 1) how starved the country is for leadership that puts the nation’s interest before partisan politics, which is what Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. did; and (2) the virtue of audacity in politics and thinking big….It’s the feeling that it has been so long since a national leader “surprised” us. It’s the feeling that it has been so long since a national leader ripped up the polls and not only acted out of political character—but did so truly for the good of the country—as Chief Justice Roberts seemingly did.”—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times.

“I wish today’s political leaders, especially in Washington, would show the courage and willingness to fight for what they believe in, but possess an understanding of the need to compromise to solve the nation’s problems. They all need to go off and read “The Summer of 1787.”—Colin Powell, the retired general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an author who has urged President Obama to read “The Best and the Brightest” by David Halberstram. 

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