The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Republicans have the power to vote in Barrett. Sen. Booker implored them to have grace.

Perspective by
Senior critic-at-large|
October 20, 2020 at 7:47 p.m. EDT
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) called for a “revival of civic grace.” It was a plea to his colleagues to be big, not just powerful. (Samuel Corum/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) was leaning forward in his seat on the last day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett and speaking with honey-toned urgency. There was outrage in his words but no acid rage in his voice. His sentences had a compelling rhythm, a reassuring melody — the kind that a preacher brings to the pulpit when he’s trying to bring a recalcitrant congregation along from self-satisfaction to self-awareness and ultimately to the higher ground of sacrifice. Booker wasn’t preaching Old Testament fire and brimstone as he cited the decay in our democracy. His was an invitation to New Testament salvation.

“The only thing that heals this body is what I call a revival of civic grace,” Booker said.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has seven kids. And don’t you dare forget it.

There was little the Democrats could do to delay a vote on President Trump’s nominee to the high court. It did not matter that hypocrisy was on full display as Republicans had previously derailed President Barack Obama’s nomination because it was an election year. The protests on Capitol Hill against Barrett’s nomination changed no minds. The signed letters arguing against her were duly entered into the Senate record — to no end.

“This goose is pretty much cooked,” Booker admitted. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on Barrett’s confirmation Thursday.

So Booker was asking his colleagues to forgo what they had the power to do and instead do what would be healing, generous and, to his mind, fair. He was asking them to ignore the partisan animus that had come before. He was asking them to make a conscious decision to stop the downward spiral of the country’s politics because in this moment only they had the ability to do so. He was asking his Republican colleagues to be big. To be benevolent. To extend grace.

Booker’s words were specific. He called it a revival because he believed that what he was requesting once existed. Revival calls to mind the return to vigor of our ailing spirit. But it also suggests the need to course correct for the lack of goodwill toward our neighbors and the willful disregard for their humanity — something that requires more than dutiful discussion. It demands a religious fervor.

Civics reminds us that we have a duty as citizens not to win at any cost but to aspire to fairness. It’s not religion — organized or otherwise — that’s under siege; it’s secular democracy. It’s justice. And grace, of course, is given freely. It’s not earned, and it’s certainly not deserved. Grace is an unfathomable kindness that often comes just in the nick of time.

“The greatest acts in American history are when people had the authority to do something and they showed the restraint of power and didn’t use that authority,” Booker said. “This is one of those moments where that is the kind of grace that stops the further tumbling of this institution towards what, I think, will be a real constitutional crisis.”

All the senators quizzed Barrett on her previous decisions, on her judicial record. Democrats aimed to put her nomination in the context of the president’s stated desire for judges who would vote against the Affordable Care Act and otherwise rule to his liking. Republicans hailed her background as a federal judge and law professor and her role as a mother of seven. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) marveled that she played the piano and spoke a little French.

Booker prodded at length about her understanding of the ways in which race prejudices a judicial system that disproportionately punishes Black men and women and how that bias can lead to a domino effect of lifelong consequences. But mostly, he seemed to be trying to get a sense of her capacity to extend grace.

“We’re debating things that to me are basic questions of human rights, human decency and human dignity,” Booker said on the third day of hearings. Had Barrett sought out information on the role race plays in sentencing guidelines? What shaped her understanding of whether justice was truly blind? He wanted to know “what studies, articles, books, law review articles you have read regarding racial disparities present in our criminal justice system?”

Had she read any of the myriad bestsellers on the subject? “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.” “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.”

“What I’ve learned about it has mostly been in conversations with people,” Barrett responded, which sounded a lot like, well, I’ve chatted about Black people. Her determination to be as nonspecific as possible in her answers left her responses hollow.

In return, Booker didn’t look aggrieved; he looked disappointed.

Politicians are practiced at displaying righteous indignation. They are good at pounding on tables and yelling into microphones. Watching their histrionics on almost any topic is a bit like watching a C-SPAN rerun on an endless loop. Booker didn’t sound troubled in the way that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has so often been during the Trump administration. (She has always managed to quickly wade through those waters and get safely back to shore.)

Booker’s words stood out because they weren’t spoken at high volume. He wasn’t being overly emotive. He was using his inside voice and he sounded like a man let down by his colleagues because he’d still been holding fast to a threadbare belief in them.

As Booker noted during the hearings, he recently marked his seventh year in the Senate. He ran for president. He’s a man who delivers speeches all the time. So he’s practiced at it — as are his colleagues. Still, he proved himself more willing and more able than his fellow Democrats to acknowledge that in our transactional politics, they pretty much had nothing with which to barter. That’s a humbling fact to admit. But it’s also the time when grace is most needed. And when extending it is most powerful.

Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee

President Trump has nominated federal appellate judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Barrett testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. The committee has formally set a panel to vote on her nomination for Oct. 22.

Who is Amy Coney Barrett? A disciple of Justice Antonin Scalia is poised to push the Supreme Court further right

What happens next: Here’s how the confirmation process for Barrett will unfold

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