One of President Trump's tweets this past week, which showed up on my Twitter feed, noted that he'd had 150 judicial appointments approved. That is, the Senate has confirmed the appointment of 150 Trump nominees to the Federal bench.
By and large I think one area the Trump administration has done a good job is in judicial appointees. True, not all have been great, but that's the case for ever single President we ever have. One of the current U.S. Supreme Court justices, by a prior President, is was a supremely poor choice in my view.
Anyhow, is 150 appointments a lot? The news has been treating it like a lot and conservatives have been regarding it in that fashion as well. So if we go back and take a look, how does it really measure up. I'll color code it by party as well, but in doing so use the color scheme that's the global norm rather than one thought up by somebody badly in need of a historical education at some television network.
Let's go back one century and start with Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson, two terms. 79.
Hmmm. . . not that many. But then his predecessor Taft had 58 in one term, and Theodore Roosevelt only 76 in 1.75 terms.
Continuing on. . .
Harding: 53.
Coolidge: 73.
Hoover: 68.
Franklin Roosevelt: 207.
207 in four terms? Wow.
Of course, the country had less than half the population at the time and only 48 states.
Truman: 140
What on earth?
There's some back story to that, but I don't know what it is. Roosevelt, in almost four terms, had only 207, and Truman, in a little over one term, 140. That's odd. It'd suggest that the Senate might have been sitting on a lot of nominations for part of Roosevelt's administration or that he was dong other things.
Eisenhower: 182
Hmmm. . . a definite trend going on here. Eisenhower had 182 in two terms. He was the first President of a 50 state union, but that wouldn't have added that many seats to the bench.
Kennedy: 125.
Johnson: 176.
Nixon: 235.
Nixon, at that time, was only the second President in American history to appoint over 200 judges to the bench. But he did it in less than two terms, not four.
Ford: 63.
Well, Ford wasn't around long. But the fact that he did 63 would suggest that Nixon would have surpassed 300 appointments but for Watergate.
We had locally a Ford appointee on the bench up until quite recently.
Carter: 262.
I hadn't realized that Carter had appointed that many judges to the bench.
Reagan: 402
Nobody has come close to Reagan since. That was a massive impact on the Court and Reagan takes the prize for the all time most appointments.
It's worth noting, however, that while Reagan was the first modern conservative President and remains a conservative hero, a couple of his Supreme Court appointments were disappointments in regard to their conservatism. Sandra Day O'Connor has been much celebrated as the first woman appointee, and she was a solid justice, but she wasn't reliably conservative. Anthony Kennedy was a real disappointment. The lesson here is that conservative Presidents don't necessarily appoint conservative judges.
Some would say that there in fact not real philosophically conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court at all. There definitely are philosophically liberal judges. There are judicially conservative judges, but that isn't the same thing at all.
G. H. W. Bush: 197.
Quite a number for one term.
Clinton: 387.
Nearly as many as Reagan.
Clinton was an odd President and while he was hated by the GOP, he was in fact a very moderate President. His appointees tended to reflect that.
G. W. Bush: 340
Obama: 334.
Now, what's going on here? Something is. It makes no sense that there were less than 200 appointees per two terms as a rule until Nixon and then it began to be the norm that there are over 200, and now 300, per two term presidency.
Trump: 150, so far.
Okay, so what's that tell us.
Well, in reality Trump is about on par for post 1960s Presidents. He isn't ahead. If he completes two terms, which due to Democrats taking the left ward sidetrack in the primaries he's increasingly likely to, he's on course to appoint just over 300 judges to the bench, about the same numbers as Presidents Obama and G. Bush had. Maybe, if he's lucky, he might make the number that President Clinton had.
Of course, if he's unlikely, he might make 200.
This is all due, really, to Mitch McConnell, who has done a really good job of getting appointees to the Senate. It's one his real goals for the Trump Administration and, taken with more than a little does of cynicism, it was basically the bargain he made for supporting Trump. There's no really strong reason at all to believe that McConnell is much of a Trump supporter, actually, but he does really care about the Court. He knew that he had four years to try to set the course of the Court for the future.
But in doing that, has he set it much more than his predecessors? Not really.
There are 870 Article III Federal judges of all types on the bench. Right now there remain over 100 vacancies. Not doubt McConnell would like all of those filled by November 2020, which will become at least slightly more difficult to do next year. If he succeeds, that would put Trump up at about 250, which would be a stunning number for a one term President or a President's first term. It'd still be, however, less than half of the sitting judges.
Which is not to say that it doesn't matter. It most definitely does.
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