The Nine [63]
But Thomas had a larger point to make. It wasn’t speeches like this one but his work on the Court that would be the best revenge against his enemies, and he planned on serving for a long time to come. To another rousing ovation, Thomas concluded that anyone hoping for his demise, including Malveaux, should have a great deal of patience. He said, smiling, “My doctor makes it clear that my blood pressure is fine, my cholesterol is normal, and I am in wonderful health.”
9
CARDS TO THE LEFT
The trajectory of the Lewinsky scandal in the Supreme Court reflected its course in the nation at large. The initial disclosures about the president’s behavior inspired widespread shock and outrage, and the Court took a harsh initial tack against Clinton. But as the president’s enemies ratcheted up the controversy into a constitutional crisis and then initiated the first impeachment proceeding in a generation, the sympathies of the public shifted. So did the Court’s. As Clinton rode a wave of popularity into the end of his term, the Court turned sharply in his direction. This happened, in part, because the majority of the Court in these years always tried to remain close to the center of popular opinion. But there was another reason the Court moved left in the late nineties, and it had to do with the changing role of Chief Justice Rehnquist.
The chief was seventy-three years old in 1998, when the Lewinsky story broke, and he didn’t have the energy he once did. His back had never fully healed from his long-ago gardening mishap, and his limp had become a permanent shuffle. But it was Rehnquist’s intellectual energy that had faded more than his physical strength. He had been a justice for more than a quarter century and chief justice for more than a decade. Rehnquist knew how everyone was going to vote, most of the time. He wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind—not in conference and not in written opinions. So, subtly but unmistakably, Rehnquist stopped trying. He became, in these years, primarily an administrator, committed more to moving cases efficiently through the pipeline than to shaping their result at the finish. He had reduced the job to its essentials: a morning meeting with his law clerks to talk about the progress of opinions, a meeting with his administrative assistant to address issues affecting the federal judiciary, lunch at his desk, review of paperwork after lunch, and limousine home by 4:00 p.m.
Once a month, there was poker. That didn’t change, although, thanks to the Lewinsky scandal, the players in his regular game did.
Bob Bennett and Bill Rehnquist were still raising young children when they met on the grounds of the McLean Swim and Tennis Club in 1972. Nixon had just appointed Rehnquist to the Supreme Court, and Bennett had recently left the United States attorney’s office and was beginning a career in private law practice that would make him one of the best-known lawyers in the country. They became friendly, and Bennett invited Rehnquist to join his monthly poker game. For the next thirty-three years, the rest of his life, Rehnquist rarely missed one.
The core group in the poker game remained remarkably stable over the years, though some players did come and go. Besides Bennett and Rehnquist, they included Walter Berns, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown; Martin Feinstein, the director of the Washington National Opera; Tom Whitehead, a Washington businessman; and eventually Nino Scalia. Other players were Bob’s brother Bill Bennett, the former drug czar and conservative activist, and local federal judges David Sentelle, Thomas Hogan, and Royce Lamberth. The game was dealer’s choice, usually seven-card high-low, five-card draw, or a Scalia