Given the pleasure of interviewing Ted Cruz, NPR host Steve Inskeep asked the Texas Republican why he’d written his new book. After all, Going Further: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas isn’t the kind of thing an ambitious senator would usually publish ahead of a presidential election. Full-blown hagiography masquerading as double-spaced biography, it’s also dotted with boasts about cases Cruz previously argued before Thomas and the Supreme Court and expositions of his own views on law.
“People will wonder about your choice here,” Inskeep said. “Does this book tell us what kind of Supreme Court justice you think you would be?”
Cruz said: “It doesn’t, Steve, for the simple reason that I don’t want to be a judge… I will never be a judge… The reason I don’t want to be a judge is a… judge stays out of politics and stays out of policy fights. And if I were a judge, I’d do that. I’d stay out of those fights. I don’t want to stay out of those fights.”
Points arise. One, as Thomas’s career shows in grim detail, judges and particularly Supreme Court justices do not stay out of politics and policy fights. Quite the opposite. Two, like any politician but maybe more so, Ted Cruz is known occasionally to be, uh, economical with the actualité. Inskeep wasn’t going to call bullshit live on NPR – the amount of granola spilled as listeners from Vermont to Montgomery County pitched headfirst into their breakfasts would’ve caused measurable economic damage – but I’m writing for Zeteo, so I can. Bullshit.
