A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come

I stole that title from Aaron Wildavsky, who was referring to a proposal to abolish the electoral college. But my subject is fast trains, specifically the proposal to build a high-speed railway linking Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Think it's a good idea? Well, you might want to look at today's Washington Post, which has a lucid discussion of the romance of the rails, called "A Rail Boondoggle, Moving at High Speed," by Robert J. Samuelson.

Samuelson's essay made me think of a policy paper published a few years ago by the Cato Institute, which had perhaps the greatest title of all time: "A Desire Named Streetcar," by Randal O'Toole.

I love trains, especially European trains. The one pictured above, called the Pendolino, is Finland's version of high-speed rail. It's a luxury that Ohio can ill afford.

Good Advice for Washington Interns

Summer is winding down, so today's Washington Post has a piece on how summer interns should be finishing up their work assignments. Taking advantage of opportunities to follow up with former colleagues during the subsequent school year is good advice for interns looking for permanent jobs.

Mr. Justice Scalia and the Moritz School of Law

I argued in an earlier post, “’Out Here’ in D.C.,” that easterners are inclined to dismiss Midwesterners as provincials and that Glenn Fellows, who have every reason to be professionally ambitious, forget or ignore this at their peril.

There could be no more dramatic example than that provided last spring by Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. As Adam Liptak reported last May in the The New York Times, Justice Scalia, speaking at American University in Washington, D.C., explained to an audience of law students that their odds of landing a clerkship with a Supreme Court justice were slim or none because they are reserved for students from America’s most prestigious law schools. According to Liptak, the “hard truth” is that “Over the last six years, the justices have hired about 220 law clerks. Almost half went to Harvard or Yale. Chicago, Stanford, Virginia and Columbia collectively accounted for 50 others." Liptak reports that “Justice Scalia said he could think of one sort-of exception to his rule favoring the elite schools.” To wit:

“One of my former clerks whom I am the most proud of now sits on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals" in Cincinnati, the justice said, referring to Jeffrey S. Sutton. But Justice Scalia explained that Mr. Sutton had been hired by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. after his retirement and then helped out in Justice Scalia's chambers. "I wouldn't have hired Jeff Sutton," Justice Scalia said. "For God's sake, he went to Ohio State! And he's one of the very best clerks I ever had."

As one can readily imagine, Justice Scalia’s remarks inspired a kerfuffle in Buckeyeland. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Scalia was “not a big fan of OSU law graduates,” and the Ohio State Bar Association objected to the “insult” and issued a sharp rejoinder, arguing that “Intellect, skill and fundamental integrity are not measured by the school someone attends. Birthright, money, LSAT scores and magazine rankings of law schools are not the standards by which this profession judges itself.”

My reading of this story is that Justice Scalia was conveying brute facts, which are not in dispute, and that his endorsement of Judge Sutton indicates that he understands that the prejudice in favor of elite law schools is ultimately not rational. True, he seems disinclined to buck the system, but I think it’s pretty clear that his “For God’s sake” remark was intended as irony. They learn that sort of thing at the elite schools, such as Harvard, where Scalia earned his law degree. They also learn not to harbor too many illusions about the quality of instruction.

September 14, 2009, update. Further evidence that Harvard law graduates tend to be lovers of irony comes from an AP story that Lawrence Hurley cites in his Supreme Court blog, Washington Briefs. Elitist joke alert: Asked if too many of the justices came from elite law schools, CJ Roberts says no -- some went to Yale (AP).

"Out Here" in D.C.

I have always thought that my credentials as an Ohioan were reasonably good. I taught for fifteen years at a small college in the northeastern part of the state. My wife and I started our family and made our first mortgage payment in Ohio. We learned to appreciate the Western Reserve’s rich inheritance in Greek Revival architecture and the simple pleasures of the Geauga County Fair. Thanks to WCLV and the Cleveland Orchestra, we developed a taste for classical music.

We moved to D.C.—actually, to Alexandria, Virginia—in 1985. Gradually, we put down roots, though we never stopped feeling like transplanted Ohioans, and we never gave up the perverse pleasure of rooting for the Cleveland Indians. And so, when, in the fall of 2008, I opened a Capitol Hill office for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, it was with the conviction that one can, Thomas Wolfe’s strenuous assertion to the contrary notwithstanding, “go home again.”

We were mistaken. I have learned that from Page Hall one views the world through a distinctive Scarlet and Gray prism in which the various accoutrements of NCAA football—e.g., Brutus Buckeye, Block O, TBDBITL, Coach Hays—loom extra-large. On my occasional visits to campus, someone inevitably will ask, “So how are things going out there?” It seems to me that the expression captures the essence of Columbocentrism. It amazes me that Buckeyes living in the Washington metropolitan area willingly concede the point. “How long have you been out here?” I was recently asked by a Glenn School alumnus who lives in suburban Maryland.

I simply cannot get used to the idea that our Capitol Hill office is “out” anywhere. In colonial and early republican America, everyone understood that it was the “Ohio country” that was “out there” in the transmontane west. And from their perspective, early settlers in the west surely regarded the Atlantic seaboard not as “out there,” but as “back east”—back in terms of both time and space. Californians do the same thing today.

I could understand it if people on the mother ship thought of their satellite as “down there” in the nation’s capital, since Washington lies south of Columbus, both geographically and culturally. I could get used to thinking that we are “down here” in D.C. But “out here,” no.

The reader might ask, “Why does any of this matter?” I would submit that it matters because easterners--never mind their own distorted view of the world, famously captured by the cartoonist Saul Steinberg in his New Yorker cover showing the buildings of 9th Avenue casting their shadows over the Great Plains--are inclined to dismiss midwesterners as provincials. This is one of those brute facts of life that ambitious Glenn Fellows should bear in mind. And that brings us to Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Stay tuned.