As a political matter, it has been a disaster for the Democrats. As a real life matter, it has been an embarrassment for the United States Senate and the judicial nomination process.

President George W. Bush nominated Miguel A. Estrada to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. While a significant position, nominees to the Courts of Appeal throughout the United States have rarely seen the level of fervor that the Estrada nomination has brought.

As the judicial nomination process has evolved since Robert Bork, qualifications have become an increasingly meaningless measure for judges in the United States. And, correspondingly, no one has questioned Estrada’ qualifications. Indeed, his story is an amazing one and his qualifications impeccable.

Estrada was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and, as a teenager, immigrated to the United States with his family.

In the land of opportunity, Estrada made much of his opportunity. He attended Columbia College in New York where he graduated with honors. He then attended Harvard Law School where he received his law degree again with honors and after serving as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Estrada chose public service, although as Harvard honors Hispanic graduate, he could have easily enter the private sector at a handsome salary. He served as a law clerk to a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then clerked for a Justice on the United States Supreme Court.

Again, after his clerkships, he could have easily entered the private sector and earned lots of money, but he chose public service. From 1990 until 1992, Mr. Estrada was the Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York. In 1992, he joined the United States Department of Justice as an Assistant to the Solicitor General.
With these qualifications, it is not surprising that the American Bar Association gave him its highest rating of “Well qualified”. So what has been the problem? Other than being a Bush nominee and thus by implication too conservative, there have been none. Yet two major issues have raised the profile of the nomination beyond the back committee rooms of the United States Capitol.

First, Estrada is Hispanic. And, as a result, the Democrats have been left explaining every day why they opposed a Hispanic to the United States Court of Appeals. The Republicans have undertaken every day to defend the nomination of a Hispanic to the United States Court of Appeals. In the political world, it has not been a dynamic that Democrats have enjoyed or that Republicans have avoided.

Second, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has decided that the Pledge of Allegiance is too religious to be recited by students in public schools. The mere timing of the ruling combined with it implications have let many Americans to ponder whether the courts have in fact become too liberal and could use an injection of more conservative judges. In the political world, the Democrats are left defending the courts that held the Pledge unconstitutional and the Republicans argue for more conservative judges.

Again, it has not been a dynamic that Democrats have enjoyed or that Republicans have avoided.