SUMMARY: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine and President Biden’s selection for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): With the world's eyes on Ukraine, and President Biden moving forward on his pick for the U.S. Supreme Court, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.
That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, columnist for The Washington Post.
Very good to see both of you. Thank you for being here on this Friday night.
We're going to talk about Ukraine in just a minute.
But, David, I want to start with President Biden's choice of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the court. What did you make of his choice of her?
David Brooks, New York Times: She seems great.
What you want on the court is someone with a lot of intellectual firepower, but without intellectual arrogance. And she seems to have that. As Marcia and others mentioned before, she has the defender. She was a regular old judge on — with real trials, not just a fancy appellate judge.
So, she has been in the trenches. She seems like just a wonderful person.
I read a very good story in The 19th about four friends — or three friends she had starting at freshman year in Harvard. These were four Black women who entered Harvard together. They roomed together. They were sisters together. All four of them went to Harvard Law together. And, since then, they have been in each other's weddings, they have been at each other's childbirths.
And what they describe, her three friends describe about her, is someone who's the social organizer, someone who early on said, I'm going to take up a lot of space. I'm going to make my point of view known.
And I think one of them early in college said, you know, you're going to be on the Supreme Court one day.
So, if she could see it that early, maybe she's fit to be there.
Judy Woodruff: Jonathan, what's your take on her?
Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post: Well, she's definitely fit to be there.
I didn't read the story you read David, in The 19th. I read this big profile of her online in The Washington Post. And what came — the four women were also featured in that profile. But what I got from that was a woman and a lawyer and now a judge who is and has been pragmatic on the bench. Sure, she follows the law and she's grounded in her belief in the law and belief that the law should be meted out equally.
And throughout her career at Harvard, both undergrad and law school, when she — there were moments when other Black students were looking to protest X, Y, or Z, sometimes, she participated. Other times, she didn't. And the reason why she didn't was because she thought it was more important that she be in class and prove folks wrong.
And I'm thinking about a situation where, at Harvard, someone in her dorm unfurled a Confederate Battle Flag out the window. And, initially, she did protest, but she told her friends, look, one of the things they want us to do is to not focus on our classes. And if we don't focus on our classes, we flunk out, thereby proving to them, at least, that we don't belong here.
So, I think what President Biden has done was nominate someone who is coming to the bench, as David said, with intellectual firepower, but also someone who's going to be somebody who tries to bring the liberal and the overwhelming conservative majority together on some of the key issues that are coming up before the court even after she's confirmed.
Judy Woodruff: And, David, how do you see her potential effect on the court?
We're starting to hear some Republicans raise objections, questions about her. Mitch McConnell is one of them. But what do you think lies ahead, if she's confirmed?
David Brooks: Well, she's — there are nine personalities on the court. And so each personality adds something to the little family drama there, they have there.
My impression of the court has always been, they find ways to get along. And — but bringing in a new personality will widen the perspective of the court, will bring a new set of perspectives, a new lived set of experiences. It can't help but have a humanizing aspect.
Ideologically, there are all these rating systems that rate judges on how liberal or how conservative they are. She's pretty much in the mainstream of Democratic nominees. One of the rating systems I saw put her slightly to the right of Elena Kagan. Another put her a bit to the left. But she's very much in the mainstream of a Democratic nominee.
And she's obviously replacing a Democratic nominee, so, as Marcia Clark said earlier today, that it's probably not going to alter the ideological balance, but it'll widen the human aperture.
Judy Woodruff: And, Jonathan, how do you see her fitting in? And how do you read the coming Republican opposition?
Jonathan Capehart: Well, I think she will fit in just fine, considering she's been on the bench for a few years now, and folks love her.
When it comes to the Republican opposition, the idea — I can't remember which Republican member of Congress said this — that she's some left-wing radical, it's just sort of — that would have been branded on to any — whoever the President named. It just now happens to be Judge Jackson.
I think that, if Republicans stick to substantive criticisms of Judge Jackson, either her record or rulings or cases, they will be fine.
But the moment they stray into the territory that Senator Kennedy of Louisiana did by saying he hoped the President would choose someone who could tell the difference between a J. Crew Catalog and a law book; or another member of Congress who said before even a person was named that, no matter what, that the President was making an affirmative action hire, if they go down that route, they should be prepared for withering criticism.
And, also, Republican leaders, those who say that they're Republican leaders, should be prepared to condemn those folks, because there is no question that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is qualified to be on the court, should be on the court, and is not some radical, but, as David said, is in the mainstream of American political thought and life.
Judy Woodruff: So, now we turn to the thing that we have all been, I guess, fixated on for the last several days.
The last time I talked to the two of you, last Friday, the Russians hadn't begun their attack, their assault on Ukraine.
But, David, now they have. This, I think, is the first time in modern memory that we have been able to watch a war unfold, one country attacking another in real time on television and social media and the rest of it.
But what do you make of what Russia has done and is doing so far?
David Brooks: Well, I'm just impressed by the Ukrainian people. I'm impressed by the Russian people who are on the streets protesting.
But the Ukrainian people are facing very long odds. And they seem to be facing them with resolve and sometimes heroic self-sacrifice. And I'm just — my hat is off, and my eyes of admiration are for them.
I think we're entering another era. We were blessed to live for many years, probably all of our lives so far, in this era of rules. We may be ending that era and reentering an era of great power rivalries, such as we saw in the 17th century and the 18th century and the 16th century and the 15th century.
And it's just not pleasant to live in those eras, because nobody is secure. Vladimir Putin only thrives in areas where nobody is secure. And so we may be, with Russia, with China, defending Taiwan, we may be one great power forever after, or least for a long time after, engaged in constant struggles to head off authoritarian tyranny.
And that will involve different defense budgets. It will involve electing different sorts of people to be our leaders. It will involve a much more bloody and much less pleasant way to live in a set of mutual democracies.
Judy Woodruff: It's hard to watch, isn't it, Jonathan?
Jonathan Capehart: It is, again, the first major land war on the European continent in more than 70 years.
As David said, this is now — this is a battle of ideas. But, as Hillary Clinton and Dan Schwerin write in "The Atlantic" today, this is — what's happening now in Ukraine is much bigger than that. They write: "Ukraine is one flash point in a larger global struggle between democracy and autocracy."
And they point out that the day that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Beijing, which was February 4, on Friday, was the same day that the Republicans said that the January 6 insurrection was — quote — "legitimate political discourse."
The battle between autocracy and democracy is — has — was a factor in President Biden's presidential campaign, but there on the streets in Ukraine, in the air, where — in terms of the war that Russia is waging on Ukraine, we are seeing right there the battle between democracy and autocracy.
And the fact that the United States and President Biden is leading the alliance to, at a minimum, defend the NATO alliance, but also help the Ukrainian people, shows that everyone takes this seriously.
There was a lot of talk about whether the NATO alliance was going to wither on the vine, whether it could be — could hold together. And in the face of this war, before the impending war with Vladimir Putin, they have rallied, and they're stronger. But that battle between democracy and autocracy and having democracy win is not assured, especially because democracy here in the United States is the weakest it's been in memory.
Judy Woodruff: David, a lot of people watching President Biden very closely because of what happened in Afghanistan.
But what's your assessment of how he has managed this, handled this so far?
David Brooks: I think quite well.
He's organized the alliance. For once, we won the information war. He really leaked all the intelligence. And it was all vindicated. Our intelligence community was excellent in predicting what the Russians were going to do. And they went ahead and did it. So he did that part well.
He is playing with an extremely weak hand. Putin is willing to commit troops. We, wisely, are not — unwilling to commit troops. That's one disadvantage.
Second, we're unwilling and our European allies are unwilling to impose sanctions that would impose any costs on Putin. To do this right, we have to go after the Russian economy, which is essentially going after the energy sector. We're not going to do that because European and American economies don't want to impose any costs on themselves.
So, I think the sanctions are weak. I think the alliance between Russia and China, which seems to be reasonably strong, is extremely troubling.
The hope I have, and I think the place to focus our efforts and our attention, is on the Ukrainian resistance. If the Ukrainian resistance, with the help of the west, can make the occupation of Ukraine very costly, then this whole thing does backfire on Putin.
But I would focus on that, rather than, say, the sanctions, which have been symbolic and not nothing, but clearly not strong enough to impose any real costs on the Russians.
Judy Woodruff: Jonathan, how do you size up the reaction here and in Europe?
Jonathan Capehart: Well, I would say that, late this afternoon, the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union announced sanctions on Putin and his foreign minister, Lavrov, personally. So that is a ratcheting up of the pressure on Putin, on Russia.
This is the — I think the third — second round of sanctions. And there are plenty more things that the United States can do.
I think one thing that everyone should do is to sort of remind — we should remind ourselves that, in a culture that we have, where everything is instantaneous, you order something online, it can be — depending on which service you use, could be at your house in a few hours, but definitely by the next day.
We are talking about war. And we're talking about responding to war. And some of the things that have to be done and should be done, the impacts that they have don't — the impacts don't reveal themselves in an hour, in 10 hours, in a day. They take time.
And I think the more people sort of reorient themselves and realize that some of the things that the United States and the West are doing to put pressure on Putin, to bring this war to a close whenever that can happen, that this takes time, the better off we will be.
Judy Woodruff: Well, one thing is for sure. We're going to have a lot of — we're going to be watching a lot of painful scenes in Ukraine, as we watch the Ukrainian people deal with this in the hours and the days to come.
Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, thank you both.
Jonathan Capehart: Thanks, Judy.
David Brooks: Thank you, Judy.
