Big media can hardly contain their glee at the collapse of President Reagan’s second nomination to fill the current Supreme Court vacancy. Watching the faces of the television news and anchor men, it was clear that Judge Douglas Ginsburg’s withdrawal of his name “made their day,” not because they were out to get Ginsburg, but because they thought they could report it as an embarrassment to Ronald Reagan.
Defeating Robert Bork was strike one, defeating Ginsburg was strike two, and the media are licking their chops at the prospect of calling Ronald Reagan “out” 14 months before the end of his term.
The media are even taking all the credit because Ginsburg’s use of marijuana was a media discovery, not an FBI or Administration or even a Senate committee discovery.
But before the media open the champagne in an orgy of self-congratulation and declare conservatism dead, I want to let them in on a secret. Conservatives are NOT unhappy about Ginsburg’s withdrawal! If Ronald Reagan had planned a daring gambit to achieve one of the major social goals of his Administration, it couldn’t have been any more perfect than the scenario that actually happened.
“The lesson of Ginsburg” will echo throughout America for years to come, and probably become a permanent sentence in our history books. Every young man and woman, boy and girl, now knows the lesson: If you use illegal drugs, even casually, experimentally, or socially, it may come back to haunt you 20 years later and cost you the greatest opportunity for career advancement you will ever have.
They’ve also learned that none of the stock excuses will save you, such as “everybody’s doing it,” “I was young and didn’t realize what I was doing” (Ginsburg was age 33), “it was just the fashion of the times,” or “I didn’t anticipate this would cause such an uproar.”
That last excuse simply proves that Harvard intellectuals live in a cloistered world, out of touch with what will “play in Peoria.”
It’s been a social, political and moral consensus for years that illegal drugs are a cancer in our society. Billions of dollars have been spent on law enforcement and on “education” with little effect.
Prosecutions have an impact on the million-dollar dealers, but are ineffective on the use of illegal drugs by the general public where it is often winked at by people who should know better. There is no real evidence that spending more money or having more discussions in the public school classroom have any significant results to show for their efforts.
But the high-visibility lesson of Ginsburg is powerful! It’s better as a means of discouraging drug use than all the preaching, all the politicians’ projects, all the confusing classroom curricula, and all the money the government is spending. Hereafter, when young people are offered illegal drugs, they will “Remember Ginsburg” in the same way that earlier generations would “Remember Pearl Harbor” or “Remember the Alamo.”
The media and the liberals have been blaming Attorney General Edwin Meese for persuading the President to select Ginsburg out of the list of a dozen candidates for the Supreme Court vacancy. If Meese was responsible, then let’s give Meese the credit for initiating a political move that resulted in new public respect for the law.
Of course, the Ginsburg lesson won’t deter the pushers; we need aggressive law enforcement for that. Of course, the Ginsburg lesson won’t impact on the addicts; they are already hooked and probably don’t aspire to any high appointment anyway.
But the lesson is impressive for the big majority who have never tried illegal drugs and who might be tempted to flirt with occasional or social use. It will fortify them against peer pressures. Those who find it hard to “just say no” because illegal drugs are wrong, or because they are illegal, now have the additional motive to say no because it might ruin their careers 20 years down the road.
We can’t say that Ronald Reagan planned the nine-day Ginsburg drama; perhaps it was just what his opponents call his luck of the Irish. But anyway, we can say, Thanks, Mr. President, for giving us the “Ginsburg lesson.” This has done more than a billion dollar appropriation for a “war on drugs” could ever do.
Thanks to Mrs. Reagan, too, for her part in building a public awareness of the problem with her “just say no” campaign. That helped move the opinion currents that brought the Ginsburg drama to its denouement.
And thanks also to Judge Ginsburg for accepting his humiliation with real class. His withdrawal statement was eloquent in its simplicity: “I hope that the young people of this country, including my two daughters, will learn from my mistake and heed their message.”
Now that the media have devoted so much TV time and column inches to exposing Ginsburg’s marijuana use, it would be a public service if they would turn their attention to an expose of illegal drug use by the people in the media. After all, this is the era of full disclosure.
