"Mediocre" is a mediocre word

All except the most hidebound and unlettered among us admit by now that there must be something to this climate change talk.  And even though the head of the EPA - the Environmental Protection Agency - doesn’t believe carbon dioxide is the primary reason for climate change (which it is), he is just playing to the philistines. You get the impression that deep down, he knows there's a good reason for those nagging sea levels and water temperatures.

Wagner

But up in Pennsylvania dwells a man named Scott Wagner, a state senator running for the governor's seat. Wagner made his bundle hauling other peoples' bundles away; he owns and operates trash hauling businesses. Which is fine.  What isn't fine is that when asked about his opinions on climate change at a candidate forum, he replied, “We have more people. You know, humans have warm bodies. So is heat coming off? Things are changing, but I think we are, as a society, doing the best we can.”

So, to sum up, Scott Wagner attributes climate change to all the hot sweaty people on Earth. And he believes the earth is moving closer to the Sun.

It feels like it in August.

At one of his campaign stops, Rose Strauss, a young woman studying Earth Sciences asked Wagner, "You've said that climate change is a result of people's body heat, and are refusing to take action on the issue. Does this have anything to do with the $200,000 that you have taken from the fossil fuel industry?"

And Wagner's answer came back:

"Well, I appreciate you being here. You're 18 years old. You know, you're a little young and naive. But are we here to elect a governor or elect a scientist? Okay? I'm here to be the governor. I appreciate - and I understand - the question. But I have one for you, Rose."

And then he went on to discuss water quality of the Susquehanna River, without posing the promised question.

Talk like that reminds me of the good old days of 1970, when Richard Nixon nominated a third-rate jurist to the Supreme Court.

(The more you learn about history, the more you see it repeating itself, you know what I'm saying to you here?)

The Supremes

The dud judge was G. Harrold Carswell. Nixon tried to put Carswell on the Court after Clement Haynsworth, his first choice to replace Abe Fortas as one of The Supremes, did not attain Senate approval. But Carswell was also found wanting for reasons of a 58 percent reversal rate of his decisions as a district court judge, and his support for racial segregation and white supremacy when he had run for the Georgia legislature in 1948. He also opposed women's rights (no surprise.)

Hruska

But in the Senate hearings on the Carswell matter, Senator Roman Hruska (R, Neb) responded to charges that Carswell was at best a mediocre judge with words that ring even yet today in my ears:

Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.

It may well have been that people in power felt that way for years and years, but not until Hruska admitted it did one of the 100 people in the US Senate come out and admit that Velveeta was just as good as Stilton, a couple of kids with harmonicas were up there with a Haydn string quartet, and a cheap backstreet affair was a parallel to true love.

Mediocrity is its own punishment, and not to be settled for if at all possible. No, we can't always have the best, but we suffer for not striving for it.