Waiting for Estrada
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Senator Schumer’s office called over the weekend to ask whether we’d be endorsing him for a second term. We sent back a cheerful message that we’d do it if the senator reversed himself and endorsed Miguel Estrada to ride the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. And we would, too, because in many respects Mr. Schumer has done a terrific job, particularly in respect of the war on terror, where he’s come a long, long way from the days when he voted against the first invasion of Iraq. He now stands, with Senator Lieberman, among the few voices in the Democratic Party for a strong foreign policy – and also for unflinching support of Israel.
But for all his virtues – and his enormous personal likeability – Mr. Schumer remains a disappointment to us, and a mystery. It’s hard to see how someone so bright, and with so much room to maneuver comes out so often on the wrong side of issues. He opposed President Bush’s pro-growth tax cuts, which have done so much to rejuvenate the economy, especially on Wall Street, which should be of special concern to a senator from New York. It’s not as if he stood on principle, for only last week he voted in favor of a package of tax breaks for various special interests, including NASCAR race-track owners, the ethanol industry, and importers of Chinese ceiling fans.
The senator from a world capital of commerce has also joined in the hysteria over “out-sourcing” of American jobs, arguing for a protectionist trade policy that would ultimately hurt this country, this state, and this city more than others. He’s prepared to get in harness with astounding bedfellows in his fight for protection, at one point co-authoring a piece for the New York Times with Paul Craig Roberts. He apparently wants freer trade with Cuba, however, since he voted to block enforcement of restrictions on travel to that Communist Caribbean enclave, restrictions that Cubans have been so desperately trying to maintain in their quest to keep pressure against Castro.
Mr. Schumer also shows himself to be a big-government Democrat. He favors the extension of Fannie Mae housing subsidies to the suburban middle class in addition to the poor. He simultaneously supports price supports for upstate dairy farmers while bemoaning the natural outcome of that policy – higher milk prices – at downstate retail stores. His performance on the Judiciary Committee has been nothing short of a disgrace. Time and again he has used the threat of filibuster to block worthy nominees to the federal courts on little more than his suspicion of a conservative agenda. His tactics will come back to haunt the judicial nominees of Democratic presidents.
We recognize that Mr. Schumer has come a long way on foreign policy from the days when he and his fellow pro-Israel senators cut President Clinton enough slack so that he could slither out of a legal obligation to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Mr. Schumer has spoken for regime change at Tehran and against religious oppression under the House of Saud. He voted for a bill that included, to the chagrin of the teachers’ unions, an experiment with tuition vouchers at the District of Columbia. In contrast to his party’s presidential standard-bearer, Mr. Schumer voted for the $87 billion to prosecute the war in Iraq.
Too, we recognize that the candidates running against Mr. Schumer are not on a trajectory much, if at all, better than Mr. Schumer’s. The candidate running under the banner of the Conservative Party, Marilyn O’Grady, might be called a big government conservative – on top of which she wants to restrict immigration to America at a time when our country is desperately underpopulated and needs pro-growth policies. This problem we lay at the feet of the leaders of the conservative moment in New York, which still lacks its Reagan. The Republican candidate, Assemblyman Howard Mills, is campaigning on a Democratic Party-type platform and making only a token effort at that.
The Republican problem can be laid at the feet of George Pataki. He has been governor for 10 years and yet he has what, if you took out a tape measure, would no doubt prove to be the shortest coattails of any governor in the 50 states. He stood down while one of the best Republicans ever to run for statewide office, John Faso, came within a whisker of gaining the comptrollers’ job. He allowed a personal feud to ruin the lieutenant governorship of, in Betsy McCaughey, one of the brightest women ever to enter politics in the state. His legacy toward the Republican Party in this state has been dismal. One of the results is the kind of uneven match-up that we’re witnessing in the race for Senate. So we’ll save our endorsement until there appears on the ticket someone with the principles of, say, Miguel Estrada.