Sen. Lindsey Graham told Politico a beautiful little tale on Tuesday about meeting constituents while taking out the trash. At the dump this weekend, the South Carolina Republican said, he was approached by “three guys in pickup trucks” who wanted to share their thoughts on whom Joe Biden should nominate to replace Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court.
The gentlemen told Graham that J. Michelle Childs, a judge of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina, “seems like a nice lady,” Graham said.
He said the men also expressed that Childs’ state-school education would be a welcome addition to SCOTUS, which is dominated by Ivy League alumni. “I’m tired of this Harvard-Yale stuff,” Graham said they said.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether the prevalence of Ivy League pedigrees makes a material difference to the workings of the Supreme Court. But the anecdote relayed by Graham—well, I’m not going to say it definitely didn’t happen, but let’s just say it stretches the bounds of credulity almost to the point of breakage.
First of all, Americans are not exactly known for keeping an eagle eye on the judiciary. In a 2018 C-SPAN survey of likely U.S. voters, a majority of respondents could not name a single sitting Supreme Court justice. Only 48 percent could—and more than half of those people cited Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is no longer on the court. How many of those people could tell you where any of the nine justices went to law school? These are likely voters, by the way, also known as the subset of Americans who actually pay a modicum of attention to the goings-on in Washington.
Are we to believe that three random individuals Graham met at the dump were not only all aware of the forthcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court, but also the name of one member on Biden’s shortlist, her perceived disposition (“nice lady”), and how her educational background differs from that of the remaining justices on the court? Get these guys a gig on CNN!
I asked Graham’s communications director, Kevin Bishop, for comment. In an email, he did not answer specific questions about the dump men—were they in three separate pickup trucks or did they come together? Did they all independently say that they didn’t like the Harvard-Yale thing, or did one of them say it and the others agree?—but he offered some possible explanations for why three random South Carolina men would know so much about a federal judge whom Graham just happens to favor for the Supreme Court.
“Keep in mind the Harvard-Yale angle has probably been discussed more in South Carolina than other locations,” Bishop wrote in the email, in part because Childs got her law degree at the University of South Carolina. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, has also been talking to the press about how great it would be for Childs to bring her state-school background to bear on cases before the Supreme Court.
OK, fine. Maybe—maybe—the type of person who would recognize their senator while hauling trash would also be the type of person to be following the news on the shortlisted federal judge from their home state, and three of those types of people happened to be at the dump at the same time as Graham.
That they were in pickup trucks, however, doesn’t say what Graham thinks it does.
In the story Graham told Politico, he called the garbage dump “the great equalizer,” the implication being that he was visiting a place where hifalutin senators mix with people of diverse social statuses—including salt-of-the-earth types, far removed from the social elite and politically powerful.
But pickup trucks are hella expensive. And most truck owners don’t even use them for their intended purpose. According to an annual survey of new vehicle owners from the consumer-research firm Strategic Vision, the vast majority almost never employ their rough-and-ready vehicles for towing or off-roading. Only 65 percent of pickup truck owners put anything in the bed of their trucks more than once a year!
Presumably, when they do, it’s to take trash to the dump.
In other words, the typical truck owner is a financially comfortable person who rarely has to do anything truck-y with his truck. And, hey, maybe that’s exactly the kind of guy who would join two of his friends in gushing to his senator about a potential Supreme Court nominee.
Update, Feb. 2, 2022, at 3:18 p.m.: HuffPost’s Igor Bobic reports that Graham has clarified that the incident took place at a “recycling center.” As far as I’m concerned, this new information has no bearing on the anecdote’s believability.
