“Measure in terms of five things, use these assessments to make comparisons, and thus find out what the conditions are.  The five things are the Way, the weather, the terrain, the leadership, and discipline.”

The Art of War
Sun Tzu

According to the comments of Du Mu and others in The Art of War, The Way means humaneness and justice; the weather simply means the right season (neither too hot or too cold); the terrain means the lay of the land; leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage and sternness, each appropriate to its function, all working together in the correct measure; and, discipline means organization, chain of command, and logistics.

Other scribes will offer their analysis, legal and political, of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to replace Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court, but let’s look at it from Sun Tzu’s viewpoint for just a moment.

President Barack Obama has stated previously that he wants a Justice who will bring some empathy to the bench, as well as a fundamental legal sense of fairness.  By selecting an Hispanic woman as his nominee, the president has followed The Way on its face value.

While the Republicans and its right wing, including Limbaugh the Entertainer, will no doubt find fault with some very brief and harmless remarks Judge Sotomayor has made about judicial activism, the issue is a manufactured one on its merits.  Nonetheless, there will be a fight.

The season may end up being just a tad warm, but if the Minnesota election results end up being certified by the Secretary of State, there, and Al Franken is seated, the Democrats will have 60 senate seats.  Filibuster-proof at that point, the lay of the land in the senate would seem to favor the President’s choice, and may even find some moderate Republican support in a couple of votes.

The President’s approval rating remains high, and the American public does seem to find him trustworthy.  Certainly, his intelligence is not in question, even by the most extreme Republican right wing elements, who question only his judgment.

The degree of discipline he is able to exercise over the senate, or those who will control the senate, remains to be seen, but it is to be remembered that this first man of color to reside in the White House was elected by running the most disciplined and well organized political campaign the country has seen in recent history.

The President is the leader of his party, and his party does control the senate.  While majority leader Harry Reid has shown some recent low profile in courage on the Gitmo closing issue, he’s not likely to take on his president this time around, and the president’s chain of command within the party structure would seem pretty solid.

The nomination of Judge Sotomayor is a muscle-flexing act on the president’s part.  He has the higher ground on the field of battle, the superior forces in the senate, and the leadership skills to get this job done.

Republicans are ready for a fight, of course.  Judge Sotomayor has already been labeled a “liberal judicial activist of the first order,” code language for opposition by the political right.  They will flail and show their bluster, and Limbaugh the Entertainer will huff and puff, but it will be Shakespearean in nature – - tales told by an idiot, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The Art of War recommends that no battle be fought until it has already been won. The president knows the battle is in hand, and is already looking down the road at future battles.  Nominating an Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court, and husbanding her confirmation through the process,  will serve to recruit more troops for those future battles.

Sun Tzu would approve.