The White House is quietly choreographing every aspect of Elena Kagan's march toward a lifetime term on the Supreme Court.It's highly shapeable because there's bigger things to worry about presently. But that's about to change. Kagan will get her hearings soon and it's going to be right back into the crucible for her. She might want to shoot BP a thank you card.
From working to dampen the impact of revelations about her stint in the Clinton White House to going out of their way to trumpet praise from conservative backers, members of President Barack Obama's team are using every available tool to burnish Kagan's image.
Take the public release of tens of thousands of pages of files from Kagan's time as an aide to former President Bill Clinton. The Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, working with White House lawyers, has for two weeks in a row made the records available on Friday afternoons, a time when few people are paying attention. That puts stories about the records in Saturday newspapers, when even fewer are reading.
The last installment of those documents – about 11,000 e-mails Kagan wrote and about 70,000 more she received while working in Clinton's White House – is scheduled to be released on Friday, a little more than a week before the Senate Judiciary Committee is to begin Kagan's confirmation hearings.
The White House is pressing hard to define Kagan for Americans before her opponents can. A new poll shows the public's opinion is still highly shapeable.
Very, very quietly, that is.
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