Former House Speaker John Boehner says that he unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to step down from his post and serve as Bob Dole's vice presidential running mate on the 1996 Republican ticket.
Recounting that recruitment effort in an editorial piece published Monday by the Independent Journal Review, Boehner said Scalia, who passed away Saturday in Texas, was one of the most "consequential Justices of the past century" and acted "with grace, good humor, and a genuine respect for others," which would have made him an "excellent vice-president or president of the United States."
Dole, a former Kansas senator, won the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, and Boehner, who was serving as chairman of the House Republican Conference at the time, thought he "needed some rocket fuel" to shake up the presidential campaign, as Dole was running against incumbent President Bill Clinton and independent candidate Ross Perot, notes Politico.
"He needed a running mate who would act as a force multiplier for the argument that was the centerpiece of Dole's campaign, while also bringing an element of buzz and excitement that had been missing, particularly among Reagan-Gingrich conservatives yearning for a champion," wrote Boehner, a 12-term lawmaker who stepped down as Speaker last year.
Boehner said the solution was right in front of his eyes: "It was a brilliant, engaging, conservative Italian-American justice with a large, Catholic family, with potential cross-generational appeal and the ability to help reconstruct the broad coalition that had made Ronald Reagan president 16 years earlier. It was a pick nobody would have seen coming, and one with the potential to ignite the Dole campaign in a manner no one thought possible."
Boehner and his Chief of Staff Barry Jackson pitched the idea to Scalia at one of his favorite restaurants in Washington, D.C., as they ate a pepperoni and anchovies pizza.
"Scalia's reaction was a mixture of amusement and humility, tempered by an underlying seriousness of purpose that reflected his love of country and sense of obligation to it," Boehner wrote. "He asked very direct questions on both the practicality of running - including how a candidacy would impact his role on the Court, what Dole's reaction would be if he were to express willingness and, ironically, what the impact on the political process might be of a vacancy appearing on the Court in the months before a presidential election."
Boehner noted that Scalia had little desire to seek elective office, which made him even more appealing.
"He also understood what was at stake for the country, and felt compelled to listen, out of a sense of duty. And it was perhaps out of that same sense of duty that Scalia, while not saying 'yes,' also didn't say 'no,' Boehner wrote.
Scalia called a couple days later with his decision, quoting verbatim what Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes said decades earlier when he had been asked to run for office: "The possibility is too remote to comment upon, given my position."
Boehner passed the news on to then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, who "loved the idea," as well as Dole himself, who also reacted positively, saying, "He didn't say no, so that means yes."
Dole sensed that Scalia could better serve from the Supreme Court, but put him on a list of possible vice presidential contenders anyway, eventually decided to pair up with Jack Kemp, a former House Republican lawmaker and secretary of Housing and Urban Development, according to The Hill.
"We'll never know what might have been, had a Dole-Scalia ticket been forged in the summer of 1996," Boehner concluded. "But we do know our nation was blessed to have Antonin Scalia defending the Constitution on the highest court in the land for a generation. And the legacy he leaves is that of one of America's greatest justices, of any era."
