Ambassadorships are often key signaling devices.  Two weeks ago, for example, President Obama gave China Jon Huntsman as ambassador.  In addition to being a rising Republican star, Huntsman is a proficient Mandarin speaker. He has lived and worked in East Asia and has an adopted Chinese daughter.  Additionally, he served as Ambassador to Singapore in the early 1990s.   Huntsman’s nomination is a clear sign to the Chinese that the United States is committed to strengthening ties.  At the press conference announcing his nomination, President Obama noted that: “This ambassadorship is as important as any in the world.”

What then to make of the appointment of Tim Roemer? While China receives a potential future president in Huntsman, India receives in Tim Roemer a six-term Indiana representative who has little connection with the region.

With the opening of the Indian economy in the early 1990s, and increasing military ties, India has emerged as one of the United States’ most important strategic partners in the 21st century. The United States is now India’s largest trading partner and also the largest source of direct foreign investment. Both nations’ navies have conducted joint exercises, and in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks there has been a renewed effort at intelligence sharing and coordination.  The Indian military has turned to American suppliers after many years of relying on Soviet and Russian military technology.  The passage of the civilian nuclear agreement in Congress allows for India to purchase nuclear technology from the United States.  The appointment of a former Congressman with little involvement in the region does nothing to highlight the importance of this growing relationship.

Roemer does have an interest in national security and foreign affairs: he has worked on non-proliferation issues and serves on the bipartisan committee on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Yet such work suggests he might have been better employed with an appointment to Pakistan, a nation with questions about the security of their nuclear arsenal.

The appointment of Roemer is just the latest in a series of steps which suggest that the Obama administration does not fully appreciate America’s relationship with India.  At the G-20 summit in April, Obama raised eyebrows in India with his remark that the tax code should be rewritten to limit outsourcing: “It’s a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India than if you create one in Buffalo, New York.”  And during her first overseas trip as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton traveled to Asia, but did not include a stop in India.

Most troubling though are the attempts by the Obama administration to link the dispute over Kashmir to the growing turmoil in Pakistan.  During the campaign, Obama suggested that the US might play a more active role in brokering a resolution to the conflict. The Obama administration believes that resolving the Kashmir dispute will both help the Pakistani government earn the support of their people and allow the Pakistani military to redirect their armed forces against the ever-growing Islamic insurgency in their country.  New Delhi immediately dismissed the idea, but it will be interesting to see if Roemer once again pushes for an American-mediated settlement.  While promoting stability in Pakistan is important, if Obama and Roemer deal with India by asking: “What’s best for Pakistan?” they may alienate an even more important long-term strategic ally.

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Yet Estrada’s nomination unleashed a furious Democratic opposition. A staffer to Sen. Dick Durban, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted that liberal interest groups saw Estrada as “dangerous”, because he was “Latino and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.” The memo stressed that these groups wanted to “hold Estrada off as long as possible.” 

Democrats, many of whom now praise the nomination of Sotomayor, mobilized to deny Estrada even the courtesy of a Senate vote. While one may justify the use of such extreme tactics for a Supreme Court nomination, the Democratic filibuster to avoid voting on his nomination was the first ever used against the nomination of a judge to a circuit court. Despite the efforts of Republicans to force a Senate vote, after seven cloture votes (a Senate process designed to bring debate to an end) and twenty-eight months, Estrada gracefully requested that the president withdraw his nomination. Gleefully, Sen. Kennedy claimed the defeat of Estrada as “a victory for the Constitution” while Democratic Sen. Zell Miller sadly noted that Estrada had “become the latest victim of Washington’s partisan, obstructionist politics.”

Forgotten after the battle was that LULAC (the League of United Latin American Citizens), the largest and oldest Hispanic advocacy group in the nation had unequivocally called on the Senate to confirm an “exceptionally well qualified candidate.” The American Bar Association, certainly no ally to conservative candidates, had certified him as “unanimously well qualified” – their highest rating. Even NBC News noted during a report on the Estrada stand-off that Democrats did not “dispute Estrada’s qualifications”

Why then one may ask the Democratic enthusiasm for Sotomayor where Miguel Estrada was not even allowed an up or down vote? Comparing their academic pedigrees, there is little difference. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and then from Yale Law School, where she served as editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, Sotomayor served as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan before entering private practice in a small New York firm. Surprisingly, Sotomayor was nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY in 1991 and only six years later nominated to the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Estrada also graduated from distinguished institutions: magna cum laude from Columbia University and then magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was also editor of the Harvard Law Review. Upon his graduation, Estrada served as a law clerk to Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse, a well-respected African-American judge on the Second Circuit, and followed this stint with a clerkship in Supreme Court Justice Kennedy’s chambers. In the legal profession, there is no more sought after position: 40,000 new lawyers graduate each year from American law schools, yet each year only 36 are selected to clerk for a Supreme Court justice. Estrada followed this position with a stint at a prestigious New York law firm, before reentering public service as an assistant U.S. attorney in the influential Southern district of New York. This job was followed by an appointment as assistant Solicitor General in the Justice Department in the Clinton Administration during which time he represented the United States government in numerous appellate matters.

Yet, despite this stellar resume, the same Senators who stand ready to place Sotomayor on the Supreme Court refused to even vote on Estrada’s nomination. Perhaps the new requirement of judicial “empathy” might be the difference? Sotomayor was, after all, born in the Bronx and grew up in a housing project in that borough. After the loss of her father, she was raised by her single mother. Yet, Miguel Estrada may also bring much “empathy” to judicial decision making. Not only is he a Honduran immigrant, but only reached the United States at the age of 17, with little knowledge of the English language. He joined his single mother and in five years had mastered English and navigated a new culture well enough to graduate with distinction from Columbia University. Whatever challenges Sotomayor may have experienced in her life, it is clear that Miguel Estrada has also overcome many struggles.

Immigrants of Hispanic descent should take pride in the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the highest court in the land. But they would do well to remember that the very party which so trumpets her nomination also acted to deny another individual of similar ethnicity and origins a chance at reaching the pinnacle of the legal profession. Sonia Sotomayor is poised to assume a seat on the Supreme Court. Miguel Estrada, on the other hand, equally qualified by any measure is not a judge, at any level, and not even employed in public service.

Only in America.