I don’t think I’ve heard it that way, but yes, it was widely reported that she was determined to have a Republican appoint her replacement. The Wall Street Journal reported that, although the comments about O’Connor wanting to retire were attributed to her husband, not O’Connor herself.
Obama will only be 55 when he leaves office. He could easily put in 20 or more years on the Court.
Assuming that he cannot count on the next President appointing him to the SC, what would be the public reaction if the President appointed himself after the 2016 election (having to resign a month early) as a recess appointment and letting Biden take over until 20 January 2017 and hoping the new Senate approves the appointment?
Of course, the timing would take coordinating with Ginsburg retiring.
That would be hilarious. The kind of entertainment you just can’t pay to get.
Wow, I stand corrected. I had no idea they actually do this.
If we pretend Obama is likely to get nominated at all, it’s not going to happen right after he leaves office. Taft, to use the only historical example, was nominated eight years after his one term as president ended. At 60 to 63 Obama would be one of the oldest Supreme Court nominees in recent memory: Ginsburg joined the court at 60, and before her, the last justice to join the court at 60 or older was Powell in 1972. And the same is still pretty much true even if you have him nominated in his late 50s.
No problem. Now, go get me some coffee, MR. 2004 join date! 
There is no reason to use the Taft example as the basis for any assumptions. It is a single data point. If Obama leaves office with high approval ratings, there’d be no reason not to nominate him at the first opportunity.
That’d be a reason, in fact.
I’ve already given several reasons beyond the age issue.
The delay in Taft’s nomination wasn’t due to his age. It was because Taft was a Republican and Wilson, a Democrat, succeeded him as President for eight years. If Hughes had been elected in 1916, he might well have appointed Taft to a vacancy on the court (although in reality there were no vacancies in what would have been Hughes’s term of office). Would have made an interesting symmetry; Taft had appointed Hughes to the court and Hughes would have appointed Taft to the court.
I didn’t say it had to do with his age. I was using Taft, apparently wrongly, as an illustration of my idea that if a president were ever nominated for the Supreme Court again, it wouldn’t be right after he left office. It would be some years later to reduce the shadow he casts over his successor, to let any controversies around him fade, and to avoid any kind of Constitutional discomfort Congress and the public might feel about the idea of someone quickly going from the top of the executive branch to one of the top spots in the judicial branch.
I don’t think he’d take it - because he and his wife have no desire to live in the DC area for the next 20 years. I also htinthe work would be too mundane for his taste. Same rooms, same people, day after day; he’d chafe.
Re: Scalia there’s a joke around here that his wife votes Republican but prays for a Democratic win -> because she knows he’ll never die with a Democrat in office. 
Why? Because you say so? Why should any sitting president feel bound to follow the particulars of the Taft appointment? At least one distinction has already been pointed out to you. Taft was succeeded by a president of another party. There are others, more on which below.
Apart from age (which is a non-issue, as Obama is quite capable of putting in 20 years on the Court) your reasons for not appointing Obama seem to boil down to this:
- It wouldn’t be a popular move/it would look bad so soon after his presidency.
- It would require the president making the appointment to subsume his/her ego in an unlikely way.
Your first point is really just an assumption your part. But the opposite could just as easily be true. Clinton left office after two terms with an approval rating over 60% in spite of the Lewinsky affair. Reagan’s approval rating was near 60% when he left.
Assuming Obama leaves office with similar approval ratings (entirely possible if the economy turns around), and assuming he is untainted by serious scandal, the public might well rejoice at his appointment, happy to see him continuing to work on their behalf.
As to your second point, you are failing to recognize Obama’s position as a historical figure. (A thing which makes him unique and sets him apart from Taft.) This is the first black president we’re talking about, and he has an intensely loyal base among African Americans owing to that fact. Whatever a politician’s ego may be, they are creatures of self-preservation above all. A Supreme Court appointment for a figure as intensely worshiped as Obama could ensure loyalty, and more importantly, high turnout, among African American voters for many years to come. (You may rightly point out that black Americans voting for the Democrat has been a given in recent years, but I am talking about energizing that base to get them to the polls.)
Which brings me to the only downside I can see for such an appointment. If you appoint Obama to the Supreme Court in your first term, he cannot take the stage to speak for you (a la Bill Clinton) at the Democratic Convention in 2020.
“Subsume” should be “subdue.” Sorry.
Because it is the only remotely relevant data point.
And I acknowledged that point. I still think it’s reasonable to believe it’d be more likely to happen further down the road than in the year or two after he leaves office.
It’s an assumption, yes. But I think it’s a reasonable one. Even if Obama remains personally popular, that doesn’t mean the public would like the idea of immediately putting him on the court. And I really don’t think the Senate would like that idea.
I’m sure that was in spite of the Lewinsky affair or if it was aided by the stupidity of that entire episode. But even if he’d been succeeded by Al Gore, I don’t think you would have seen a lot of popular support for Clinton being nominated to the Supreme Court. I haven’t heard anyone advocating for that idea since Obama took office, although early in his term you would hear someone talk about the possibility of nominating Hillary Clinton (which isn’t happening either).
I’m skeptical that nominating Obama in 2017 would do anything for turnout in 2020, much less 2024 or 2028 or 2032. And the Democrats are going to be in trouble if they can’t find a way to keep black voters engaged other than turning to Barack Obama over and over. But that doesn’t address the idea of the next president wanting to put his or her stamp on the office. This is why ex-presidents occupy such a weird space in national politics. One of the last things any president would do, I think, is give his/her predecessor a permanent position that will give the ex-president a public forum to review anything the new president does. Like I said, the president-turned-justice will probably be on the court longer than the new president would be in office. That’s a remarkably egoless move for some of the most egocentric people on planet Earth.
He could if he wanted to. It’s against precedent, but no more so than putting the last president of your party on the Supreme Court.