Pivotal Politics,Presidential Capital,and Supreme Court Nominations

We analyze the Supreme Court nomination process in order to provide a general explanation of presidents' propensity to win confirmation battles even in the face of an ideologically hostile Senate. The analysis serves two purposes. First, we argue that employing the conventional measure of the Senate's power to constrain the president's choice of nominees–the median senator–provides an inaccurate picture of this process. In its stead we argue that the filibuster pivot (or the sixtieth most liberal or conservative senator) more accurately captures the Senate's power over the president (Krehbiel 1998). Second, we argue that even under this more stringent spatial constraint, presidents still have the ability to win most confirmation battles with the Senate. Indeed, our results indicate that presidents often overcome situations where the Senate should reject their nominees, or where it should force them to make a less desirable choice, by invoking political capital.