Dressed to kill?

Justice Rehnquist's sartorial sins

National Interests by Gary Griffith

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist will be presiding over the Senate trial of the president this week, enjoying increased visibility. Well, maybe not enjoying. He does not allow his Supreme Court to be televised, and we have not seen many images of this man in action.

The first thing everyone has noticed is that Rehnquist wears gold stripes on the sleeves of his judicial robe. If you have been living under a rock and have not heard the explanation for this yet, it is that Rehnquist watched the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Iolanthe a while ago, saw similar stripes on a costume, and decided to add them to his own robe.

There was no one to stop him from doing this. He is the top honcho of the top court, and he is appointed for life.

His wife, Natalie, a former Junior Leaguer from San Diego, might have talked him out of it, but she died in 1991. He has not remarried, so there is no one to tell him about his ear hair, either.

Most Americans have seen Mr. Rehnquist's silly costumes only in the Senate chamber. But he walks around Capitol Hill all the time looking like a badly dressed homeless person. In the wintertime he wears a cap with earflaps that seems to have been handed down by Tom Poston when his last sitcom died.

Last June, Rehnquist went to another Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Mikado, at Wolf Trap, and met with the cast afterward. So perhaps we may see him in a pink kimono for final arguments. Worse yet, he posed for a photograph with the cast. He's the doofus in the beige car coat. It looks about right for cleaning out the gutters, but not for an evening of theater -- even outdoor theater.

Liberals, by the way, have more problems with Rehnquist's politics than with his clothes. He is, after all, the leader of the Supreme Court's right wing. He has helped to reverse the judicial activism of the 1960s, and he reads the Constitution as allowing states to do silly and even unfair things as long as they are not strictly prohibited. Thus, it is okay with him if states allow prayer in public schools or prohibit abortions.

He was brought into government by President Nixon, who appointed him as an assistant attorney general in 1968. Rehnquist arrived from Phoenix wearing Elvis-style sideburns on his cheeks and desert boots on his feet. His sartorial taste did not improve when Nixon appointed him a Supreme Court justice in 1972, or when President Reagan made him chief justice in 1986.

It was, of course, Rehnquist's politics -- not his haberdashery -- that attracted Nixon to him. They shared certain views. A Swedish-American from Milwaukee (hardly the nation's fashion capital), Rehnquist grew up in the all-white suburbs and adopted their provincial view.

In the course of his two confirmation hearings, his opponents discovered "covenants" in deeds to his home in Phoenix that prohibited its sale to nonwhites, and to his summer home in Vermont that prohibited its sale to Jews. Rehnquist said he hadn't read the deeds. He was probably out shopping for hats. But suffice it to say that neither Nixon nor Reagan advanced the judge's career because they expected him to champion minority causes.

Conservatives, whatever other shortcomings they might have, usually dress decently. They wear shined leather shoes, Brooks Brothers suits, overcoats with scarves. That sort of thing. But Rehnquist doesn't get it. When he arrived at the Capitol last week to begin presiding over what we are told will be the most somber trial in living memory, he showed up with some kind of big-and-tall men's casual winter jacket zipped up over his suit, as if he were on a mission to the 7-Eleven. This is not just a conservative, but a dangerous conservative.

It hasn't become entirely clear yet how Rehnquist will affect the trial. He was the single justice who ruled against the president's lawyers last year when they tried to claim "executive" and "protective" privileges to keep White House officials and Secret Service agents from testifying before the Starr grand jury. Most likely, he will merely act as something of a timekeeper and parliamentarian, hulking over the Senate chamber like some badly dressed turkey vulture. But we can expect him to side with the Senate majority on any close calls. So brace yourself, America. The trial of the century is going to be presided over by a man who does not know when to wear a topcoat. Bad taste and a lifetime appointment -- seems to me like a nasty combination.

Gary Griffith is the Washington bureau chief for Hearst-Argyle Television.