Pat Buchanan has written another top notch column this week, as usual.

Buchanan rightly defends President Bush against the charges of racism, but notes that Bush is “approaching the greatest crisis of his presidency,” and that in this crises, the president has already “signaled weakness”:

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a splendid conservative jurist and public man, had not even been laid to rest at Arlington before Bush held a press conference to announce his successor: John Roberts.

The unseemly haste in elevating Roberts suggests Bush is desperate to divert attention from the New Orleans disaster. And where Roberts had originally been named to replace a social liberal, Sandra Day O’Connor, thus strengthening the conservative bloc, he is now to replace his mentor, thus simply maintaining the existing balance on the court the president is committed to change.

When Roberts is confirmed – Democrats now intend to cut him up – the constitutionalist bloc will still consist of, at best, only three justices: Scalia, Thomas and Roberts. And while Roberts is a man of brilliance, integrity, judicial temperament and wit, and showed nerve and grit as a young aide to Attorney General William French Smith and President Ronald Reagan, he is unscarred in public battle.

Unlike the man who should have been Bush’s choice.

Antonin Scalia, a generation older than Roberts, with near 20 years experience on the high court, has scar tissue aplenty, all of it acquired in battle for the philosophy and beliefs Bush claims to hold dear. He is the veteran warrior for constitutionalism and intellectual heavyweight of the court. To pass over Scalia for Roberts is like passing over George Patton and giving command of the 3rd Army to a brilliant young staff officer from the Pentagon.