President Obama called on the Senate to "rise above day-to-day politics" and consider his as-yet-unnamed pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.
"I understand the stakes. I understand the pressure that Republican senators are undoubtedly under," he said Tuesday. "The court is now divided on many issues, and this will be a deciding vote. And there are a lot of Republican senators who are going to be under a lot of pressure from various special interests and various constituencies and many of their voters to not let any nominee go through, no matter who I nominate. But that's not how the system is supposed to work."
Obama said objections from Republican senators that Obama shouldn't be able to nominate someone in his last year defies the Constitution itself. "I'm amused when I hear people who are supposed to be strict interpreters of the Constitution suddenly reading into it all kinds of provisions that are not there," he said.
"Part of the problem we have here is that we’ve almost become accustomed to how obstructionist the Senate has become to pending nominations," he said. "This argument is just an extension of what we’ve seen in the Senate generally, and not just judicial nominees."
Obama stopped short of tipping his hand in terms of who he would nominate. When asked whether his comments should be interpreted as suggesting a moderate, he said, "You shouldn’t assume anything about the qualifications of the nominee other than that they’re well qualified."
"There's not going to be any particular position on any particular issue that determines whether I nominate them, but I'm going to nominate somebody who is indisputably qualified for the seat," he said.
And Obama discounted the idea of a temporary recess appointment to serve through the end of the congressional session. "I think that we have more than enough time to go through regular order, regular processes," he said.
Obama discussed the nomination process in a news conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where he hosted members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a two-day summit.
Speaking about the nomination for the first time since hearing of Scalia's death Saturday, Obama prefaced his remarks by reiterating his condolences to the Scalia family.
"Obviously, Justice Scalia and I had different political orientations, and we probably would have disagreed on specific cases, but there's no doubt that he was a giant on the Supreme Court," he said. "It’s important before we rush into all the politics of this to take stock of somebody who made an enormous contribution the the United States."
