Most people I know think Andrew McDonald is a nice man, a good judge and deserved appointment as chief justice. Some—myself included—think a chief justice with experience such as McDonald’s, both in the legislative trenches and with the executive branch, might make him just the person to steer the judicial branch through the rocky shoals of our state of “permanent financial crisis,” which promises to become only more extreme when we get a new governor.

The bigger issue may be how l’affaire McDonald shines an uneasy light on the role of politics in judicial appointments. True, as a now-retired Supreme Court justice told a class of grammar-school kids I was showing through the New London courthouse a few years ago, a judge is a lawyer who is friends with the governor. Or at least with someone with enough political pull to get them onto the governor’s radar. It’s no secret that there usually are many more names on the judicial selection list than judge slots open. (Many are called, few are chosen.) Yet our system of judicial appointment, though inevitably political, has got to be way better than the process in many states where judges and justices are elected.