Wanted: Obama's Supreme Court Pick

WASHINGTON, D.C. - There's job opening here in Washington. The profile is high, the hours are long, and the person hiring is none other than the President of the United States.

The job is as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. But even Presidents have buyer's remorse when their picks go off in a different ideological direction from the President that picked them.

Supreme Court history is full of lessons in things don't always go as planned. Case in point: retiring Justice David Souter, nominated by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Justice Souter is part of a long tradition of justices who didn't stick to the politics of the President who picked them.

Ronald Reagan may have thought he was getting a conservative in Sandra Day O'Conner, but she wound up as a deciding vote for the court's liberal wing.

President Reagan fared better in his selection of Antonin Scalia, who stuck to his conservative reputation. So, too, has Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the court by George W. Bush.

But Democratic Presidents have also been caught in the Supreme switch, like when John F. Kennedy named Byron White in 1962. White went on to be a strong voice on the court's right wing until his retirement in 1993.

Michael Greenberger, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, says Kennedy's predecessor in the White House also had a bit of buyer's remorse. President Eisenhower named Chief Justice Earl Warren to the court and famously said it was the biggest mistake he made as president.

As far as President Obama's choice goes, Greenberger says as a former law professor, Obama is unlikely to choose someone on the far left, adding, "I think he's not going to pick an idealog, or even look for an idealog."