Since this nation's founding, the flows of the Potomac consistently have filled miles of newsprint and, more recently, prolonged periods of air time. For this next round, we need to define what is at stake and what boundary lines civility should require.

The Bush administration, and its great stage-setter Karl Rove, are going for a one-two confirmation punch. Having coordinated with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor her July 4th weekend retirement announcement, Rove has set into public play the Senate confirmation process for one associate justice and the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

I say two for several reasons. Politics in Washington should be viewed sequentially. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has nontreatable cancer and, in the near future, will either resign or die in office. So, Rove will put forward a confirmable, conservative nominee to fill the substantial chair of Justice O'Connor, perhaps Utah's Judge Michael McConnell of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The confirmation process for Judge McConnell will be less contentious than the recent round of judicial nominees because Judge McConnell is more respected as a scholar, and, frankly, is less predictable in his judicial decisions.

Having gotten the new associate justice confirmed, Rove and the White House then will move on to the chief justice position. Justice Rehnquist probably will resign in late September or October, after O'Connor's replacement is confirmed. Then, the Rove White House will nominate the new associate justice to be chief justice, and will nominate a "hard rock," more predictably conservative person as associate justice.

The sequence sets up a wonderful preface to the 2006 congressional elections where the Republican selling machine can delve into the politics of fear and loathing that has orchestrated several political victories since the 2000 election.

Democrats are not a tidy group. They like to debate, to wade through the confirmation mire in hopes of finding the truth and garnering some political advantage. Republicans, on the other hand, like order, or to sail across the surfaces of controversies, as long as they are in charge. Normally, these predispositions wouldn't be an issue in the context of confirmation hearings, but our judiciary has taken on a final arbiter role our country's founders never anticipated.

That is, as elective politics has become more professionalized (read: more money spent by campaigns), our elected leaders have become more focused on image and re-election than addressing substantive problems of our nation. The founding fathers wrote Article One of the Constitution to define the power of Congress because they believed it was to be the most powerful part of federal government.

Article Two dealt with the administration/chief executive of the nation, an important but subservient position to Congress. Article Three was somewhat of an afterthought. The judicial branch was seen as necessary to resolve private disputes consistent with the common-law legacy of England.

In the past four decades, beginning with Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education and accelerating with the Roe vs. Wade judicial decisions, the leaders of our legislative and executive branches have deferred to the non-elected judiciary to decide actual or perceived societal conflicts.

Because of this trend, the nomination of Supreme Court justices has taken on a thespian twist, rather than a straightforward exercise of political power. At times it is as if William Shakespeare has replaced John Locke in defining our political processes.

Until the Bush administration, the American Bar Association provided an independent review of judicial nominees. Bush has all but disemboweled this independent review by an organization whose members have to work, day in and day out, with the federal judges who are appointed.

For these two Supreme Court nominees, the ABA screening committee should be asked, in a serious manner, to review and comment on the nominees.

Second, the Senate Judiciary Committee should conduct public confirmation processes which maintain civility, and limit outside theatrics. I recognize this latter standard will be difficult to achieve, but I think the American public would be relieved to limit their knowledge of the nominee to what is actually presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee and not leaked to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.

Finally, at the Senate Judiciary Committee level, limit the endless litany on how distinguished are the nominees, and get to the heart of the matter - is the nominee qualified to hold for life a position of great political authority?

All sides, or any advocate, need to give at the onset of the hearings their definition of "qualified." Once the definitions are made, let the debate begin, with a defined beginning, an understandable and time-defined middle and then a vote.

Life is too short and interesting outside of the Potomac to be dominated by orchestrated, strident political voices dividing, rather than uniting, America.

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Pat Shea is a Salt Lake attorney, formerly director of the Bureau of Land Management during the Clinton administration.