WHY DID VERRILLI SCREW UP? HERE'S A THEORY

A lot of people who covered yesterday's Supreme Court oral arguments came away with the impression that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli did a godawful job of defending the Obama health care law -- but is it possible that he has a good excuse for that?

Adam Serwer:

... [Verrilli's] defense of Obamacare on Tuesday may go down as one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court....

"What is left?" Justice Antonin Scalia demanded of Verrilli, "if the government can do this, what can it not do?" ...

The months leading up to the arguments made it clear that the government would face this obvious question. The law's defenders knew that they had to find a simple way of answering it so that its argument didn't leave the federal government with unlimited power.... Verrilli was unable to do so concisely, leaving the Democratic appointees on the court to throw him life lines, all of which a flailing Verrilli failed to grasp....

Yes, but didn't every plugged-in legal and political insider tell us that this part of the case would be a slam-dunk for the administration?

In the orgy of panel discussions, interviews and feature articles previewing this week's arguments, law professors, Supreme Court litigators and journalists confidently predicted that the justices would uphold the individual mandate as a logical extension of the federal government's well-established ability to regulate the health insurance market.

Harvard law professor Charles Fried, a solicitor general himself in the Reagan era, famously promised a couple of years ago to eat his Kangaroo skin hat if the Supreme Court struck down the law.

All the insiders tell us that the Supreme Court, whatever its members' ideology, is an institution that tries to be fair, that respects precedent, and that is highly aware of maintaining its reputation for impartiality. For the insiders, all that added up to a Court that simply had to uphold the mandate.

Meanwhile, we non-insiders aren't fooled -- a recent Bloomberg poll found that 75% of Americans believe the Court's health care decision will be based on politics, not the legal merits.

But if Verrilli shared the insider view, why should we be surprised that he wasn't prepared for total war? Didn't all the smart people say this would be a piece of cake?