Between now and November 4th, we in the U.S. will be caught up in the sea of political rhetoric surrounding the election of the next President of the United States. But it is important we all look beyond the mud that will be slung and the various claims that are being made to the long term impact the next President will likely have on this country for perhaps twenty years after he/she leaves office.

It is important to consider whether or not we should get out of Iraq; if we decide to leave, who can get us out most quickly; who can best fix the economic mess that will be left by the Bush Administration; and who can best help solve the emerging worldwide food crisis. But, relatively speaking, these are all largely short-term agenda items that will resolve themselves one way or another over the next eight years.

Equally, or perhaps even more, important, and something you will not hear preached from the campaign stump, is the long-term impact the next President will have by his or her appointments to the Supreme Court. Consider, if you will, the following table of the current members of the Court:

* - As of the beginning of the Court’s 2008-2009 session.

In the decade preceding the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist in September 2005 and the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor in January 2006, the Court had pretty consistently managed to find a centrist view that reflected the will of the American people. With Scalia and Thomas consistently holding to a strict “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution and Ginsberg and Breyer generally taking a “living Constitution” view when evaluating cases, it was often left to Rehnquist, Kennedy, Stevens, Souter and O’Connor to determine which way the Court would rule.

In numerous cases, the conservatives Rehnquist and Kennedy sided with Scalia and Thomas, while Souter and Stevens came down on the Ginsberg-Breyer side of the question. Thus, for much of her time on the court, Sandra Day O’Connor had the deciding vote, which, arguably, made her the most powerful woman in the United States.

The Nation was fortunate to have O’Connor in that position. Her tendency toward the middle of the road and her belief that the Court should reflect the feelings of the majority of U.S. citizens allowed the Court to fend off the demands of largely conservative, evangelical forces that tried to push the Court to the right while, at the same time, avoiding an overreactive swing to the left that could have devastated the country.

Now, though, Rehnquist has been replaced by John Roberts, who has an even more conservative view than did Rehnquist, and O’Connor’s centrism has been replaced by the ultra-conservatism of Alito. The current make-up of the court does not bode well for resisting ultra-conservative causes. And with the election of a Republican President, the situation is likely to grow even worse.

Assume, for a moment, that the Republicans retain control of the White House for the next eight years. During that time, it is highly likely that at least two, and possibly three, of the Liberal/Moderate seats held by Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg and Breyer will be replaced by ultra-conservatives cut from the same cloth as Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. At the same time, the conservatives on the court stand to lose, at most, only Scalia or Kennedy, and a Republican President would replace either of those by another ultra-conservative Justice. In the case of Kennedy, this would move the Court even further to the right.

The resulting situation is that in the next two to six years, the Supreme Court could become a consistent 7 – 2, or even 8 – 1, Conservative majority, paving the way for implementation of the right wing, evangelical agenda. And this makeup could easily last for as long as twenty years.

Among the items on the Conservative agenda are:

• Overturn Roe v. Wade and again make abortion illegal throughout the land
• Speed up executions for those who receive death penalty sentences
• Allow expansion of the Executive Branch in accordance with Bush-Cheney doctrines, including unwarranted individual privacy invasions by the government, exemptions from information disclosure and suspension of habeas corpus in the name of National Security
• Continue to allow the inhuman treatment of foreign nationals in the name of National Security
• Pave the way for the return of (largely Christian) prayer into public schools
• Expansion of “faith-based initiatives,” a euphemism for government funding of evangelical religious activities

At the end of the day, we all need to ask ourselves whether any of the short-term issues being argued from the podiums of McCain, Clinton and Obama are really as important as the portent of twenty years of a Supreme Court that is so far to the right that no matter who is President, the shredding of individual liberties begun under Bush and Cheney is allowed to continue unabated.