redblueamerica.com

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Though he has been Chief Justice of the United States for nearly three years, John Roberts still seems to be a bit of a cipher. Yes, we know he's a conservative -- he wouldn't have the job he does today if a lot of well-placed people on the right didn't have a lot of trust in him. But I'm still not certain what that actually means for the court, and thus for the United States; I sense we still haven't seen a defining "Roberts Court" moment.

The partial-birth abortion decision, you say? That had Anthony Kennedy's fingerprints on it. All those pro-business decisions? Even liberal members of the court are joining those. The Hamdan decision on military tribunals for terror suspects? Roberts had to abstain.

So when came to Lawrence tonight to lecture on the University of Kansas campus, I was eager to attend and do a bit of Kremlinology. What would John Roberts say that would would give us a peek into his famous balls-and-strikes mind? What would he tell us that would help us see the future of jurisprudence in America?

And this is what we got: the Louisiana Purchase.

If that sounds like a high school civics lesson, well, it actually sounded liked a high school civics lesson -- lifted, it seemed, almost straight from the "Adventures in American History" textbook and delivered by Roberts in a clipped, read-along voice leavened only by the occasional (very dry) joke and nary the snappy soundbite. Somewhere in the middle, my mind started to drift.

Then it snapped back again. Because -- potentially -- Roberts was telling us something very important about American power.

I'll spare you many the details of the Louisiana Purchase, as presented by Roberts. Suffice it to say that President Thomas Jefferson, with Secretary of State James Madison and negotiators James Monroe and Robert Livingston, managed one of the great land bargains in world history: A bit more than $11 million for the land that would comprise much of the American west and transform the United States from a collection of tiny coastal colonies into a power that spanned a continent.

But here's the interesting part: Jefferson didn't think he had the Constitutional authority to negotiate the purchase. Before his presidency, Roberts said, Jefferson had bitterly opposed the Jay Treaty governing relations between the United States and Britain because he thought treaty-making power was limited only to peace treaties. And he proposed amending the Constitution to allow the purchase. Madison took a broader view of the Constitution, and worried the deal might collapse if it had to wait on approval of a new amendment, convinced Jefferson the effort was sound.

"Sometimes the best deals are lost if the lawyers take too long," Roberts said, endorsing the work of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Livingston. Jefferson, he said, "was a good CEO."

And that was pretty much the speech. Which leaves us with two ways of looking at Roberts' views of American history:

* That America was blessed to have a president who could get advice that conflicted with his own opinions and allow himself to be persuaded for the good of the country. Which, yes, it would be nice to have a president like that.

Or:

* That America was blessed to have a president who, when push came to shove, was willing to ignore his own views of the Constitution in order to create an empire.

And if that's what Roberts believes: Uh-oh.

We'll see, won't we? The Roberts Court is bound to have a defining moment sooner or later.