Hamilton - Coats = Hruska?

Federalist No. 78: "[A] voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free government.  To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable bulk, and must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them.  Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges."

Dan Coats, former GOP Senator who is shepherding Harriet Miers's nomination through the Senate: "If great intellectual powerhouse is a qualification to be a member of the court and represent the American people and the wishes of the American people and to interpret the Constitution, then I think we have a court so skewed on the intellectual side that we may not be getting representation of America as a whole."  (For the story, see here.)

Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Neb.): "Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?"

I think these quotes mostly speak for themselves.  I will add that there are many who believe the Supreme Court should, in some sense, be a representative body in certain senses.  But of course it is possible to be white or black or Hispanic, from a rich or poor background, evangelical or atheist, and to be an "intellectual powerhouse."  That leaves two readings of Coats's quote.  Either he means to send the signal that "intellectuals" are an identifiable and undesirable class -- a view with which I have some sympathy, and which lays bare certain kinds of social schisms on the right, but which seems to me to have been both inconsistently applied and, in any event, to fail to recognize that it is possible to be brilliant and distinguished without being a member of the academic class.  Or he means to suggest exactly what Hruska did: that mediocrity is not a quality to be avoided, but a constituency to be cultivated and represented.  And this is her champion on the Hill speaking?