Why can't we (and they) be friends?

Choose your friends carefully -- especially if you want to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Leah Ward Sears, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court from 2005-09, should know that by now.

She's reportedly made President Obama's short list of potential nominees to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. But her friendship with a member of the nation's highest court makes some folks deem her unworthy of joining it.

No, Sears doesn't share pal Clarence Thomas' conservative judicial perspective. She describes herself as "a moderate with a progressive streak" -- an appraisal echoed by most judicial experts.

But she does share a harmonious relationship with the fellow Savannah area native. She didn't know him until the early 1990s, when he called to commiserate with her as she caught some public grief while rising the legal ladder.

That surprise introduction impressed Sears -- and persuaded her that despite the widespread condemnation of Thomas by liberals (particularly black liberals), he's a swell guy. Their friendship has grown through the years.

Too bad that when she invited Thomas to see her sworn in as Georgia's top judge, some black leaders skipped the historic occasion rather than endure his presence.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, widely esteemed veteran of the Civil Rights Movement and longtime head of the Southern Leadership Conference, cited Thomas' inclusion as his reason for skipping that event. Nearly a decade earlier, Lowery had decreed that Thomas "has become to many in the African-American community what Benedict Arnold was to the United States, a deserter; what Judas was to Jesus, a traitor; and what Brutus was to Caesar, an assassin."

Georgia state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, another no-show, told The Washington Post last year that there aren't "any black people on the Supreme Court," adding, "It's not just the pigmentation of skin. It is philosophy, and even though Justice Thomas has our skin, he really does not vote the way African-Americans would have him vote."

Ponder his premise: Black Americans "would have" judges vote only one way.

Now ponder this prescient lament expressed long ago, in Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer," by another civil rights hero -- Jackie Robinson: "It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but the political parties are segregated."

At least June's Republican primary field for our 1st Congressional District seat isn't segregated.

Back to the man Harvard Professor Randall Kennedy's aptly dubs "the most vilified black official in the history of the United States." That assessment's from Kennedy's book "Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal," which devotes a chapter to "The Case Of Clarence Thomas."

Thomas draws bitter wrath (and not just from black people), in large part, because he dares to question not just the fairness but the effectiveness of affirmative action.

That's a provocative position for a man who himself was a veritable quota hire by President Bush the First. And Thomas has been a reliable high-court protégé (his critics prefer the term "lackey") of hard-liner Atonin Scalia in opposing not just racial set-asides but "voting rights" aimed at boosting minority participation.

Yet should that disqualify Thomas from friendship with another prominent jurist who grew up 11 miles from where he was born and raised?

Should guilt by friendly association disqualify Sears from becoming the fourth woman, third black person and first black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court?

Absurdly asked to justify asking Thomas to attend her swearing-in ceremony, Sears told NPR five years ago: "He is from Savannah, or Pin Point right outside Savannah. I am from Savannah. We're both African-Americans. We both sit on the same -- you know, similar courts."

And: "I don't agree with some of his rulings. He doesn't agree with some of my rulings. He is a friend and I was really pleased that he would come and stand with me on such a historic day. We need to in this country begin again to raise civil discourse to another level. I mean, we shout and scream and yell and get very little accomplished, but you can disagree very much with the next guy and still be friends and acquaintances."

Neither side of America's political divide has a monopoly on "civil discourse" -- or on the self-defeating urge to "shout and scream and yell" (see the columns on this page by Rich Lowry and Kathleen Parker).

But having some buddies who disagree with you does tend to liven up friendly conversations.

Frank Wooten is assistant editor of The Post and Courier. His e-mail is wooten@postandcourier.com.