[Rider on the Rain]

Has a Democrat President in the last 50 years ever picked a good judge?

Yes. John Kennedy appointed his former college buddy, Byron White, who turned out to be a staunch conservative.

[Tarkin]

Justice White was OK, but he wasn't a "staunch conservative", I'd rather call him a moderate and an advocate of judicial restraint. Remember that he also often sided with liberals. For example he sided with the ultra-liberals in Bakke (Brennan, Marshall and Blackmun) who claimed that racial quotas were permissible in college admissions, when even Stevens sided with moderates and conservatives in that case. He was also the fifth vote in Furman which effectively suspended the death penalty (the other four were Douglas, Brennan, Stewart and Marshall) and he also wrote a 6-3 opinion which declared capital punishment for rape unconstitiunoal.