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Published Oct. 6. Again, this is a small (16,000 circ) daily in a very conservative area of Pennsylvania. I have to make my points fairly quietly or risk losing the column or the newspaper vital business. So if this isn't strong enough for some of you....
Also available online at:
www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/10/07/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txt
Bush’s court choice pleases no one
By Rich Lewis, October 6, 2005
Darned if I can figure out why President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
Certainly, he didn’t do it to please his “base” — Evangelical Christians and other social conservatives longing for a guaranteed fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative movement’s flagship magazine, The Weekly Standard, immediately declared himself to be “disappointed, depressed and demoralized.”
Rush Limbaugh, calling it “a pick that was made from weakness,” finds it hard to resist being “depressed” and “angry.”
Pat Buchanan found the choice “deeply disheartening,” adding Miers’ qualifications “are nonexistent.”
George Will said the nomination threatened to reduce the Supreme Court “to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.”
Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a powerful Republican conservative on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said if Miers doesn’t convince him she would vote to overturn Roe, there is a “good chance” that he will vote against her. At the same time, Brownback confesses that Miers can’t say how she’d vote on Roe or any case — which puts him in a tricky spot.
The president had a long list of candidates — including many women — with much more impressive resumes and who also had the conservative movement’s seal of approval as iron-clad anti-Roe votes.
So what was he thinking? It’s hard to believe a president who repeatedly declares his readiness to take on a fight and do the “hard work” would chicken out of a fight with... who? Teddy Kennedy? Hillary Clinton? NARAL?
The president held a press conference on Tuesday in which he tried desperately with winks, nods and coded language to communicate the message that Miers is exactly what the conservatives want.
“You’ve got to understand,” Bush pleaded, “because of our closeness, I know the character of the person.” He insisted Miers was a “strict constructionist” — code for “anti-Roe.”
At the same time, the president said flat-out he has no “recollection” of ever talking to Miers about her views on abortion. So how could he know enough to promise his base that she’s a solid vote for their side?
John Yoo, a deputy attorney general during Bush’s first term, hit the nail on the head when he said during an interview on PBS that Bush had made a “faith-based nomination.”
But as Cathie Adams, president of the ultra-conservative Texas Eagle Forum, told the Washington Post, “President Bush is asking us to have faith in things unseen. We only have that kind of faith in God.”
Also strange was Bush’s insistence that Miers will not change her stripes once she’s on the court.
“I don’t want to put somebody on the bench who’s this way today and changes,” Bush said. “I’m interested in finding somebody who shares my philosophy today and will have that same philosophy 20 years from now.”
But Miers has radically changed her life before. She was once a Democrat and a supporter of abortion rights. She adopted a new religion and church when she was 34 years old.
Who can say she won’t undergo similar changes in the future? Faith-based, indeed.
As for Miers, her lack of qualifications has nothing to do with her lack of judicial experience. Many good Supreme Court justices arrived without that kind of background. The difference is they brought some other outstanding quality or achievement to the job. Miers is, many observers have said, a solid B+ candidate. She is a high-achieving lawyer — of which there are thousands. You can find a few dozen right here in central Pennsylvania. As Buchanan complained, “Were she not a friend of Bush, and female, she would never have even been considered.”
One troubling detail came from conservative columnist David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter.
“In the White House that hero worshiped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal,” Frum writes. “She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.”
Yikes. If Bush is the most “brilliant” man Miers has ever met, she simply lacks judgement or experience in the world. Bush is not dumb; he was a C student in college whose main strengths are tenacity and passion, not brains. The world is full of people much smarter than the president — and that’s no knock against him. But Miers claims she has never met any of them or recognized their intelligence — which is a knock on her.
More likely, Miers has met lots of people smarter than the president — but felt the need to please her boss with exaggerated praise. That suggests a tendency toward toadyism.
All in all, it’s hard to see who wins with this nomination. Bush is getting his lights punched out by his own supporters — who feel everything from deep uneasiness to complete betrayal. No winners there.
And the rest of us face the prospect of having our most precious national document entrusted to the care of a B+ corporate lawyer who just happened to make a powerful friend.
Rich Lewis' e-mail address is rlcolumn@comcast.net
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