President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court reminds me of a broken running play from a football game: The President went under center for second down to name a nominee to the Supreme Court, after having made a substantial gain on first down with Justice Roberts. Once the ball was snapped, the play failed to materialize as expected. The President handed the ball to Miers, who no one expected to carry the ball, and she sort of stood back to survey the field to see if she would pick up any blocking from the rank and file Republicans in Congress, and found none. Luckily, the Democrats on the defensive line couldn’t penetrate the offensive line, so they haven’t stopped Miers yet. However, right now everyone on the field is sort of just standing there, and whether or not the President makes or loses yardage depends upon who can recover the quickest.
Whether or not you think my analogy is correct or not (or even any good), it does emphasize the confusion that has currently taken hold of the political world regarding this nominee. A lot of this confusion is due to the expectations that many had held regarding Bush’s Supreme Court nominations. Having won a majority in both Houses of Congress and holding the White House, most conservatives were hoping that should the President get to name multiple nominees to the Supreme Court, he would submit nominees whose conservative credentials were not only unquestionable, but very, very public. Most Democrats felt that any nominee that Bush would name could be soured by showing an willingness to overturn what has become the Leftest Holy Grail, Roe v. Wade.
The President has stymied both sides. Harriet Miers is an attorney with no judicial experience, which means that she has no paper trail. Conservatives have nothing to point to which reassures them that Miers would be a Constitutional “constructionist” and not legislate from the bench. The fact that she gave a campaign donation to Al Gore doesn’t help. Liberals have no written opinions or arguments which they can parse for every little perceived slight to anyone who might take offense, or point to and scream “non-mainstream.” Ms. Miers is the proverbial “pig in a poke.”
Personally, I’m not a fan of this pick. I have practically no information whatsoever to determine whether or not Miers will be the type of Supreme Court Justice I’d like to see on the bench. I have no idea if she is going to start looking at other country’s laws to determine the Constitutionality of a an American law. I don’t know if she is going to start to weave new “rights” out of whole-cloth or pervert the interpretation of a couple of words to mean something completely different then intended by the Founders. These things, to me, are upper-most in my mind as I think about the pick. However, I trust the President and do not think he would appoint someone who wasn’t in line with his stated criteria for a judicial nominee. Therefore, in order to accept and promote this nominee, I have to have faith in the President’s actions and believe that Miers is what he says she is. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.
The President, in my opinion, needed to submit a nominee which would have brought the conservative/liberal ideologies into direct conflict with each other in front of the American public. This debate about the better judicial philosophy needs to be had, and it needs to be as public as possible. It is a well known fact that for decades liberals have legislated via the Courts because they can’t get anyone to vote for their ideas. This is why they tend to appoint activist judges to the Courts, so that decisions are made not on merit but emotion. A public debate during the confirmation process of a Supreme Court nominee would illustrate in no uncertain terms the superiority of conservative judicial nominees.
Elections are supposed to mean something with regard to the culture of the government in this Country. Since 1994 America has repeatedly and continually increased the numbers of conservatives in elected positions in the local, state, and federal governments. This would tend to support the idea that the country as a whole is moving, however slightly, to the right. Therefore, the governmental culture should also move to the right. In order for this to happen, the President needs to nominate persons with strong conservative convictions to all sections of the government, especially the judiciary. These convictions need to be obvious and apparent in order to change the culture. If they’re not, nothing changes and it becomes harder for conservative principles to gain a foothold.
Harriet Miers may well turn out to be the next Scalia or Thomas, and then again she might turn about to be another Souter. We won’t know until she’s been on the bench for awhile and written a decision or two. That’s the problem. The President should have nominated someone who answered this question unequivocally. He didn’t, and in my opinion that is a failure of leadership. I still support President Bush in most areas of policy and Administration, but I can’t support this decision.
October 4th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Who is Harriet Miers?
This is my obligatory Harriet Miers post. I’m having trouble generating enough interest to write about the Supreme Court nominations. I honestly couldn’t care less that George Bush picked yet another crony for an important job, a lifetime …
October 4th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
It doesn’t make sense as long as you try to make every decision fit into a liberal/conservative paradigm. What you should look at is who is going to jump when the cabala of corporate interests that prop up the Bush Admin. say jump. What Roberts and Meirs have in common is that they both reflexively yield to the powers that be without any pesky judicial integrity getting in the way. The best qualification is following orders.
October 4th, 2005 at 4:01 pm
It doesn’t make sense if you look at it through a “corporate/little guy” eye either. The whole point of the post was that there is no “paper trail” to determine her judicial philosophy, so we have to take it on faith that Bush knows what her judicial philosphy is.
It doesn’t have anything to do with corporate interests, although it is obvious that from your liberal viewpoint that everyone in the Bush Admin is controlled by some dark, secret corporate board that meets once a week in an undisclosed location to discuss and decide what will happen in the world this week.
Pity that this corporate board doesn’t exist. If it did, conservatives would have won everything a long time ago. As it is, all this paranoid fantasy does is give you guys something to complain about.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
Another Souter? What are you, stupid?
She is the cretin-in-chief confidante. If confirmed, she’ll be a nice little toadie who will do everything to further Bush’s and the GOP hardliners’ agenda.
Don’t insult Souter either. Harriet has zero credentials, and a brain barely larger than that of your moronic President. Souter, on the other hand, has a brain between his ears, and the legal scholarship to go with it.
She is singularly unqualified to be appointed — for life — to the highest court in the land. She has never clerked for a judge, she has never pled a case in front of the Supreme Court, she has no record of legal scholarship whatsoever, and she has never been on the bench. In other words, her resume would not get her appointed to the mailroom in corporate America.
She is yet another case of “Hey, Harriet, you are doing a heck of a job” — an incompetent crony and political hack being nominated to a crucial post by the stupidest, most parochial, most incompetent, and most corrupt, President in this country’s history.
To top it all, she is also an Evangelical nut, i.e., one of our home-grown Taliban-types who want to turn this country into a theocracy. Hello, Iran, you are not alone. This beacon of democracy and enlightement of a country of ours is being taken over by unhinged religious fanatics!
Why the Democrats are rejoicing at the choice of such an incompetent hack as a Supreme Court justice, I cannot fathom. Or rather, I can surmise that they are their usual spineless and toothless selves, and they are just happy that they did not have to filibuster anyone…
The Republicans are corrupt, sleazy, trash, only interested in stealing taxpayer’s money and handing it out to special interests. Cut taxes and spend, spend, spend… On bridges to nowhere and fat, no-bid contracts, to Cheney’s cronies…
Never mind humongous farming subsidies and a Medicare prescription bill that prohibits Medicare to use the first principle of Business 101: use buyer power to negotiate better prices. Did the Moron-in-Chief retain anything from his MBA days at Harvard? Or was he too drunk through it all? But then again, he only got into Harvard because he comes from a family of influence-peddlers. The moron could not have gotten into a community college had his grades been the only criterion…
And that hapless little turd is the President of the United States? it tells a lot about the intelligence of those who voted for this ridiculous creature.
H. L. Mencken famoulsy said: ” No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”. He was wrong, the country is now broke. More tax cuts and increased spending anyone? Since little George has a direct line to God, maybe it is time to ask for some manna from heaven?
October 4th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
America obviously isn’t ready for democracy yet.
Think about this. If Diebold are as pissed about Miers as the rest of you are, the 2008 ballot has already been won by Hilary.
Thanks a sarcastic bunch for that!
October 5th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
Now you Chicken Hawks know what it’s like to be on the bad end of Bush nominees who refuse to talk, evade questions, or pretend not to have opinions. It’s as if they were borne from pods that morning.
Good luck Armchair Generals… she’s your judge and he’s your president. Now you have to live with it also.
Can anyone spare a few trillion to fix his deficit?
bok bok Chicken Hawks