MIERS: THE CRITICS AND THEIR CRITICISM
MIERS - THE CRITICS AND THEIR CRITICISM:
HOW WILL IT PLAY OUT WITH ALITO?
by
Ken Eliasberg
As previously indicated, the Miers selection brought forth a torrent of criticism—FROM HARD CORE MEMBERS OF BUSH’S BASE! The unusual aspect of this nomination was that the left never even got into the picture (they were having too much fun watching the results of their opponent’s torment). As an aside, their amusement might have been short lived had the Miers’ nomination come before the Senate, i.e. they would have had to vote on her; and, in doing so, they would have had to be worried, lest, after all this fuss, she turn out to be right of Scalia. In other words, this pig in a poke, presented a serious dilemna for both right and left. The left may have had a more difficult decision to make, i.e. do they vote to approve of this nominee (who may—hopefully, from their point of view—turn out to be another O’Connor), or do they reject her and thereby give Bush a chance to get it right (in both a correction and direction sense)—an interesting dilemma. Fortunately, Miers withdrawal took the guesswork out of the picture. We now have another opportunity - this time, hopefully, to get it right—and Alito provides an opportunity to do just that; he is a good choice.
Notwithstanding Miers removing herself and the Alito nomination, I think it is helpful to look at the conservative critics - who they are, and what they had to say—if only to provide some idea of why the right was so up in arms. Bear in mind that, while the left is trying to paint these critics as part of the radical right, nothing could be further from the truth; they are, for the most part, rational and reasonable people - a veritable who’s who of distinguished Republican columnists, commentators, and conservative pundits. These are members of the conservative elite, and, I suspect, Bush supporters each and every one.
A couple of weeks ago I quoted from a column of Bill Kristol’s to demonstrate what Republicans were fearful of in anticipating Bush’s selection of an O’Connor replacement. Let’s take a look at Kristol’s reaction to the Miers nomination and the realization of the fears expressed in his earlier column. In his 10/17/05 column, Kristol had this to say:
“IT’S BEEN A BAD WEEK for the Bush administration—but, in a way, a not-so-bad week for American conservatism [referring here to the spirited debate which the Miers nomination had engendered]. George W. Bush’s nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme
Court was at best an error, at worst a disaster. There is no need now to elaborate on Bush’s error. He has put up an unknown and undistinguished figure for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction. There is a gaping disproportion between the stakes associated with this vacancy and the stature of the person nominated to fill it. * * * * President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers was an out-of-the-blue act of loyalty to a longtime staffer. Is it too much to hope that she might reciprocate by withdrawing, thereby sparing her boss the chance of lasting damage to his legacy that her appointment to the Supreme Court may well represent?”
Bob Bork, the man whose name, thanks to a disgustingly biased group of Democratic Senators, became a verb (i.e. to Bork someone is to malign them in such a manner as to scuttle their nomination prospects), had this to say in the Wall St. Jl’s online column:
“With a single stroke—the nomination of Harriet Miers—the president has damaged the prospects for reform of a left-leaning and imperialistic Supreme Court, taken the heart out of a rising generation of constitutional scholars, and widened the fissures within the conservative movement. That’s not a bad day’s work—for liberals.”
Bork goes on from this glowing tribute to really tell you how he feels (feelings, I might add, that are shared by a number of distinguished conservatives—with good reason).
Then there’s Charles Krauthammer, Fox analyst and Washington Post columnist who had this to say in his less than ambiguously entitled column on 10/17/05 “Withdraw This Nominee” :
“When, in 1962 Edward Moore Kennedy ran for his brother’s seat in the Senate, his opponent famously said that if Kennedy’s name had been Edward Moore, his candidacy would have been a joke. If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.” Continuing right along, Krauthammer observes:
“There are 1.084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes
Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president? To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous.”
And then this, to cap it off:
By choosing a nominee suggested by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and well known only to himself, the president has ducked a fight on the most important domestic question dividing liberals from conservatives: the principles by which one should read and interpret the Constitution. For a presidency marked by a courageous willingness to think and do big things, this nomination is a sorry retreat into smallness.”
In his regular column entitled, Can This Nomination Be Justified?, George Will, ABC commentator and columnist, observes:
“It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she
posesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks. The president’s “argument” for her amounts to Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.” And he goes on to list those reasons. Continuing, he observes: “Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’s nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Meirs’s name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.”
Pat Buchanan, a man who I respect, but with whom I more than occasionally disagree, said it as well as any one in his column entitled “Bush recoils from greatness.” He observed: “Handed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return the Supreme Court to constitutionalism, George W. Bush passed over a dozen of the finest jurists of his day—to name his personal lawyer. In a decision deeply disheartening to those who invested such hopes in him, Bush may have tossed away his and our last chance to roll back the social revolution imposed upon us by our judicial dictatorship since the days of Earl Warren.” Continuing, he notes: “Bush had a chance for greatness in remaking the Supreme Court, a chance to succeed where Republican predecessors from Nixon to his father all failed. He instinctively recoiled from it. He blew it.”
And then there is David Frum, Rich Lowry, John Fund, Peggy Noonan, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and on an on it continues—a reservoir of conservative talent, all vehemently opposed to this nominee. It is also interesting to note that among the pundits who took a more accepting approach to Harriet Miers almost none of them would have picked her first(or second, or third, etc.). Certainly, this degree of enlightened opposition had to make a difference and, fortunately, it eventually did—to Bush and his Brain(?) Trust.
Again, all of this is not put forth to demean Harriet Miers in any way, shape, or form; I’m certain that she is a fine person and a gifted attorney. The appropriate steps that Bush should have taken with Ms. Miers was to put her on an appellate court so that she could have matured on the bench and established a record from which she could be properly evaluated before making the ultimate judicial step up; she should never have been put in to the meat grinder that is currently our nomination process.
And how will conservative punditry react to Alito? I’ll lay odds that, to a man (and woman) they voice their full throated approval