David Frum at NRO is leading the attack.
IF I WERE HARRIET MIERS ...
I really would ask my friends to keep their mouths closed. Every time they speak up, they only remind the country of what is wrong with this unwise nomination. My friend Matthew Scully's oped in the New York Times today perfectly exemplifies the problem.
Throughout this debate, critics of the nomination have raised important and valid points about the record of this nominee, her qualifications, and the political dangers post-Katrina of offering up high-profile nominees to important jobs solely on the basis of their personal closeness to the president.
Defenders by contrast have offered ... nothing much. They urge us to trust the president rather than the evidence. And when we hesitate, they produce not arguments but insults. I fear that not even gentle, decent Matt Scully has proven immune to this last.
"Her qualities are disappointing only in comparison, of course, to all those perfectly credentialed lions of the law we keep hearing about. Her critics couldn't run to the TV studio and expertly discourse about her. Therefore, she must be a nobody.
"My friend David Frum expresses the general complaint when he asks, in his blog, when did Harriet Miers 'ever take a risk on behalf of conservative principle? Can you see any indication of intellectual excellence? Did she ever do anything brave, anything that took backbone?' To translate: When all the big-thinkers were persevering year after year at policy institutes and conferences at the Mayflower Hotel, or risking all for principle in stirring op-ed essays and $20,000 lectures, where was Little Miss Southern Methodist University?
"If four years observing the woman is any guide, the answer is she was probably doing something useful. But whatever she was up to, it's not good enough."
If you pierce the (uncharacteristic) sarcasm, you will notice I think that Scully has just confirmed everything that the critics of Miers have said.
He concedes that she never has taken those risks I spoke of, never demonstrated that backbone and courage.
He concedes that she was never much of an intellectual force, and that the case for her rests entirely on her pleasantness of manner.
More than that, he confirms - and more than confirms - that something has gone very seriously wrong inside the Bush White House.
1) Notice first that the loyalties of people inside the Bush White House are felt primarily toward each other.
"When it was Mr. Kristol's charming friend John Bolton whose fate was in question, that was family business, and for the president no price was too high for loyalty. But Harriet Miers, who is only the president's friend, is now to be led away like Carlo in 'The Godfather' with his 'ticket to Vegas.'"
But we who supported John Bolton did not support him because he was our friend. I think I've met him maybe twice in my life. We who supported Bolton supported him not because he was "charming," but because we shared his principles and believed they were in the American interest.
As Scully's oped makes clear, the Bush White House has ceased to think in such terms, if indeed it ever did.
2) Notice next the antipathy to ideas, the little curl of the lip about those opeds and policy conferences. Notice the refusal even to acknowledge let alone rebut the concern that Miers has shunned ideas her whole career. It is no reply to say that Harriet Miers is a very nice person. Nobody ever denied that Harriet Miers was a very nice woman, capable of generous acts. We all know about her work for Meals on Wheels. It's just that niceness alone is enough to qualify one for the Supreme Court. There are a lot of nice people in America. There are a lot of nice people at Valley View Christian Church. They cannot all be appointed to the Supreme Court.
The first and most famous slogan of the American conservative movement was: "Ideas have consequences." But if Matt fairly represents the state of mind inside the Bush White House, and on this I fear he does, then the main consequence of ideas seems to be ineligibility for service on the nation's highest court.
3) Note next the implied hostility to the larger American conservative movement. The ideas that are disparaged in this oped are not any old ideas. They are the ideas that moved millions of people to sacrifice time and money to build the movement championed by for example this magazine - and the ideas that (at least theoretically) led American conservatives to overcome their reservations about the son of George HW Bush and support the candidacy of Governor George W. Bush. The promise to appoint judges in the mold of Scalia and Thomas was the "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge of the younger Bush's candidacy. But even Miers' strongest senatorial supporter, John Cornyn, admits that Miers is no Scalia and no Thomas. The inability to read the conservative reaction to this betrayal as anything more than personal pique on the part of American conservatives bespeaks a very serious clouding of the vision at the Bush White House.
4) And speaking of the clouding of vision, there is a real problem here of the inability to see ourselves as others see us. That line about the critics of the Miers nomination and their $20,000 speaking fees - is that really, um, well-considered? Does Matt expect anyone to take seriously the claim that those of us who oppose Miers are self-serving cynics, while those who silence their doubts and say "yes sir" to an erring president are self-sacrificing idealists? We're supposed to believe that Robert Bork is in it for the cash, while Ed Gillespie fights for the principle of the thing?
Matt himself would never engage in such behavior, but all over Washington at this very moment administration representatives are quietly warning people: "Keep quiet on Miers - or else." The cynics, the cowards, and, yes, the check-seekers are all on the pro-Miers side of the argument. To reverse that reality is ... well I guess it is to reveal some of the upside-down thinking that produced the nomination in the first place.
frum.nationalreview.com |
