After Careful Consideration...
First, to our readers, I apologize for not posting much last week. I am still a bit under the weather, and in having to deal with school, I am pretty wiped out by the end of the day. This last week was a bit touchy around here over the nomination of Harriet Miers. When this started, Thomas fired off the first salvo against her from the Asylum. Sabrina and I were on the opposite side of this debate. But over the course of the week, in our numerous debates over the subject, he slowly whittled us both down.
I still held out a tiny sliver of hope until I saw John Fund’s article this morning in the Wall Street Journal. Needless to say, he raises a couple of key points, and he, too, has changed his mind on Ms. Miers.
I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal's Political Diary that "while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself."
But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now--and loudly--because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. "She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.
White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president's views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, "Behind my back, people say . . .," she responded, ". . . they can't figure me out."
As Thomas would say, this gives me a moment of pause. It seems that even her close friends do not know what to make of her. And while they do say she is a good woman, a faithful Christian, and a solid lawyer, they cannot give anyone anything regarding her views on the Constitution. Further, they cannot state precisely what her judicial philosophy is. Will she rule from the bench as a jurist should, or will she rule from the bench through fiat? Her friends do not know, which means we do not know.
Conservatives shouldn't care about her personal views on issues if they can convince themselves that she agrees with Chief Justice John Roberts's view of a judge's role: that cases should be decided the way an umpire calls balls and strikes, without rooting for either team. But the evidence of Ms. Miers's views on jurisprudence resemble a beach on which someone has walked without leaving any footprints: no court opinions, no law review articles, and no internal memos that President Bush is going to share with the Senate.
It is traditional for nominees to remain silent until their confirmation hearings. But previous nominees, while unable to speak for themselves, have been able to deploy an array of people to speak persuasively on their behalf. In this case, the White House spin team has been pathetic, dismissing much of the criticism of Ms. Miers as "elitism" or even echoing Democratic senators who view it as "sexist." But it was Richard Land , president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who went so far as to paint Ms. Miers as virtually a tool of the man who has been her client for the past decade. "In Texas, we have two important values, courage and loyalty," he told a conference call of conservative leaders last Thursday. "If Harriet Miers didn't rule the way George W. Bush thought she would, he would see that as an act of betrayal and so would she." That is an argument in her favor. It sounds more like a blood oath than a dignified nomination process aimed at finding the most qualified individual possible.
After going through this debate for a week now, I am not sure I am convinced that she will be like Chief Justice Roberts, or Associate Justices Scalia and Thomas. And whereas Chief Justice Roberts had everything possible released for people to see, Mr. Fund is correct: The White House has released nothing, and chances are will not release anything of substance. Can we say attorney/client privilege? I knew we could.
And when the question of faith ends up in the discussion, things begin to spiral out of control. We are told that because she is an solid Evangelical Christian she will abide by what is right, just, and moral. But, as Mr. Fund points out, even those assurances are not solid assurances.
Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation recalls the hard sell the Reagan White House made on behalf of Anthony Kennedy in 1987, after the Senate rejected Robert Bork. "They even put his priest on the phone with us to assure us he was solid on everything," Mr. Weyrich recalls. From term limits to abortion to the juvenile death penalty to the overturning of a state referendum on gay rights, Justice Kennedy has often disappointed conservatives.
One’s religion cannot be questioned in this debate. The committee may not make her faith a qualification to her appointed position. It is forbidden under Article VI. The White House is not making it an issue, per se; they are offering this up in an effort to show how moral she is. That is wonderful. I am moral, as well, but that does not qualify me for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Harriet Miers is unquestionably a fine lawyer and a woman of great character. But her record on constitutional issues is nil, and it is therefore understandable that conservatives, having been burned at least seven times in the past 50 years, would be hesitant about supporting her nomination.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Ms. Miers tabula rasa was just summed up by John Fund—above—in less than fifty words. We have been burned too many times by presidents that took what they saw at face value. And now Pres. Bush wants us to do the same thing. Just take her at face value and "trust me." My trust of people and what they say without any backup for their assertions is thin. I prefer to see the information myself, and make a determination from there.
The White House professes to be sanguine about Ms. Miers's reliability, while at the same time expressing irritation with conservatives who won't fall into line. Time magazine quotes a Bush adviser as saying that the "driving force" behind Ms. Miers's appointment was White House chief of staff Andy Card, not Karl Rove. "This is something that Andy and the president cooked up," the adviser told Time. "Andy knew it would appeal to the president because he loves appointing his own people and being supersecret and stealthy about it." Despite his lack of hands-on involvement, Mr. Rove has stoutly defended the Miers pick to allies as a brilliant "Trojan horse"--a conservative nominee who will avoid any possible Democratic filibuster.
So, the truth is now out. The White House was not willing to engage in a fight. And yes, I will challenge the president on that. Thomas was right. They opted to go for the nominee that would befuddle the Left, like Roberts, and there would be little opposition to her. What they obviously were not prepared for was the backlash from the base of the party, which according to Sen. Specter is a "lynch mob" out to get Ms. Miers. We are no such thing. We have questions. We have concerns. And thus far the White House has not been entirely forthcoming.
David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, who describes Ms. Miers's role in the White House as largely that of a "bureaucrat who couldn't see the forest for the trees," nonetheless believes that Team Bush is right--but only for a while. He believes she will be remain a conservative justice at least until Mr. Bush leaves office in early 2009. "But then the Bushies will have gone home, and she will develop new friends, and then the inevitable tug to the left may prove irresistible."
A friend of both Mr. Bush and Ms. Miers disagrees. He notes that for eight years Justice O'Connor remained largely true to Ronald Reagan's judicial views, even though she had no personal ties to him. "I think Harriet has morphed her views into those of the president," he told me. "I think she will be pretty much the same justice she starts out being for 10 or 15 years. And she is now 60."
Mr. Frum has a good point. She is a close friend of the president, and she does share his ideology, but once he heads back to Crawford, TX., she could develop new friends within the court, hit the social scene, and could be persuaded to become more of a moderate in her views. The unnamed friend of Pres. Bush and Ms. Miers fails to remember that when Justice O’Connor came to the court, she was completely inexperienced with the Supreme Court, and while she did adhere to Pres. Reagan’s ideology while he was in office, by the end of Pres. Bush (41)’s term, she was slanting more towards the middle and the Left. Justice O’Connor found new friends, and saw which way the wind was blowing in Washington, DC.
The simple fact is, and it has taken me a week to come to terms with this, is that she is a blank slate. Little will be revealed to the Judiciary Committee in terms of paperwork. Much of it will be held back as a part of attorney/client privilege, and the other writings that she has submitted will give little in terms of a picture for her ideology and judicial philosophy. And as I have noticed from some of the brightest legal minds in the nation have said that they doubt she will be forthcoming with much for the committee. Many fear that she will rely far too much on Canon 5, and not enough on proving herself.
That is what ultimately must happen. She must not only prove herself worthy and qualified to sit on the high court to the committee, but to the party’s base. Many people are speculating that the base is not what is upset. It is the "elites" that are upset. And the White House is calling those opposed to her as "sexist." Nothing could be further from the truth. And our readers here know it. Same thing goes for those that have watched the "court-watching" sites like ConfirmThem.com, ConfirmationWhoppers.com, and the SCOTUS bloggers. If they were sexist then Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, Karen Williams, Alice Batchelder, and Edith Jones would not have been on their preferred justice list.
This is not elitism. This is not sexism. This is a nation that is asking the president to prove his assertions about a person going to the highest court in the land. We have waited patiently for years to start taking the court back from the judicial activists and the Left. Now, we have an enigma up for the sole vacancy on the court, and we are told to trust the president in his decisions. Trust only goes so far. And I would like to remind people what Pres. Reagan once said. "Trust, but verify."
Mr. President, we do trust you. But, we would like you to verify, for us, your assertions that Ms. Miers is a worthy and qualified candidate for the Supreme Court.
The Bunny ;)
First, to our readers, I apologize for not posting much last week. I am still a bit under the weather, and in having to deal with school, I am pretty wiped out by the end of the day. This last week was a bit touchy around here over the nomination of Harriet Miers. When this started, Thomas fired off the first salvo against her from the Asylum. Sabrina and I were on the opposite side of this debate. But over the course of the week, in our numerous debates over the subject, he slowly whittled us both down.
I still held out a tiny sliver of hope until I saw John Fund’s article this morning in the Wall Street Journal. Needless to say, he raises a couple of key points, and he, too, has changed his mind on Ms. Miers.
I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal's Political Diary that "while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself."
But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now--and loudly--because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. "She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.
White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president's views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, "Behind my back, people say . . .," she responded, ". . . they can't figure me out."
As Thomas would say, this gives me a moment of pause. It seems that even her close friends do not know what to make of her. And while they do say she is a good woman, a faithful Christian, and a solid lawyer, they cannot give anyone anything regarding her views on the Constitution. Further, they cannot state precisely what her judicial philosophy is. Will she rule from the bench as a jurist should, or will she rule from the bench through fiat? Her friends do not know, which means we do not know.
Conservatives shouldn't care about her personal views on issues if they can convince themselves that she agrees with Chief Justice John Roberts's view of a judge's role: that cases should be decided the way an umpire calls balls and strikes, without rooting for either team. But the evidence of Ms. Miers's views on jurisprudence resemble a beach on which someone has walked without leaving any footprints: no court opinions, no law review articles, and no internal memos that President Bush is going to share with the Senate.
It is traditional for nominees to remain silent until their confirmation hearings. But previous nominees, while unable to speak for themselves, have been able to deploy an array of people to speak persuasively on their behalf. In this case, the White House spin team has been pathetic, dismissing much of the criticism of Ms. Miers as "elitism" or even echoing Democratic senators who view it as "sexist." But it was Richard Land , president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who went so far as to paint Ms. Miers as virtually a tool of the man who has been her client for the past decade. "In Texas, we have two important values, courage and loyalty," he told a conference call of conservative leaders last Thursday. "If Harriet Miers didn't rule the way George W. Bush thought she would, he would see that as an act of betrayal and so would she." That is an argument in her favor. It sounds more like a blood oath than a dignified nomination process aimed at finding the most qualified individual possible.
After going through this debate for a week now, I am not sure I am convinced that she will be like Chief Justice Roberts, or Associate Justices Scalia and Thomas. And whereas Chief Justice Roberts had everything possible released for people to see, Mr. Fund is correct: The White House has released nothing, and chances are will not release anything of substance. Can we say attorney/client privilege? I knew we could.
And when the question of faith ends up in the discussion, things begin to spiral out of control. We are told that because she is an solid Evangelical Christian she will abide by what is right, just, and moral. But, as Mr. Fund points out, even those assurances are not solid assurances.
Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation recalls the hard sell the Reagan White House made on behalf of Anthony Kennedy in 1987, after the Senate rejected Robert Bork. "They even put his priest on the phone with us to assure us he was solid on everything," Mr. Weyrich recalls. From term limits to abortion to the juvenile death penalty to the overturning of a state referendum on gay rights, Justice Kennedy has often disappointed conservatives.
One’s religion cannot be questioned in this debate. The committee may not make her faith a qualification to her appointed position. It is forbidden under Article VI. The White House is not making it an issue, per se; they are offering this up in an effort to show how moral she is. That is wonderful. I am moral, as well, but that does not qualify me for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Harriet Miers is unquestionably a fine lawyer and a woman of great character. But her record on constitutional issues is nil, and it is therefore understandable that conservatives, having been burned at least seven times in the past 50 years, would be hesitant about supporting her nomination.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Ms. Miers tabula rasa was just summed up by John Fund—above—in less than fifty words. We have been burned too many times by presidents that took what they saw at face value. And now Pres. Bush wants us to do the same thing. Just take her at face value and "trust me." My trust of people and what they say without any backup for their assertions is thin. I prefer to see the information myself, and make a determination from there.
The White House professes to be sanguine about Ms. Miers's reliability, while at the same time expressing irritation with conservatives who won't fall into line. Time magazine quotes a Bush adviser as saying that the "driving force" behind Ms. Miers's appointment was White House chief of staff Andy Card, not Karl Rove. "This is something that Andy and the president cooked up," the adviser told Time. "Andy knew it would appeal to the president because he loves appointing his own people and being supersecret and stealthy about it." Despite his lack of hands-on involvement, Mr. Rove has stoutly defended the Miers pick to allies as a brilliant "Trojan horse"--a conservative nominee who will avoid any possible Democratic filibuster.
So, the truth is now out. The White House was not willing to engage in a fight. And yes, I will challenge the president on that. Thomas was right. They opted to go for the nominee that would befuddle the Left, like Roberts, and there would be little opposition to her. What they obviously were not prepared for was the backlash from the base of the party, which according to Sen. Specter is a "lynch mob" out to get Ms. Miers. We are no such thing. We have questions. We have concerns. And thus far the White House has not been entirely forthcoming.
David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, who describes Ms. Miers's role in the White House as largely that of a "bureaucrat who couldn't see the forest for the trees," nonetheless believes that Team Bush is right--but only for a while. He believes she will be remain a conservative justice at least until Mr. Bush leaves office in early 2009. "But then the Bushies will have gone home, and she will develop new friends, and then the inevitable tug to the left may prove irresistible."
A friend of both Mr. Bush and Ms. Miers disagrees. He notes that for eight years Justice O'Connor remained largely true to Ronald Reagan's judicial views, even though she had no personal ties to him. "I think Harriet has morphed her views into those of the president," he told me. "I think she will be pretty much the same justice she starts out being for 10 or 15 years. And she is now 60."
Mr. Frum has a good point. She is a close friend of the president, and she does share his ideology, but once he heads back to Crawford, TX., she could develop new friends within the court, hit the social scene, and could be persuaded to become more of a moderate in her views. The unnamed friend of Pres. Bush and Ms. Miers fails to remember that when Justice O’Connor came to the court, she was completely inexperienced with the Supreme Court, and while she did adhere to Pres. Reagan’s ideology while he was in office, by the end of Pres. Bush (41)’s term, she was slanting more towards the middle and the Left. Justice O’Connor found new friends, and saw which way the wind was blowing in Washington, DC.
The simple fact is, and it has taken me a week to come to terms with this, is that she is a blank slate. Little will be revealed to the Judiciary Committee in terms of paperwork. Much of it will be held back as a part of attorney/client privilege, and the other writings that she has submitted will give little in terms of a picture for her ideology and judicial philosophy. And as I have noticed from some of the brightest legal minds in the nation have said that they doubt she will be forthcoming with much for the committee. Many fear that she will rely far too much on Canon 5, and not enough on proving herself.
That is what ultimately must happen. She must not only prove herself worthy and qualified to sit on the high court to the committee, but to the party’s base. Many people are speculating that the base is not what is upset. It is the "elites" that are upset. And the White House is calling those opposed to her as "sexist." Nothing could be further from the truth. And our readers here know it. Same thing goes for those that have watched the "court-watching" sites like ConfirmThem.com, ConfirmationWhoppers.com, and the SCOTUS bloggers. If they were sexist then Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, Karen Williams, Alice Batchelder, and Edith Jones would not have been on their preferred justice list.
This is not elitism. This is not sexism. This is a nation that is asking the president to prove his assertions about a person going to the highest court in the land. We have waited patiently for years to start taking the court back from the judicial activists and the Left. Now, we have an enigma up for the sole vacancy on the court, and we are told to trust the president in his decisions. Trust only goes so far. And I would like to remind people what Pres. Reagan once said. "Trust, but verify."
Mr. President, we do trust you. But, we would like you to verify, for us, your assertions that Ms. Miers is a worthy and qualified candidate for the Supreme Court.
The Bunny ;)
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 10:44 AM
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