[Mb-civic] Perplexed by This Pick - Eugene Robinson - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Perplexed by This Pick

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; Page A17

Was it impotence or omnipotence?

I've been wondering which variety of delusional thinking led George W. 
Bush to choose poor Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. It must have 
been one or the other, it seems to me, and neither is particularly good 
news.

I have nothing against Miers, though I probably will once she dons those 
black robes and starts voting on cases I care about. Over the years, the 
president has had more than enough time to peer deeply into her heart, 
or her soul, or wherever it is he looks to discern what the person under 
scrutiny thinks about Roe v. Wade . I'm betting that she's no David 
Souter -- that she quickly signs up with the Scalia-Thomas fringe, even 
if she lacks Antonin Scalia's right-wing erudition or Clarence Thomas's 
persecution complex. They'll be like a middle-aged Mod Squad, a trio of 
groovy avengers fighting for truth, justice and the American Way circa 1805.

But that's only what the president has been promising, and at least 
Miers hasn't spent her whole adult life in the judicial monastery, 
illuminating manuscripts by candlelight. One reason for Sandra Day 
O'Connor's effectiveness -- she basically hijacked Rehnquist's court -- 
is that she's such a skilled politician. Miers is no O'Connor, but she 
did serve a term on the Dallas City Council, and maybe she has some 
passing familiarity with the real world.

Still, the smoke continues to puff from conservatives' ears. As they 
keep reminding us, Miers wasn't on anybody's short list, or even 
anybody's long list, for the Supreme Court. Her name occurred only to 
the president, her qualifications were evident only to the president, 
her loyalty is only to the president.

Any of a dozen other names would have brought joy to the hearts of his 
conservative supporters. So why did he pick Miers? Was he feeling 
impotent or omnipotent?

The impotence theory is easy to understand, since it's obvious that 
things haven't exactly been going according to plan, to the extent this 
administration has a plan. Iraq is still a bloody mess. Hurricane 
Katrina did structural damage to the administration's main pillar of 
public support, the illusion that whatever you thought of this crowd, it 
was cold-eyed and competent in a crisis. All the ethics investigations 
-- of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby -- threaten 
the White House with a dim future: three lame-duck years in a bunker, 
pinned down by hostile fire.

Given all that, it makes sense that the president might decide this 
wasn't the best moment to send the Senate a well-known, red-meat 
Originalist. He might conclude this isn't the time for an all-out 
confirmation battle that could stiffen the spines of Democrats and 
weaken the nerve of Republicans who keep an eye on the opinion polls.

But if that impotence scenario is correct, then obviously the president 
just doesn't understand the need to dispel the odor of rampant cronyism 
-- the whole "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" thing. It's hard 
for me to believe that after the Katrina debacle, with the ethics 
controversies beginning to swirl like a newly formed tropical 
depression, the president would think that he could nominate a woman 
whose only unchallenged qualification to sit on the highest court in the 
land is her blind loyalty to Bush.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/10/AR2005101001175.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051011/5aa745b4/attachment.htm