[Mb-civic] What's the Next Choice? - Eugene Robinson - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

What's the Next Choice?

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A23

If you believe the official line that Harriet Miers's withdrawal of her 
nomination to the Supreme Court was entirely her idea, then she must 
have figured out what every college freshman learns around this time of 
year: When you flunk a take-home exam, it's probably time to drop the 
course.

Of all the indignities poor Miers has had to suffer, getting a 
bipartisan "F" on the questionnaire she answered for the Senate 
Judiciary Committee might not have been the most embarrassing -- release 
of her sycophantic billets-doux to the extremely "cool" George W. Bush 
wins the mortification derby hands-down. But being ordered to try again 
on the committee's questions about her legal philosophy was bleakly 
ominous. It meant that the final exam -- her confirmation hearing -- was 
going to be really hard.

Uncool.

But of course if you believe this was all Harriet Miers's idea, I've got 
a nice piece of canal-front property in New Orleans I'd like to sell you.

It's much more likely that Miers was done in by the shocking revelation 
that she holds, or once held, views that suggest a modern and reasonable 
view of America. As The Post reported earlier this week, when she was 
president of the State Bar of Texas she gave a speech in which she said 
"self-determination makes sense" as a way of handling issues such as 
abortion and separation of church and state. She also set numerical 
targets to achieve racial and gender diversity in the legal profession.

There's no promise that these sentiments give a strong indication of how 
Miers would have voted on Roe v. Wade or affirmative action. Based on 
what we know, her philosophy seems to have shifted over the years 
depending on the circumstances, and her loyalty to the president is such 
that I believe she would have done her best imitation of a complete 
troglodyte on the court if that was what he wanted.

But even the suggestion of fleeting moderation was too much for the 
radical-right bullies who are demanding nothing less than a certified, 
red-meat conservative activist -- oops, I meant "strict constructionist" 
-- who will not hesitate to provide the swing vote on hot-button cases. 
That hardening opposition, plus the indignation of principled 
conservatives at her lack of discernible grounding in constitutional 
law, meant that she was losing Senate votes as time went on, not gaining 
them.

Normally this White House would have just bulled ahead, twisting arms 
and knocking heads until the rebellion was quelled. But the chief 
twister and knocker, Karl Rove, has been preoccupied with his own legal 
situation, and the president's approval ratings are so low that he was 
hardly in a position to appeal over the senators' heads to the public.

So now Bush has to suffer not only the indignity of getting slapped down 
by his own party but also the pain of having put a loyal friend through 
weeks of humiliation that turned out to be ultimately pointless. It's 
almost enough to make you feel sorry for the president -- until you 
realize that he brought this on himself.

I have many, many problems with George Bush, but I do believe that in 
his own way he has some commitment to diversity. If it's just tokenism, 
it's more impressive tokenism than the Democrats were ever able to 
muster -- Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales are all 
trailblazers. I think he wanted to put a woman on the court to replace 
Sandra Day O'Connor, and I think he would be right to believe that some 
of Miers's harshest critics were being patronizing and sexist.

But of course it was Bush who made this uncomfortable bed for himself. 
Remember all that rhetoric about being a "compassionate" conservative? 
Well, that went by the wayside when it turned out he needed the 
"sledgehammer" conservatives to get anything done on Capitol Hill. He 
promised them a Savonarola for the Supreme Court, and when he failed to 
deliver with John Roberts -- too brainy, too potentially reasonable, but 
ultimately unassailable -- they drew a line in the sand.

So now the president has two choices. He can up the ante and give them 
somebody like Alberto Gonzales, who has a record of (gasp!) sensible 
moderation but also possesses impeccable qualifications -- and whose 
nomination would delight the nation's biggest minority. Or he could do 
the prudent, realistic thing and cave to the sledgehammer right.

But George Bush just hates to cave. Stay tuned.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/27/AR2005102701852.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051028/777ea3ef/attachment.htm