Controversy Ensues...
DAVID FRUM ON WHY MIERS SHOULD NOT BE THE CHOSEN ONE...
"OCT. 5, 2005: RULE OF REASON
The president was visibly angry at his press conference yesterday. Nobody likes criticism, especially when it's justified. But was he convincing? He sure did not convince me. The closest thing he offered to a defense - praise for his nominee for hailing from outside the "judicial monastery" - entirely misses the point. Senator John Cornyn elaborates on this defense in the Wall Street Journal this morning, and makes it clearer than ever what is wrong with it:
"[S]ome have criticized the president because he did not select an Ivy-League-credentialed federal appeals court judge for the open seat."
The problem with Harriet Miers is not that she lacks formal credentials, although she does lack them. Had the president chosen former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, or Securities and Exchange Commission chair Christpher Cox, or Interior Department secretary Gail Norton, nobody would complain that they were not federal appeals court judges.
Or had the president named Senator Jon Kyl (LLB, University of Arizona) or Senator Mitch McConnell (LLB, University of Kentucky) or Edith Jones Clement (LLB, Tulane), nobody would be carping at the absence of an Ivy League law degree.
Those who object to the Miers nomination do not object to her lack of credentials. THey object to her lack of what the credentials represent: some indication of outstanding ability.
The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job.
(See more on this in my article in the next print NR.)
And she will remain not good enough even if she votes the right way on the court, or anyway starts out voting the right way. A Supreme Court justice is more than just a vote. A justice is also a voice.
The president's defense of Miers in many ways amplified the problem. His case for her boils down to: "Because I say so" and "She really is a nice person."
But "because I say so" is not an argument. It is an assertion of pure authority. And have not the great conservative legal minds of the past three decades warned again and again that the courts have gone wrong precisely because they have relied too much on authority and too little on argument?
"She really is a nice person" likewise is a statement grounded on feeling rather than thought. And don't conservatives object to legal liberalism precisely because it is based on sloppy emotion rather than disciplined thought?
Legal conservatism is a powerful and compelling school of thought. The Scalias and the Thomases and the Rehnquists have changed the law not by forcing their positions on the country by brute vote-counting, but by persuasion. That's why, to pick out just one example, that Bush v Gore was decided by a 7-2 majority and not lost 3 to 6.
This president has never believed much in persuasion. He believes that the president should declare and that the country should then follow. But judges cannot and should not do that. He should have chosen a justice who could lead by power of intellect, and not because she possesses 1/9 of the votes on the supreme judicial body
It has been conservatives who have been most up in arms about the Miers nomination - and can I single out here the broadcaster Laura Ingraham, who has been first and most forceful with this story? Not for a second has she wavered under the pressures that have been deployed against her and the others who have joined this fight.
But the Miers nomination is a disservice, not just to conservatives, but the whole country.
All Americans are entitled to know that those judges who exercise the power of judicial review have thought hard and deeply about the immense power entrusted to them. If the courts were just about getting the votes, then the preisdent should have chosen Dennis Hastert for the Supreme Court. But to change American law, it's not enough to win the vote count. You have to win the argument. And does anybody believe Harriet Miers can win an argument against Stephen Breyer?
Yesterday's White House talking point was that Miers "reflects the president's judicial philosophy." OK. But can she articulate it? Defend it? And persuade others of it - not just her colleagues, but the generations to come who will read her decisions and accept them ... or scorn them. That's the way this president should have thought about this choice. And that's the way the Senators called on to consent to the choice should be thinking about it now.
PS"
HUGH HEWITT ON MIERS AND FRUM
"October 5, 2005 07:39 AM PST
The sort of conservative critique of Harriet Miers that ought to embarass all conservatives is a personal attack that makes sweeping assertions without a detailed factual basis, and which also makes claims that can not be rebutted by resort to evidence, present or future. It is the sort of critique that David Frum makes this morning. The ordianrily persuasive and careful Frum doubles down (triples down?) on his first blast at Miers, and does so in such a fashion as to raise the question of whether there is some personal ax being ground fine here. Frum served 13 months in the Bush White House as a speechwriter, a time when Harriet Miers was Staff Secretary, so they know each other -- a little or a lot, I don't know. Given what follows in this column, you have to wonder what sort of relationship they had.
Here's the key paragraphs of the Frum blog from this morning:
Those who object to the Miers nomination do not object to her lack of credentials. They object to her lack of what the credentials represent: some indication of outstanding ability.
The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job.
(See more on this in my article in the next print NR.)
And she will remain not good enough even if she votes the right way on the court, or anyway starts out voting the right way. A Supreme Court justice is more than just a vote. A justice is also a voice.
Not only is Frum inaccurately reporting the harshest criticism made of Miers --though not from him-- he is turning his face from all contrary evidence already on the table and, incredibly, puts forward the anti-intellectual argument that nothing she does or writes in the future will be enough to ever prove him wrong."
JAMES LILEKS ON MIERS
"The wailing! The gnashing! The rending of garments! If the conservative reaction to Harriet Miers is any indication, Bush has no chance of winning a third term. The decision to appoint a relative unknown – or, given her proximity to the Bush inner circle, an unknown relative – has caused many on the right to open a vein and the let the despair flow out into the warm bath of misery, disappointment, and overextended metaphors. Why didn’t Bush clone Scalia in a dish and appoint him? Here, use some stem cells if you have to. Anyone but another Souter!...
...Keep one thing in mind: Souter was nominated by Bush 41, who stood for genial, ideologically indifferent governance by the Establishment. Bush 43, we’re constantly told by his opponents, is so besotted by neocon ideology he cannot blow his nose without calling Wolfowitz and asking if it’s okay to touch his left nostril. He would nominate a squishy cipher? Maybe....
...And it shouldn’t bother the administration that hard-core conservative pundits aren’t happy. They’re never happy nowadays. These were the people who caught a whiff of Souterism in John Robert’s nomination, and wouldn’t be happy unless a nominee announced his intention to back Souter into a corner in the cloakroom and give him a turbo-wedgie every day. Yes, the base would be happier if the Republicans acted like a party that had won all the elections, and pursued its agenda as unapologetically and brazenly as some accuse. But what does one expect? The operative word in that sentence is “Republicans,” the party that dare not speak its own name. If it’s pronounced Conservative, that is. "
"OCT. 5, 2005: RULE OF REASON
The president was visibly angry at his press conference yesterday. Nobody likes criticism, especially when it's justified. But was he convincing? He sure did not convince me. The closest thing he offered to a defense - praise for his nominee for hailing from outside the "judicial monastery" - entirely misses the point. Senator John Cornyn elaborates on this defense in the Wall Street Journal this morning, and makes it clearer than ever what is wrong with it:
"[S]ome have criticized the president because he did not select an Ivy-League-credentialed federal appeals court judge for the open seat."
The problem with Harriet Miers is not that she lacks formal credentials, although she does lack them. Had the president chosen former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, or Securities and Exchange Commission chair Christpher Cox, or Interior Department secretary Gail Norton, nobody would complain that they were not federal appeals court judges.
Or had the president named Senator Jon Kyl (LLB, University of Arizona) or Senator Mitch McConnell (LLB, University of Kentucky) or Edith Jones Clement (LLB, Tulane), nobody would be carping at the absence of an Ivy League law degree.
Those who object to the Miers nomination do not object to her lack of credentials. THey object to her lack of what the credentials represent: some indication of outstanding ability.
The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job.
(See more on this in my article in the next print NR.)
And she will remain not good enough even if she votes the right way on the court, or anyway starts out voting the right way. A Supreme Court justice is more than just a vote. A justice is also a voice.
The president's defense of Miers in many ways amplified the problem. His case for her boils down to: "Because I say so" and "She really is a nice person."
But "because I say so" is not an argument. It is an assertion of pure authority. And have not the great conservative legal minds of the past three decades warned again and again that the courts have gone wrong precisely because they have relied too much on authority and too little on argument?
"She really is a nice person" likewise is a statement grounded on feeling rather than thought. And don't conservatives object to legal liberalism precisely because it is based on sloppy emotion rather than disciplined thought?
Legal conservatism is a powerful and compelling school of thought. The Scalias and the Thomases and the Rehnquists have changed the law not by forcing their positions on the country by brute vote-counting, but by persuasion. That's why, to pick out just one example, that Bush v Gore was decided by a 7-2 majority and not lost 3 to 6.
This president has never believed much in persuasion. He believes that the president should declare and that the country should then follow. But judges cannot and should not do that. He should have chosen a justice who could lead by power of intellect, and not because she possesses 1/9 of the votes on the supreme judicial body
It has been conservatives who have been most up in arms about the Miers nomination - and can I single out here the broadcaster Laura Ingraham, who has been first and most forceful with this story? Not for a second has she wavered under the pressures that have been deployed against her and the others who have joined this fight.
But the Miers nomination is a disservice, not just to conservatives, but the whole country.
All Americans are entitled to know that those judges who exercise the power of judicial review have thought hard and deeply about the immense power entrusted to them. If the courts were just about getting the votes, then the preisdent should have chosen Dennis Hastert for the Supreme Court. But to change American law, it's not enough to win the vote count. You have to win the argument. And does anybody believe Harriet Miers can win an argument against Stephen Breyer?
Yesterday's White House talking point was that Miers "reflects the president's judicial philosophy." OK. But can she articulate it? Defend it? And persuade others of it - not just her colleagues, but the generations to come who will read her decisions and accept them ... or scorn them. That's the way this president should have thought about this choice. And that's the way the Senators called on to consent to the choice should be thinking about it now.
PS"
HUGH HEWITT ON MIERS AND FRUM
"October 5, 2005 07:39 AM PST
The sort of conservative critique of Harriet Miers that ought to embarass all conservatives is a personal attack that makes sweeping assertions without a detailed factual basis, and which also makes claims that can not be rebutted by resort to evidence, present or future. It is the sort of critique that David Frum makes this morning. The ordianrily persuasive and careful Frum doubles down (triples down?) on his first blast at Miers, and does so in such a fashion as to raise the question of whether there is some personal ax being ground fine here. Frum served 13 months in the Bush White House as a speechwriter, a time when Harriet Miers was Staff Secretary, so they know each other -- a little or a lot, I don't know. Given what follows in this column, you have to wonder what sort of relationship they had.
Here's the key paragraphs of the Frum blog from this morning:
Those who object to the Miers nomination do not object to her lack of credentials. They object to her lack of what the credentials represent: some indication of outstanding ability.
The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job.
(See more on this in my article in the next print NR.)
And she will remain not good enough even if she votes the right way on the court, or anyway starts out voting the right way. A Supreme Court justice is more than just a vote. A justice is also a voice.
Not only is Frum inaccurately reporting the harshest criticism made of Miers --though not from him-- he is turning his face from all contrary evidence already on the table and, incredibly, puts forward the anti-intellectual argument that nothing she does or writes in the future will be enough to ever prove him wrong."
JAMES LILEKS ON MIERS
"The wailing! The gnashing! The rending of garments! If the conservative reaction to Harriet Miers is any indication, Bush has no chance of winning a third term. The decision to appoint a relative unknown – or, given her proximity to the Bush inner circle, an unknown relative – has caused many on the right to open a vein and the let the despair flow out into the warm bath of misery, disappointment, and overextended metaphors. Why didn’t Bush clone Scalia in a dish and appoint him? Here, use some stem cells if you have to. Anyone but another Souter!...
...Keep one thing in mind: Souter was nominated by Bush 41, who stood for genial, ideologically indifferent governance by the Establishment. Bush 43, we’re constantly told by his opponents, is so besotted by neocon ideology he cannot blow his nose without calling Wolfowitz and asking if it’s okay to touch his left nostril. He would nominate a squishy cipher? Maybe....
...And it shouldn’t bother the administration that hard-core conservative pundits aren’t happy. They’re never happy nowadays. These were the people who caught a whiff of Souterism in John Robert’s nomination, and wouldn’t be happy unless a nominee announced his intention to back Souter into a corner in the cloakroom and give him a turbo-wedgie every day. Yes, the base would be happier if the Republicans acted like a party that had won all the elections, and pursued its agenda as unapologetically and brazenly as some accuse. But what does one expect? The operative word in that sentence is “Republicans,” the party that dare not speak its own name. If it’s pronounced Conservative, that is. "
posted by Lil' Mermaid | 11:59 AM
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