Harriet Miers, conservatism’s caped crusader or Souter’s sister act?
Patrick Ruffini breaks a lance for Supreme Court Justice nominee Harriet Miers:
Little is known about the views of Harriet Miers. But what is known, through official and unofficial channels, paints a picture of a conservative Texas lawyer with rock-solid beliefs on life, strong religious convictions, and a modesty that should allay fears of a renegade Justice determined to remake society through the courts. John Roberts was the silver-tongued, inside-the-Beltway pick for the Court; Miers is the plain spoken red stater.
Right. But then she becomes Supreme Court Justice. She gets invited to nice parties with nice people. She’s invited to theater plays, to chateaux in Sothern France, to speak at prestigous universities that reward ideological diversity (you know, where there’s not only Marxism, but also Leninism, Trotskyism, Engelsism, Maoism, Stalinism, Spartakism…) and where good people laud her for every little word of “tolerance” she utters. So she “grows” and her opinions take a Souter-esque turn and in 2015 she’s having great fun in Oprah’s studio, detailing how she came to appreciate (to use President George W. Bush’s favorite word) the many different kinds of “families” in America and why Roe v. Wade is so important for America’s women and how much good the federal government can do if only state governments get out of its way and on and on and on.
Yeah, it will be a moment to treasure and cherish.
OK, I hope I’m wrong, and certainly it may be more than unfair to suggest that Miers is a mealy mind like Souter, but I get the feeling, looking at her resume and her campaign contributions that maybe, just maybe, she’s a tad of a follower. One can argue that Texas Democrats - and she used to be one of them, back when they were running the show in the Lone Star State - aren’t much less conservative than Texas Republicans, but perhaps it is also true that she hasn’t really been exposed a whole lot to being in the ideological minority and who knows what could sway her? Sure, she was active in the American Bar Association, a bizarrely liberal grievance group, I’ll give her that, but Washington is a world away from Texas, and as a Justice she won’t be spending her days in the inner circle of White House Republicans any more.
Almost final word for the moment goes to David Frum:
I’ll confess that I have been more shaken by the Miers nomination than by almost anything President Bush has done since the night of September 11 itself. I foresaw its coming, and yet I never quite believed in the end that the president would go through with it. Yet here it is - and we must all decide what we are to do: passively accept it? actively justify it? or something else?
I wouldn’t go quite that far, because there was this little thing between 9/11 and Miers nomination.
Update: Stephen Bainbridge and Ramesh Ponnuru are arguing with Hugh Hewitt and Doug Kmiec over the nominee’s qualifications.
This paragraph from Kmiec’s WaPo piece is a bit humorous:
Senators of both parties encouraged the president to look outside the so-called judicial monastery. If they were serious — and they should have been — Miers has precisely the right background. A former at-large member of the Dallas City Council, she has a sense of accountability at the grass-roots level. Her more than two decades of advising clients and meeting their expectations will help her assess the practical import of some of the court’s abstract and too often sharply divided handiwork. And on the last point — reaching consensus — Miers has had a pivotal role in the White House for the past four years doing just that. As staff secretary, deputy chief of staff and now counsel to the president, Miers has a reputation, as described by her former boss Andy Card, as an “honest broker.”
I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t sound like a Supreme Court Justice job description. To the extent it does, it sounds like somebody who would have agreed with the Kelo decision. It’s all about being practical, you know! Of course, I don’t know if Miers at all agrees with Kmiec’s take on the job, so I’m not going to hold that paragraph against her. It’s just a funny thing I wanted to share.
Update 2: Paul Mirengoff at Power Line:
The two most relevant issues now are (1) is [Miers] qualified and (2) is she conservative (and if so, in what sense). We don’t know the answer to either question, which confirms how bad Bush’s decision was. And given the way the process works, we probably won’t learn the answer to the second question until Miers already is on the Court.
