Posted on 10/03/2005 1:30:05 PM PDT by Irontank
Miers' Qualifications Are 'Non-Existent'
by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted Oct 3, 2005
Handed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return the Supreme Court to constitutionalism, George W. Bush passed over a dozen of the finest jurists of his day -- to name his personal lawyer.
In a decision deeply disheartening to those who invested such hopes in him, Bush may have tossed away his and our last chance to roll back the social revolution imposed upon us by our judicial dictatorship since the days of Earl Warren.
This is not to disparage Harriet Myers. From all accounts, she is a gracious lady who has spent decades in the law and served ably as Bush’s lawyer in Texas and, for a year, as White House counsel.
But her qualifications for the Supreme Court are non-existent. She is not a brilliant jurist, indeed, has never been a judge. She is not a scholar of the law. Researchers are hard-pressed to dig up an opinion. She has not had a brilliant career in politics, the academy, the corporate world or public forum. Were she not a friend of Bush, and female, she would never have even been considered.
What commended her to the White House, in the phrase of the hour, is that she “has no paper trail.” So far as one can see, this is Harriet Miers’ principal qualification for the U.S. Supreme Court.
What is depressing here is not what the nomination tells us of her, but what it tells us of the president who appointed her. For in selecting her, Bush capitulated to the diversity-mongers, used a critical Supreme Court seat to reward a crony, and revealed that he lacks the desire to engage the Senate in fierce combat to carry out his now-suspect commitment to remake the court in the image of Scalia and Thomas. In picking her, Bush ran from a fight. The conservative movement has been had -- and not for the first time by a president by the name of Bush.
Choosing Miers, the president passed over outstanding judges and proven constitutionalists like Michael Luttig of the 4th Circuit and Sam Alito of the 3rd. And if he could not take the heat from the First Lady, and had to name a woman, what was wrong with U.S. appellate court judges Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owens and Edith Jones?
What must these jurists think today about their president today? How does Bush explain to his people why Brown, Owens and Jones were passed over for Miers?
Where was Karl Rove in all of this? Is he so distracted by the Valerie Plame investigation he could not warn the president against what he would be doing to his reputation and coalition?
Reshaping the Supreme Court is an issue that unites Republicans and conservatives And with his White House and party on the defensive for months over Cindy Sheehan and Katrina, Iraq and New Orleans, Delay and Frist, gas prices and immigration, here was the great opportunity to draw all together for a battle of philosophies, by throwing the gauntlet down to the Left, sending up the name of a Luttig, and declaring, “Go ahead and do your worst. We shall do our best.”
Do the Bushites not understand that “conservative judges” is one of those issues where the national majority is still with them?
What does it tell us that White House, in selling her to the party and press, is pointing out that Miers “has no paper trial.” What does that mean, other than that she is not a Rehnquist, a Bork, a Scalia or a Thomas?
Conservative cherish justices and judges who have paper trails. For that means these men and women have articulated and defended their convictions. They have written in magazines and law journals about what is wrong with the courts and how to make it right. They had stood up to the prevailing winds. They have argued for the Constitution as the firm and fixed document the Founding Fathers wrote, not some thing of wax.
A paper trail is the mark of a lawyer, a scholar or a judge who has shared the action and passion of his or her time, taken a stand on the great questions, accepted public abuse for articulating convictions.
Why is a judicial cipher like Harriet Miers to be preferred to a judicial conservative like Edith Jones?
One reason: Because the White House fears nominees “with a paper trail” will be rejected by the Senate, and this White House fears, above all else, losing. So, it has chosen not to fight.
Bush had a chance for greatness in remaking the Supreme Court, a chance to succeed where his Republican precedessors from Nixon to his father all failed. He instinctively recoiled from it. He blew it. His only hope now is that Harriet Miers, if confirmed, will not vote like the lady she replaced, or, worse, like his father’s choice who also had “no paper trail,” David Souter.
The hash the Supremes made of sentencing makes it important, IMO, that Bush DOES appoint a "conservative version of Thurgood Marshall". Those yutzes have shown themselves incapable of understanding the day to day realities of criminal justice administration, and NEED a colleague capable of explaining the real world to them.
Chief Justice Rehnquist praised then Justice Marshall's ability to explain to the other Justices what lawyers were really up to in making certain arguments and points in briefs and argument. Marshall's vast constitutional trial and appellate experience gave him unique insight into how lawyers frame issues for presentation on appeal - strategy, tactics, etc. And he was articulate and personable enough to get the other Justices to listen to him.
The Supremes have become so detached from reality that they need all the help they can get in most any regard, so by all means bring on a "conservative version of Thurgood Marshall". They need other things too, but this is a worthy goal by itself.
The problem is that Miers is not a solution to any problem save rewarding loyalty to President Bush.
True. The Dems and Gang of 14 were ready for a throw down, President Bush picked his own, personal, lawyer. Truly BM, do you think President Bush's personal lawyer is a raging liberal?
Earl Warren had been Attorney General of California for two terms, and before then Distict Attorney of Contra Costa County, California, for several terms, before being elected Governor for three terms. He had more than adequate senior legal administrative experience for a Supreme Court appointment. Prior judicial experience is not necessary provided there is adequate other experience, and two terms as a state Attorney General is that. I believe William O. Douglas had been Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is a comparably important federal legal administrative position.
I must have said this a thousand times about Buchanan himself.
Funny he would attack her on those grounds.
What's next?
Is Hillary going to say that Miers has fat ankles?
Looks like we've found a Hillary voter.
This is the same thing evrybody on this forum does every time Pat writes a column. You attack the emssenger. Why can't you just for once admit that he got it right. I don't care whether you like him or not, he gets it right sometimes. He got it right here.
Pat is smeared because he put American interests before all others.
I don't know...do you? Maybe a hidden scheme to withdraw her name, and then nominate a real candidate (JR Brown)? Maybe she could come up with an "illness" and withdraw herself. The Dems would have exhausted all their missile batteries and would look downright silly attacking a second nominee with the same rhetoric. Just thinkin' outloud here. I don't normally wear a foil hat but there has got to be more here than meets the eye. I have yet to hear a good argument as to why she would NOT be a good Justice.
This is the sort of incomprehensible, typo-ridden attempt at a thought that I have come to expect from the Bushbots.
I'm not a "Bushbot", but I've made typos.....what's your point, other than being an a$$?
Buchanan is nothing more than a columnist who once ran a vanity candidacy. Good for his business, but that is the extent of his effect.
Mr."has nothing of merit to contribute".
The point is that half of the responses to this article are some boneheaded variant of, "Well if Buchanan doesn't like her then she must be good." It's just depressing to see the level of stupidity that wells up in the Buchanan-haters each time one of his articles appears. This article of his is spot on.
They are so ready with the smear that they don't remember that Buchanan came out for Bush.
Oh, I certainly agree with that. Buchanan hating is definitely a pass time on FR. Mr. Buchanan isn't the boogie man many would like to make him out to be. That said, I respectfully disagree with you and him on Miers.....I have one question for Ms. Miers, her stance on the Second Amendment, it's the question that separates the chaff from the wheat. Thanks for replying civilly to a post that was a more than......errrr.....inflammatory.
At last...a voice of SANITY! Our Constitution has been trashed by Judges and lawyers.
I believe that Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary, beating Bob Dole that year. So he won at least one election...
dvwjr
There is dog crap on the sidewalks that I respect more than PJB.
Must be hard to not have respect from the left, the right or the middle.
I wonder Mr Buchanan if, when you pass on, anybody other than your family will care?
I really don't get you folks. Conservative moonbats...who'd a thunk?
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