While you are still on a roll, who should the President have nominated and why?
Posted on 10/05/2005 4:03:47 PM PDT by perfect stranger
I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.
Unfortunately for Bush, he could nominate his Scottish terrier Barney, and some conservatives would rush to defend him, claiming to be in possession of secret information convincing them that the pooch is a true conservative and listing Barney's many virtues – loyalty, courage, never jumps on the furniture ...
Harriet Miers went to Southern Methodist University Law School, which is not ranked at all by the serious law school reports and ranked No. 52 by US News and World Report. Her greatest legal accomplishment is being the first woman commissioner of the Texas Lottery.
I know conservatives have been trained to hate people who went to elite universities, and generally that's a good rule of thumb. But not when it comes to the Supreme Court.
First, Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years. Among the coalitions that elected Bush are people who have been laboring in the trenches for a quarter-century to change the legal order in America. While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right.
To casually spurn the people who have been taking slings and arrows all these years and instead reward the former commissioner of the Texas Lottery with a Supreme Court appointment is like pinning a medal of honor on some flunky paper-pusher with a desk job at the Pentagon – or on John Kerry – while ignoring your infantrymen doing the fighting and dying.
Second, even if you take seriously William F. Buckley's line about preferring to be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston telephone book than by the Harvard faculty, the Supreme Court is not supposed to govern us. Being a Supreme Court justice ought to be a mind-numbingly tedious job suitable only for super-nerds trained in legal reasoning like John Roberts. Being on the Supreme Court isn't like winning a "Best Employee of the Month" award. It's a real job.
One website defending Bush's choice of a graduate from an undistinguished law school complains that Miers' critics "are playing the Democrats' game," claiming that the "GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness." (In the sort of error that results from trying to sound "Ivy League" rather than being clear, that sentence uses the grammatically incorrect "which" instead of "that." Websites defending the academically mediocre would be a lot more convincing without all the grammatical errors.)
Actually, all the intellectual firepower in the law is coming from conservatives right now – and thanks for noticing! Liberals got stuck trying to explain Roe vs. Wade and are still at work 30 years later trying to come up with a good argument.
But the main point is: Au contraire! It is conservatives defending Miers' mediocre resume who are playing the Democrats' game. Contrary to recent practice, the job of being a Supreme Court justice is not to be a philosopher-king. Only someone who buys into the liberals' view of Supreme Court justices as philosopher-kings could hold legal training irrelevant to a job on the Supreme Court.
To be sure, if we were looking for philosopher-kings, an SMU law grad would probably be preferable to a graduate from an elite law school. But if we're looking for lawyers with giant brains to memorize obscure legal cases and to compose clearly reasoned opinions about ERISA pre-emption, the doctrine of equivalents in patent law, limitation of liability in admiralty, and supplemental jurisdiction under Section 1367 – I think we want the nerd from an elite law school. Bush may as well appoint his chauffeur head of NASA as put Miers on the Supreme Court.
Third and finally, some jobs are so dirty, you can only send in someone who has the finely honed hatred of liberals acquired at elite universities to do them. The devil is an abstraction for normal, decent Americans living in the red states. By contrast, at the top universities, you come face to face with the devil every day, and you learn all his little tropes and tricks.
Conservatives from elite schools have already been subjected to liberal blandishments and haven't blinked. These are right-wingers who have fought off the best and the brightest the blue states have to offer. The New York Times isn't going to mau-mau them – as it does intellectual lightweights like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee – by dangling fawning profiles before them. They aren't waiting for a pat on the head from Nina Totenberg or Linda Greenhouse. To paraphrase Archie Bunker, when you find a conservative from an elite law school, you've really got something.
However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," let alone to be a real one. Both Republicans and Democrats should be alarmed that Bush seems to believe his power to appoint judges is absolute. This is what "advice and consent" means.
Ann is right on the money on this one.
While you are still on a roll, who should the President have nominated and why?
Are you kidding me? We'll need to be strapped in NASCAR style for the coming cogntivie whiplash on everything from Border Control to States' Rights.
Bush is picking Meirs to avoid a fight... a fight that must be fought. Coulter's right on this as are many conservatives.
BWHAHAHAHA!
I can't tell if that is envy...or if you're just, um...frustrated.
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Well, that explains why she mentions it so often in this essay.
Drama queens.
Or a Pat Buchanan.
I agree. Ronald Reagan graduated from Eureka College, hardly "Ivy League". I watched her on O'Reilly last night. Her elitist snobbery came through loud and clear.
And this comment is perfectly acceptable?
"While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s"
First, there was the unwarranted attack on Roberts (which she now pretends she never did), and now comes this screed.
My comment is right on the money, pal.
There is no requirement in Constitutional law concerning SC nominations. If you wanted someone that checked the polls before they went to the bathroom, you should have voted Democrat, dipsht.
No, I hired a company to think it up :-)
Not that I have any hope of altering your state of total denial, but I am going to start a list of Conservatives who agree with me:
Peggy Noonan, Thursday, October 6, 2005, The Miers Misstep-What was President Bush thinking?
Robert Novak, October 6, 2005, Bush's Unpleasant Surprise.
Ann Coulter, October 5, 2005, "pooch"
George Will, October 5, 2005, Can This Nomination Be Justified?
David Limbaugh, October 4, 2005, The Miers Pick: Disappointed, but Still Hopeful.
Pat Buchanan, October 4, 2005, Bush Recoils From Greatness.
Rush Limbaugh, October 4, 2005, "weakness"
Bill Kristol,
Bill Bennett,
Mike Savage,
Mark Levin,
Laura Ingraham,
more to come . . .
There's the missing piece.
Mark Levin does not have a hair on his backside for Supreme Court nominations, having helped to inflict Kennedy on us.
I didn't know Mark could speak Clintonese
AC bump
Over one thousand comments to Ann's column this week. Heck, I thought she would write about Ronnie Earle! It just goes to show the contentiousness of this nomination.
I can see Ann's point- Bush had not one but TWO opportunities to stick a REAL HARD CORE CONSERVATIVE on the bench,and he does not even have to worry about re-election.
I woulda sent up Bork and had a clone made of him for the 2nd job.
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