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.
Sour grapes?
Sour grapes?
I don't know, but you were certainly eager to oblige without asking.
As a pretty sharp non-Northeasterner who did not attend an Ivy League school, I think I see the problem now. None of the inside the beltway, northeastern elitists on the right like to have an non-northeastern elitist enter their little club. Now the picture is getting clearer. This nominee looks more and more to have the right viewpoints, she is just not from the right place.
I, too, have my questions, but this assault from the rightwing pundits is actually turning me off.
I've been an admirer of Ann Coulter's (I own her book "High Crimes & Misdemeanors"). There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with the President's decision, but she's becoming more over the top with each article.
If she keeps this up, she'll become a blond, female Joe Farah.
This is the norm for her, not the exception. She is a better looking Michael Savage, and has only gotten worse as she continues to feed on her own political ideology without checkpointing it with the real world.
Ping
I like Ann, and agree with her on many points. However, I must agree the "booze" was not appropriate, even for Ann.
She went off on John Roberts also. IMO, she is like many of us in that we were looking for a fight.
Otherwise she's comming off as an Elitist. I'll be damned if I accept the ideal that only graduates from certain "prestige" schools are worthy of high office.
LOL....have to be quick to beat the Bushbots!
and yet another personal attack!
Say, were you on the threads saying about how great miers would be because she's a 'christian'?
Just checking. Want to know what 'christian' behavior looks like. It's the personal attacks, right?
Well, well, well.
I can agree with that. I wasn't a hard and fast conservative until I went to college and "saw the devil". Even when I was in the Army I was still wasting my votes on Perot.
Ann needs to chill out. Miers has yet to say a single word at a hearing and Ann is savaging her. And some here get worried about a few insults tossed in Anns direction? Ann is the master of insults. Many I agree with when aimed at liberals.
I like Annie Oakley...but she's missed it the second time. First Roberts now Miers....she lookin' worse and worse...I guess Annie's boob job has affected her. To bad.
Yes he does! He has told the nation the truth at every turn. He has extended the conservative message in all areas. He has taken heat, and kept going. He doesn't deserve this from Coulter just because she is p*ssed. She didn't like Roberts very much either. She was wrong.
Bush owes us. We deserve a strong conservative nominee. We got him there -- with a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a majority of Republican governorships.
It's his second term -- what's he politicking for?
Talk to the head hunters and they will tell you the Ivy League is now second tier. Living on it's past. SMU is a top notch school. Try to play'em in football, but afetr that they are top notch.
What if the next Klinton picked the next Lanny Davis?
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