Posted on 10/20/2005 9:06:27 AM PDT by aceintx
The Meritocracy Party Is it still the GOP? The Miers nomination poses an awkward test. by Duncan Currie 10/19/2005 12:00:00 AM
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WRITING IN the Wall Street Journal, editorial board member Melanie Kirkpatrick counsels her "friends on the right" to "brew themselves a cup of chamomile tea and go back and review the roster of Bush judges." Such an exercise may help them "sleep better" with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. "Any president is due some deference under the Constitution in his choice of judges," Kirkpatrick says, "and given his record on picking judges, this president deserves more than he has received."
In other words, trust Bush--or at least wait until the Senate hearings before passing judgment on Harriet Miers. For over two weeks now we've heard White House aides and pro-Miers conservatives parrot some variation of this argument. A charitable interpretation might be paraphrased as follows: Just be patient--when Miers goes before committee, she'll dazzle everyone with her punctilious mastery of constitutional law. A not-so-charitable interpretation might go like this: As long as she votes our way on the Court, what more do you want? So let's quit all this elitist nonsense about "qualifications" and "cronyism" and give her a chance.
If the pro-Miers forces mean to imply the former, then yes, they are correct to say the president deserves at least a modicum of deference in his selection. But if they mean the latter--that how Miers will vote is all that matters, and her credentials be damned--then conservatives should be aghast.
Republicans have spent much of the past quarter century establishing themselves as the Meritocracy Party: the party that rejects
"dumbing down" American institutions, eschews race- and sex-based quotas, supports merit pay for schoolteachers, and endorses rigorous standards in all spheres of American life, the Supreme Court included. Yet when it comes to George W. Bush's second High Court nominee, the Meritocracy Party finds itself in quite a pickle.
A conservative president--whose broader agenda most Republicans still favor--has tapped a patently under-qualified candidate. But the White House insists she will adjudicate as a strict constructionist, not unlike Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and the newly-minted (though still untested) chief justice, John Roberts. The administration also touts her evangelical Protestantism, a not-so-subtle assurance to pro-lifers. Meanwhile, First Lady Laura Bush and White House adviser Ed Gillespie have suggested that opposition to the nominee might be a function of sexism.
It is useful to construct a hypothetical here. Imagine a Democratic president, one with fairly solid street-cred among his party's base. Imagine he stated his intent to nudge the Court in a more liberal direction. Imagine he had once named John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as his favorite justices, the models for his own picks. Imagine, then, that this president chose his own White House counsel for the Court, a woman with no record of constitutional jurisprudence. Imagine that, to appease pro-choicers who were skeptical of how she'd vote on Roe v. Wade, the president mentioned that his nominee was a Jewish woman like Justice Ginsburg (wink-wink). Imagine, finally, that the first lady and a top White House staffer painted her opponents as sexists.
How would Republicans react? They'd fly into high dudgeon. They'd condemn the cynical use of religion. They'd blast the nomination of a White House insider with no ostensible background in studying the constitution. They'd lament the triumph of cronyism and blind partisanship over merit and intellectualism. They'd thump their chests and affirm that Republicans, not Democrats, were the Meritocracy Party--as witness the High Court hullabaloo. And, on each count, they'd be convincing.
So when Harriet Miers's defenders insinuate that her qualifications are meaningless--when they hint that adding a reliably conservative vote to the Court is all they care about--they do both the nominee and American conservatism a disservice. Leave aside the fact that Supreme Court justices rarely prove as "reliable" as they might initially seem. If Miers lacks the sweeping constitutional expertise needed to persuade wavering justices on individual cases, it's hard to see how, over the long term, she'll help move the Court in a more conservative, or "constitutionalist," direction. (After all, Republicans won't be picking Supreme Court justices forever.)
Conservatives, moreover, are typically among the most full-throated enthusiasts for America's vaunted meritocracy. They have led the charge to end anti-meritocratic policies such as affirmative action. And, in so doing, they have successfully molded the GOP into the Meritocracy Party. But at this critical juncture, their support for a Republican president has led them to trumpet anti-meritocratic arguments--the sorts of arguments conservatives would quickly scorn if they were made by liberals. Indeed, one often wonders if pro-Miers conservatives would accept any lawyer for the Court who promised to vote "the right way."
Harriet Miers may well possess the myriad talents and capabilities that President Bush claims she does. But let's not pretend her constitutional credentials--or the lack thereof--are immaterial. Conservatives, of all people, should know better.
Duncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
Test results? Written? Oral?
Said it many times before. I'll rather have a group of conservative dog catchers on the SCOTUS that a gaggle of "intellectual" Harvard lawyers.
Quite frankly, I doubt this happens much nowadays. Anyone who can vote to uphold McCain-Feingold won't be swayed by any kind of constitutional expertise. If you can ignore "Congress shall pass no law", you can ignore anything.
Yogi Berra would have made a better justice than Earl Warren.
Ah ha! So you admit it... she's a dog catcher!! But seriously, I hear Hillary Clinton is the smartest woman in America. Why? Because a lot of people say so. I sure don't want to see her sitting on the SC.
It actually is about who can get confirmed and qualified enough. Both.
She fits the bill best in Bush's mind for whatever reason.
Then we can't trust Miers. What we really need is someone so completely retarded that he's incapable of voting any way other than he's told, and then make Scalia his handler.
It's about how she votes and lying won't help. We want her to vote in a legitimate way -- a Constittuional way. Judges have only limited Constitutional power. When they legislate, they usurp that power. So the "how she votes" argument is true, even though it's a distortion too, in that, for the right, it is not about imposing their ideology. It's about butting out of ideology and just ruling on the laws and Constitution AS WRITTEN and ratified by the people, not the judges.
Exactly. Yes, we need some justices on the Court who can sway others. That is largely why Bush nominated Roberts. That guy can probably persuade others.
But, we don't need ALL justices to be like this.
Some times, we just need a reliable conservative.
This nomination is insulting to all the conservatives who paid top dollar for an expensive piece of sheepskin with the right University on it.
Lincoln would be looked down upon today if he was nominated to SCOTUS. Can you actually believe a man could teach himself law? GASP!
So actual votes on the court don't matter. Only qualifications. I assume, then, that you would rather have someone with a bio along these lines:
She attended both Harvard and Columbia law schools and served on the law review of both, an achievement that generally bodes well for a distinguished legal career. She tied for first place in her graduating class. As classmate put it, she was "scary smart."
She become a clerk for a U.S. district judge and later became the first female tenured professor at Columbia School of Law. She then became a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Who is she?
Answer: Ruth Bader Ginsberg
It's not about her resume, it's about whether the nominee understands why the judicial branch is a problem and what the proper method for reversing its usurpations will be. Merely voting against Roe v. Wade is completely insufficient, the entire edifice of judicial legislative action must be torn down.
BS....if she votes the "right" way, it's proof of her constitutional acumen. A ninety percent concurrence rate with Scalia/Thomas and I would wish her on the court untill she's 110.
In this case, meritocracy is code for elitist.
Seems to me my hero, Ronald Reagan, former Roosevelt democrat, didn't have a stellar pedigree before he commenced to re-arrange the world.
They also said Clarence Thomas wasn't the best qualified, and I'm sure he wasn't, but in my opinion he's the best justice on the court right now.
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