I will defer to Sowell's column, who said it better than I could:
Thomas Sowell: Republican Senate Is Weak, Not Bush
President Bush has taken on too many tough fights -- Social Security being a classic example -- to be regarded as a man who is personally weak. What is weak is the Republican majority in the Senate.
When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of pre-emptive surrender.
Before we can judge how the President played his hand, we have to consider what kind of hand he had to play. It was a weak hand -- and the weakness was in the Republican Senators.
Does this mean that Harriet Miers will not be a good Supreme Court justice if she is confirmed? It is hard to imagine her being worse than Sandra Day O'Connor -- or even as bad.
The very fact that Harriet Miers is a member of an evangelical church suggests that she is not dying to be accepted by the beautiful people, and is unlikely to sell out the Constitution of the United States in order to be the toast of Georgetown cocktail parties or praised in the New York Times. Considering some of the turkeys that Republicans have put on the Supreme Court in the past, she could be a big improvement.
--snip--
The bottom line with any Supreme Court justice is how they vote on the issues before the High Court. It would be nice to have someone with ringing rhetoric and dazzling intellectual firepower. But the bottom line is how they vote. If the President is right about Harriet Miers, she may be the best choice he could make under the circumstances.
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Does Sowell like this reality? Apparently not. Do I like it? No. I would love to see Bush, in a post-nuclear-option Senate, ram JRB down the Dem's throat. But he cannot. That is the reality here. Sowell is smart enough to realize that.
So Bush's critics over this nomination can engage in the luxury of putting forth their dream candidates as an alternative. But the Senate Republicans took that luxury away from Bush.
There _is no_ "best person" for this - or for ANY - Supreme Court nomination.
There _is_ a pool of qualified candidates. Their "qualifications" consist of their past writings and stands on the issues, and by expressing themselves through the years on the issues, they build up a career portfolio and _become_ "qualified".
From this pool, a president may select that person _he considers_ to be his best choice.
Of course, that is no guarantee that the person selected will, over time, live up to one's expectations. Example: Eisenhower's pick of Earl Warren.
To pick someone who DOES NOT have a track record of written opinions as evidence of his or her judicial philosophy is tantamount to a crapshoot. G.H.W. Bush tried that with David Souter; and exactly how has _he_ turned out?
Ms. Meirs may indeed turn out to be a dedicated conservative justice, possibly in the mold of Clarence Thomas. But at this time, there is no way to KNOW that, because so little is known about her.
There are dozens of conservative judges, on both the federal and state levels, who DO have established conservative credentials and who would have been as "confirmable" as Ms. Meirs.
Again, I hope Ms. Meirs evolves into a justice who will guard the Constitution and surprise conservatives. But - at this point, her performance will remain "a surprise", because so little is known of her, other than her employment relationship with G.W. Bush.
She may indeed surprise us by being a "good pick".
But for the BushBots to continue to argue that she is "the best person for the job" is flat-out ridiculous.
She isn't.
As I said, NO ONE is.
Cheers!
- John