What made President George W. Bush nominate Harriet Miers to the US Supreme Court? Not the controversial abortion opinion, Roe v. Wade. But it does rhyme with it.
Try “Abu Ghraib.”
It’s not yet a case pending before the US Supreme Court. But it might be, one day, along with other controversial “war on terror” issues. These and extraordinary innovations like the Patriot Act and the McCain-Feingold law are being scrutinized and may one day form lawsuits. And if and when that happens, it will be good to have friends in high places. Like the highest court in the land.
Because the buck stops there.
Bush regularly rewards friends. Miers is Bush’s friend, so it’s not surprising he wants to do something nice for her. But his selection of Miers, a Texas lawyer whose spare credentials, including Texas Lottery Commission work, would be more appropriate to a Federal trial-level judgeship, is the first time Bush’s Sun King-like bestowing of honor and largess upon loyalists is seen even by die-hard conservatives like George Will and Pat Buchanan as going too far.
What should matter to solid conservatives who actually care about abortion or any other legal issues is not Miers’ personal views on these “hot” issues, or anything else. It’s safe to say that despite her earlier career as a Democrat, Miers will now listen to only her master’s voice.
But so what?
That kind of sycophantic obedience is not enough to get your way on the Supreme Court. And getting your way is what being on the nation’s highest court’s all about.
Getting brother justices to see things your way is how opinions like Roe v. Wade get decided, written, or overturned in the first place. It’s an old-school process of persuasion. And generally, a stint as an appellate judge helps develop the skills for talking to other justices — skills that do not come naturally in any other legal setting.
Miers has no such experience. While this lacunae doesn’t render her incompetent, it does put her at a clear disadvantage in being able to press her case, as it were, before other vastly more accomplished and experienced justices — both those there now, and those sure to come. She’ll be a pushover for more experienced judges who don’t care whose friend she is.
Being an “honest broker,” a “quick study,” and even “incredibly bright” — all laude and glories applied generously to Miers, who likely deserves them, just isn’t enough to safeguard conservative values, or any values, in the inner sanctum. Even doltish lawyers fare well enough as Supreme Court justices due, in large part, to an ever-ready, eager flow of legal intelligentsia in the form of “honest,” “quick,” and “incredibly bright” law school graduates who become law clerks and often write the bulk of both federal and US Supreme Court opinions.
Miers is a little old for a clerkship, but that sounds like what she’d be naturally good at, given her supporters’ accolades. Conservative critics understand something Bush does not — to safeguard conservative values, Bush must appoint someone who knows what happens at the US Supreme Court, and understands how to make it happen.
Learning curves are for amateurs. Conservatives believed that Bush was made of sterner stuff. And when he first ran for office, he promised he was.
Why then choose Miers? Because she’s a “friend.” She will be loyal to Bush to the bitter end, and why not? The US Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment, and Bush and those who participated in a war that both the New York Times and the Washington Post now speculate is unwinnable may well be looking to position themselves for the future and protect themselves against whatever hindsight and scrutiny it will bring. Lots of unexpected things can happen when you destroy a whole country, ruin its infrastructure, and kill many, many people, and then fail to find the weapons of mass destruction that formed your argument for pursuing the war in the first place.
Bush is a true survivor, with a survivor’s instincts. This is what Miers’ appointment surely is. Otherwise, it’s too eccentric and whimsical to make sense. Her closer-than-close contact with Bush and his White House — she was his staff secretary, deputy chief of staff, and now presidential counsel — make her appointment pivotal for Bush and his friends.
People who are not “FOB” — friends of Bush — but merely traditional Republican conservatives, are rightly startled, mystified, and even furious.
So what’ll it be — Roe v. Wade, or Abu Ghraib? It’s fearing the latter in the form of a lawsuit and all the future fallout from the “War on Terror” that makes Miers the right US Supreme Court justice for Bush and friends, but all wrong for conservatives and America.
