October 3, 2005
Meaning behind Miers
As the flap over the Harriet Miers appointment has blown up in the administration’s face, we hear two constant refrains from the White House:
1) Bush is a competent leader who wants to ensure an originalist Supreme Court.
2) He knows Miers, so just “trust him” on this.
Well, most of us know that Bush hasn’t really given us, as conservative, much during his time in office. He promised tax reform, partial privatization of social security, vouchers in education, and limited government in general. All we’ve gotten so far is tax cuts, and he celebrated those by spending like a drunken sailor on a Medicare prescription drugs plan, and giving the Congress every dollar of appropriations it asks for, like his $286B transportation bill. Tax cuts are worthless unless spending comes, because he’s just running up the tab that young people like me will spend the rest of our lives paying.
So I’m not ready for #2. I don’t trust that Bush knows what he’s doing. I don’t trust that he’s upholding his promises to us. I don’t trust that he knows that Miers is going to be in the mold of a Scalia or Thomas. And since he’s not given us any indication of who this woman is or why we should trust her, we need to start looking at this more carefully.
Napoleon said, “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.” I’m sure Bush could simply be incompetent, but given his track record so far, he’s managed to survive a long time.
So I’m going to try and figure out the hidden motives behind Miers’ appointment:
Blackmail: Miers has pictures of Bush in a– compromising– position with a goat. C’mon people, she is his lawyer! If anyone has this kind of dirt on Bush, it’s her.
Draft Liberal to Retire: John Paul Stevens is old (85). It’s quite possible that this is some gambit by Rove to nominate moderate enough justices now, to entice one of the liberals on the court to retire now instead of waiting for Bush’s term to end. I think we all know that if current trends continue, Bush will be succeeded by a Democrat, so they might be willing to try to hold out. If he can make one of those liberal justices believe that he’ll not make any big moves or enter any big fights over the court, they might be duped into thinking it’s okay to retire, and that Bush will be forced into maintaining the balance of the court. If this were true, it’d be a fairly diabolical scheme, assuming Bush had the cojones to replace someone like Stevens, Ginsburg, etc with Janice Rogers Brown. But there’s so much risk in a gambit like this, I have to think it’s not worth trying.
It’s all about abortion: Harriet Miers is a pro-life evangelical Christian. She’s replacing Sandra Day O’Connor, who was not a staunch conservative on abortion. If Bush’s sole goal was to gain himself an extra vote overturning Roe, he is likely to know that’s a solid vote with someone like Miers. I think this could very well be the most plausible reason, as abortion has to be one of Bush’s key goals in the court. If he thinks Roberts will more commonly vote with Scalia and Thomas against abortion, it turns what is now about a 6-3 balance on Roe into a 5-4 balance. One more vote would sway it. We don’t have a clue on Miers’ take on the commerce clause, or states’ rights, etc, but we know this one.
Protect the White House: She’s apparently pretty enamored with Bush, and has been White House counsel for quite some time, as has Roberts. If Bush is trying to stack the court with justices who will uphold a lot of power in the executive branch, she’d be a strong pick. If he needs someone to provide cover on releasing White House documents/etc if (when) he’s impeached, he might as well find someone who believes in executive privilege.
But that’s what I’m thinking at this point. I don’t think Bush is doing this just to avoid a fight, because he can win a fight with a Republican Senate behind him. And I don’t see any reason to believe that she’s a Clarence Thomas in sheep’s clothing. So I have to believe there’s something behind this nomination, and the list above is all I can figure out so far. But whatever it is, I can’t say I like it.
UPDATE: Bradford Plumer and slingshot.org think that this might just be a nice big pro-business appointment. This seems very, very plausible. Perhaps Bush is just nominating big-government, big-business-friendly social conservatives, because that’s who he is. All that talk of originalism is a just a load of BS…
3 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I know nothing about this woman. Who knows what she will do.
I vote for “Protect The White House” and it will be, in my opinion, on ongoing civil matters like damages over Enron, Halliburton, and perhaps even thinks like deLay, or Abramoff, or Valerie Plame or Abu Gharib or Gitmo. Clinton had to testify in the Paula Jones matter. You are going to find, I predict, that no one in the Bush administration will be forced to talk about anything to anybody.
When you mention enticement over Stevens’ retirement, you have to ask yourself why didn’t Rehnquist resign if he was so ill? Could it be that even Rehnquist didn’t trust Bush with a SCOTUS choice? If Rehnquist wouldn’t resign, why should Stevens?
This just reminds you of a point I am always coming back to in all of our exchanges. Bush is not a Democrat. Bush is not a Republican. Not a liberal, not a conservative, not a libertarian, not a religous visionary, not a 12-stepper. Bush is a Bush. He is the Man Who Would Be King.
Maybe so… Either way, he’s becoming more and more bothersome every day. I don’t know whether his motives in the War on Terror are even right, I just know that he seems to be doing relatively okay there (like his father, foreign policy OK but horrible domestically). But I’ve given up on him. We need a change in 2008. I don’t know if that change should be the opposite side of the aisle, but the Republicans better shake things up in our own nomination.