George Will, Harriet Miers and Old Fashioned Affirmative Action
05 October 2005 12:36 am by Taylor Marsh
Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted
and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First,
it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important
that she not be. Third, the presumption — perhaps rebuttable but certainly
in need of rebutting — should be that her nomination is not a defensible
exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.
It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that
she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses
talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks. The president’s “argument”
for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.
… It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year,
she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests
and talents pertinent to the court’s role. Otherwise the sound principle of
substantial deference to a president’s choice of judicial nominees will dissolve
into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents
to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the
Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf
of friends.
CAN
THIS NOMINATION BE JUSTIFIED?, by George Will
Come on, George, tell us how you really feel.
You know, I’ve been stewing over something since yesterday’s
presidential grumble fest.
It started when Debra Orin (the
journalist I couldn’t identify yesterday) questioned Mr. Bush, asking
if his pick of Harriet Miers wasn’t just “old fashioned affirmative action,”
as some female lawyers had posited to Ms. Orin.
The question stopped me for a moment and I lodged it to ponder.
Then I remember hearing Mr. Bush say that Harriet Miers was
a “good worker.” At least that’s how I remember him referring to
her. I thought, someone who might be the next associate justice of the Supreme
Court is a “good worker”?
The condescension was clear.
As the day wore on, with Ms. Orin’s inference of “old fashioned
affirmative action” swirling in my brain, later I heard Ben Ginsburg
and Patrick J. Buchanan arguing over Ms. Miers on “Hardball.” That’s
when Chris Matthews said the oddest thing. Something to the affect that Harriet
Miers will swim in synch with the other conservatives, as a picture of some
oddball Supreme Court water ballet danced across my inner eye.
Yes, that’s what Ben and Pat envisioned. Harriet Miers swimming
along side all the other conservatives, without a care or a thought in her
head, as she acquiesces to what the big boys want. That’s Bush’s good little
girl.
And once again, I was brought back to the “old fashioned
affirmative action” idea. That Harriet, because she is a good worker,
a friend of the president, a pioneer in law for women in Texas (which is a
dubious distinction, frankly), but without one whit of constitutional experience,
gets a pass that no male would get in a million years.
Mind you, I was all for Roberts taking his position as chief
justice. Look at his resume, his life, the man.
But to pick Harriet Miers because she is a “good worker,”
shares the president’s philosophy, whatever the hell that is (conservatives
don’t even know at this point), and blazed a trail in Texas, well, is Bush
kidding?
I then thought of something else Bush said yesterday. He quoted
the Democrats plea to pick someone “outside the judicial monestary.”
And he did, Harry Reid’s pick, that is. Bringing to mind what I asked from
the start: Did the Honorable Senator from Nevada set Bush up? If you aren’t convinced he did. Look again at the results.
George Will is absolutely right. The Senate does not owe George
W. Bush abdication of their Article II constitutional responsibility just
because Bush won an election and a president deserves his nominee. Because
the president doesn’t deserve squat if he hasn’t first justified and proven
his nominee is qualified in the first place.
Being a good worker just won’t wash.
It wouldn’t for a man, so why should it for a woman?
Are we now elevating Harriet Miers to take Sandra Day O’Connor’s
place on the Supreme Court just because she has a set of ovaries?
Or is it because wifey wanted a woman?
Would any man get such a pass? Don’t make me laugh.
George Will’s question is apt: can this nomination be justified?
Not in a million years.
