Random Thoughts, Part 2

On Friday the Citizen ranted through a bunch of related but poorly-connected thoughts. Apologies to all. Let me try again:

1. Harriet Miers. No offense is intended to Ms. Miers. She is, by her resume, a capable lawyer. The failings are simple: she has held only one position that required her to deal with constitutional issues, and that was as White House Counsel. And how long did she hold that position? Since midway 2004, or, rephrased, right around a year. Literally no other position she's held -- as head of the Texas Lotto Commission (?! -- one of those "first women" things), one of the staff secretaries at the White House (er, secretary?), and so forth; or as head of the Texas Bar (another "first woman"), which has no inherent value in terms of defining her Constitutional capacities nor requires in any way that she ever think about Constitutional law. Fact: we've found no writings of hers that support a claim that she was a "deep thinker" about Constitutional law (the precise opposite of the flawlessly-qualified John Roberts, whose breadth and volume of dealing with exactly Constitutional issues was enormous and deep). So it is palpably FALSE for the White House to assert that Harriet Miers is the "best person they could find" and "best qualified for the job" -- I can come up with a half-dozen female judges/attorneys and several non-lawyers who have a broader and deeper background in Constitutional law than Ms. Miers. What sets Ms. Miers apart from her competitors? That she's a Friend-of-George. Which is sort of ironic: Friend of George = FOG, which is what this nomination was made in. Conservatives are rightly angered, especially as the White House uses rhetoric that exactly undermines its own assertions in the past about how to judge candidates: by their capacity to think, as evidenced by their writings (oops, she doesn't have any!); by their experience with constitutional law (oops, she has less than one year of experience in that, out of her entire career); that a person be judged not by their sex organ but by their capacity to think and how they think (not the policies, the actual methodologies to their thinking process)... and OOPS, the White House has just gotten done holding her up as "the first woman" this and that, which would be exactly counter-intuitive to the "judge not by sexual organ or skin pigmentation but by mental/philosophical capacities" argument that the Right has trumpeted successfully. Well, it was successful... until a Republican White House started trumping exactly the opposite argument. Huh? I prefer Mr. Bush for his correct decisions regarding foreign policy, and some of his stands on domestic politics (some, by no means all), and he was head-and-shoulders better than Al Gore or John Kerry. But this is simply ridiculous, made moreso every time the White House opens its mouth and offers arguments that shouldn't be coming from any Conservative.

I could care less whether she was the first woman to head the Texas Lotto Commission -- or if she were he and he were the first Chairman of the Right to Surf organization. They're equally as relevant -- which is the point. They need to be talking about her qualifications in terms of actual qualifications for the position in question, which is Supreme Court justice: that she has a history that indicates deep constitutional study and thinking; that she has held at some point positions that lend themselves to constitutional study; that she has a philosophy toward the Constitution that is of the same philosophy that the President promised to appoint, and that there be evidence to show that she has that philosophy. The problem is, they can't talk about those things in specifics -- she doesn't have anything in those categories. They can't talk about her writings, she doesn't have any that relate to the job; can't talk about her constitutional philosophy, because her history has nothing in it to indicate or prove what sort of constitutional scholar (other than that she isn't, which is proveable given the absence of any supporting evidence) she is/will be.

The White House should either: withdraw the nomination NOW and get back to basics, or start immediately justifying the nomination by pointing to and providing the actual evidence that she is a deep Constitutional scholar. Neither is going to happen -- President Bush has among his failings a flawless loyalty that can extend into situations that get him in trouble, like now; and they have no evidence to speak of, because she has no writings/positions/etc. to offer.

Tomorrow, we look back at Al Gore, who continues to try to be a voice in American politics... and how one single event makes Al Gore utterly and completely unqualified for any office, even dogcatcher. Ah, the fun of videotape and chronology... :)