What, No Up or Down for Harriet?

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What, No Up or Down for Harriet?
by James Hall, Senior Associate Editor

October 31, 2005

"Leaning Left"

James Hall It's great to be back in print. Just in time, it seems, to document the meltdown of President Bush and the Washington Republicans. In a week that features yet another FEMA slowdown in the face of hurricane Wilma, the indictment of Scooter Libby (perhaps he can get advice from Tom DeLay on posing for the mug shot), and the two-thousandth fatality in Iraq, the withdrawal of Harriet Miers' nomination is just the latest evidence of the wheels coming off the Bush Bus.

The Miers withdrawal was inevitable, once the rabid religious right picked up the barest whiff of unorthodoxy. That whiff came from a speech in 1993 where Miers had the temerity to pay tribute to women's dignity and their right to choose their own destinies.

Even though this wasn't anything like an overt endorsement of abortion, and Miers had signed a petition to strengthen anti-abortion laws in Texas should Roe v. Wade be overturned, this wasn't enough for the radical religious right, for whom any moderate-sounding voice is dangerous.

Not that Harriet Miers was ever the best Bush could nominate for the Supreme Court, mind you, despite her tenure on the Dallas City Council and the Texas Lottery Commission. She was, instead, evidence of the insularity and cronyism practiced by this White House in its leadership picks. It was clear to both Left and Right that Miers is another Mike Brown, a loyal supporter whom the president tried to place, out of her league, into the nation's most august judicial body.

While she may be a good personal lawyer, she's a bad choice for the Supreme Court. So bad, in fact, that she was "borked" by Bork himself, who called her mediocre and unqualified for the high court.

Moreover, her job in Washington made her a bad choice even had she been the sharpest legal mind around. As Bush's White House legal council, Miers is and was privy to many if not most of the president's legal decisions. Yet she refused to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee which of these decisions she had had input on, and the White House itself refused to release the record of her involvement on a range of cases which may eventually find themselves before the high court.

This lack of transparency created a situation where the nation would have to accept a Justice Harriet's word on whether or not she herself had been involved in a case she was being asked to rule on. For that reason alone, the Miers nomination should have been rejected, and her withdrawal is welcome.

But still, one is amused by the Right's reaction to Miers. After telling the world publicly that every Bush candidate for the courts deserved an "up or down vote," the Right's forces shamelessly worked behind the scenes in the Senate, the papers, and the conservative talk radio to undermine Harriet Miers before any vote could come up. Senators talked about her underwhelming visits, and conservative pundits bemoaned her lack of a radically-conservative paper trail.

No Republican Senator mentioned an "up or down vote" this time.

Their strategy worked, but it came at a price. It will be much harder to condemn any behind-the-scenes machinations of the Left against Bush's next candidate, after seeing the Right's behavior with Harriet Miers. Up or down vote? "Yeah, right," as the kids say. ***

Photo of the author courtesy of staff files