Text 15807, 221 rader
Skriven 2005-10-04 22:03:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
     Kommentar till en text av Bob Sakowski
Ärende: The best he could find
==============================
BS>Preznit Lamedick says the Miers was the best person he could find for
BS>Susan O'Connor's seat on the SCOTUS.

BS>Question for conservative wingnuts everywhere: How does it feel to to
BS>have those conservative judges, members of the Federalist Society,
BS>called less qualified to sit on the SCOTUS than a 60 year old woman
BS>who never married, never was a judge, never really had anything close
BS>to a notable career as a lawyer?

BS>Are you wingnuts feeling as used as a douce bag in a whorehouse about
BS>now? That's what you get when you give your allegience to a man who
BS>has no sense of loyalty, ethics or morality. Are you happy now?


Aren't you getting tired of Bush beating you folks at every turn ?  I 
thought liberals were supposed to be the smartest people on the planet.  
You know, enlightenment.

======================================

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4876

Don't misunderestimate Miers
October 4th, 2005


President Bush is a politician trained in strategic thinking at Harvard 
Business School, and schooled in tactics by experience and advice, 
including the experience and advice of his father, whose most lasting 
political mistake was the nomination of David Souter. The nomination of 
Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court shows that he has learned his lessons 
well. Regrettably, a large contingent of conservative commentators does 
not yet grasp the strategy and tactics at work in this excellent 
nomination.

There is a doom-and-gloom element on the Right which is just waiting to 
be betrayed, convinced that their hardy band of true believers will lose 
by treachery those victories to which justice entitles them. They are 
stuck in the decades-long tragic phase of conservative politics, when 
country club Republicans inevitably sold out the faith in order to gain 
acceptability in the Beltway media and social circuit. Many on the right 
already are upset with the President already over his deficit spending, 
and his continued attempts to elevate the tone of politics in Washington 
in the face of ongoing verbal abuse by Democrats and their media allies. 
They misinterpret his missing verbal combativeness as weakness.

There is also a palpable hunger for a struggle to the death with hated 
and verbally facile liberals like Senator Chuck Schumer. Having seen 
that a brilliant conservative legal thinker with impeccable elite 
credentials can humble the most officious voices of the Judiciary 
Committee, they demand a replay. Thus we hear conservatives sniffing 
that a Southern Methodist University legal education is just too non-Ivy 
League, adopting a characteristic trope of blue state elitists. We hear 
conservatives bemoaning a lack of judicial experience, and not a single 
law review article in the last decade as evidence of a second rate mind.

These critics are playing the Democrats’ game. The GOP is not the party 
which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual 
and mental fitness. Nor does the Supreme Court ideally consist of the 
nine greatest legal scholars of an era. Like any small group, it is 
better off being able to draw on abilities of more than one type of 
personality. The Houston lawyer who blogs  under the name of Beldar 
wisely points out that practicing high level law in the real world and 
rising to co-managing partner of a major law firm not only demonstrates 
a proficient mind, it provides a necessary and valuable perspective for 
a Supreme Court Justice, one which has sorely been lacking. 

Ms. Miers has actually managed a business, a substantial one with 
hundreds of employees, and has had to meet a payroll and conform to tax, 
affirmative acttion, and other regulatory demands of the state. She has 
also been highly active in a White House during wartime, when national 
security considerations have been a matter of life and death. When the 
Supreme Court deliberates in private, I think most conservatives would 
agree that having such a perspective at hand is a good thing, not a bad 
thing.

Other conservatives are dismayed that the President is playing politics 
(!), rather than simply choosing the “bestö candidate.  But the 
President understands that confirmation is nothing but a political game, 
ever since Robert Bork, truly one of the finest legal minds of his era, 
was demonized and defeated. 

The President’s smashing victory in obtaining 78 votes for the 
confirmation of John Roberts did not confirm these conservative critics 
in their understanding of the President’s formidable abilities as a 
nominator of Justices. Au contraire, this taste of Democrat defeat 
whetted their blood lust for confirmation hearing combat between the 
likes of a Michael Luttig or a Janice Rogers Brown and the Judiciary 
Committee Democrats. Possibly their own experience of debating emotive 
liberals over-identifies them with verbal combat as political 
effectiveness.

In part, I think these conservatives have unwittingly adopted the 
Democrats’ playbook, seeing bombast and ‘gotcha’ verbal games as the 
essence of political combat. Victory for them is seeing the enemy 
bloodied and humiliated. They mistake the momentary thrill of triumph in 
combate, however evanescent, for lasting victory where it counts: a 
Supreme Court comprised of Justices who will assemble majorities for 
decisions reflecting the original intent of the Founders.

Rather than extend any benefit of the doubt to the President’s White 
House lawyer and counselor, some take her lack of a paper trail and a 
history of vocal judicial conservatism as a sign that she may be an 
incipient Souter. They implicitly believe that the President is not 
adhering to his promise of nominating Justices in the mold of Scalia and 
Thomas. The obvious differences between Souter, a man personally unknown 
to Bush 41, and Miers, a woman who has known Bush 43 for decades, and 
who has served as his close daily advisor for years, are so striking as 
to make this level of distrust rather startling. Having seen the Souter 
debacle unfold before his very eyes, the President is the last man on 
earth to recapitulate it.

He anticipates and is defusing the extremely well-financed opposition 
which Democrat interest groups will use against any nominee. Yes, he is 
playing politics by nominating a female. A defeated nominee does him and 
the future of American jurisprudence no favors. By presenting a female 
nominee, he kicks a leg out from under the stool on which the feminist 
left sits. Not just a female, but a career woman, one who has not raised 
children, not married a male, and has a number of “firstsö to her credit 
as a pioneer of women's achievement in Texas law. Let the feminists try 
to demonize her.

If they do so, almost inevitably, they will seize on her religious 
beliefs and practice. Some on the left will not be able to restrain 
their scorn for an evangelical Christian Sunday school teacher from 
Dallas, and this will hurt them. They will impose a religious test 
against a member of a group accounting of a third of the voting base. 
Speculation on her being a lesbian has already started. "She sure seems 
like a big ol' Texas lesbian to me," as one of the Kos Kidz put it. 

They are going to make themselves look very ugly. 

The President must also prepare himself for a possible third nominee to 
the Court. With the oldest Justice 85 years old, and the vagaries of 
mortality for all of us being what they are, it is quite possible that a 
third (or even fourth) opportunity to staff the Court might come into 
play. Defusing, demoralizing and discrediting the reflexive opposition 
groups  in the Democrats’ base is an important goal for the President, 
and for his possible Republican successors in office.

Then there is the small matter of actually influencing Supreme Court 
decision-making.

This president understands small group dynamics in a way that fewif any 
of his predecessors ever have. Perhaps this is because he was educated 
at Harvard Business School in a legendary course then-called Human 
Behavior in Organizations. The Olympian Cass Gilbert-designed 
temple/courtroom/offices of the Supreme Court obscure the fact that it 
is a small group, subject to very human considerations in its 
operations. Switching two out of nine members in a small group has the 
potential to entirely alter the way it operates. Because so much of 
managerial work consists of getting groups of people to work 
effectively, Harvard Business School lavishes an extraordinary amount of 
attention on the subject.

One of the lessons the President learned at Harvard was the way in which 
members of small groups assume different roles in their operation, each 
of which separate roles can influence the overall function. The new 
Chief Justice is a man of unquestioned brilliance, as well as cordial 
disposition. He will be able to lead the other Justices through his 
intellect and knowledge of the law. Having ensured that the Court’s 
formal leader meets the traditional and obvious qualities of a Justice, 
and is a man who indeed embodies the norms all Justices feel they must 
follow, there is room for attending to other important roles in group 
process.

According  to a source in her Dallas church quoted by Marvin Olasky, 
Harriet Miers is someone who 

taught children in Sunday School, made coffee, brought donuts: "Nothing 
she's asked to do in church is beneath her."

As the court’s new junior member, the 60 year old lady Harriet Miers 
will finally give a break to Stephen Breyer, who has been relegated to 
closing and opening the door of the conference room, and fetching 
beverages for his more senior Justices. Her ability to do this type of 
work with no resentment, no discomfort, and no regrets will at the least 
endear her to the others. It will also confirm her as the person who 
cheerfully keeps the group on an even keel, more comfortable than 
otherwise might be the case with a level of emotional solidarity.

But there is much more to it than group solidarity, important though 
that ineffable spiritual qualty may be.  Ms. Miers embodies the work 
ethic as few married people ever could. She reportedly often shows up 
for work at the White House at 5 AM, and doesn’t leave until 9 or 10 PM. 
I have no doubt that she will continue her extraordinary dedication to 
work once confirmed to the Court. She will not only win the admiration 
of those Justices who work shorter hours, she will undoubtedly be 
appreciated by the law clerks who endure similar hours, working on the 
research and writing for the Justices. These same law clerks interact 
with their bosses in private, and their influence intellectual and 
emotional may be more profound than some Justices might like to admit.

The members of the Supreme Court all see themselves as serving the 
public and the law to the best of their abilities. Their self-regard 
depends on their belief in the righteousness and fairness of their 
deliberations. They must listen to the arguments of the other Justices. 
But their susceptibility to viewpoints they had not yet considered is 
matter of both an intellectual and emotional character. Open-mindedness 
uusally requires an unfreezing of deeply and emotionally-held 
convictions. 

Having proven herself capable of charming the likes of Harry Reid, 
leader of the Senate Democrats, is there much room for doubt that 
Harriet Miers is capable of opening up opponents emotionally to hear and 
actually consider as potentially worthwhile the views of those they 
might presume to be their enemies? 

George Bush has already succeeded in having confirmed a spectacularly-
qualified intellectual leader of the Court in Chief Justice Roberts. If 
conservatives don’t sabotage his choice, Harriet Miers could make an 
enormous contribution toward building Court majorities for 
interpretations of the Constitution faithful to the actual wording of 
the document.

Thomas Lifson is the editor and publisher of The American Thinker.



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