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Harriet Miers Withdraws Supreme Court Nomination
Whether Harriet Miers really was qualified to take a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States has now become a moot point. Her nomination never had the votes to get her through without some serious revelation of her “judicial philosophy” – a grandiose word meaning ideology as it applies to interpretation of the law. In order to win confirmation, she was going to have to perform at an Oscar-winning level in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and she would need some White House papers to back up her statements. Since the White House didn’t want to reveal privileged information between a lawyer and the presidential client, her withdrawal merely acknowledged the inevitable.
Interestingly, Ms. Miers now joins a body even more select that the top court in America. She is just one of seven nominees to have withdrawn from the lists before being thrown off since the constitution went into effect. And she withdraws with a fig leaf of dignity because there is some truth to the pretext for her decision. In her letter to the president withdrawing, she wrote,
Repeatedly in the course of the process of confirmation for nominees for other positions, I have steadfastly maintained that the independence of the Executive Branch be preserved and its confidential documents and information not be released to further a confirmation process. I feel compelled to adhere to this position, especially related to my own nomination. Protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my confirmation are in tension. I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield.
Perhaps, Mr. Bush will learn from this. In particular, he’s going to have to pick someone whose public record is sufficiently accessible to allow Senators to justify their up or down vote. “Trust me” just isn’t good enough. While it is admirable that he believes he has surrounded himself with people of such caliber (evidence to the contrary, e.g., Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk” WMD statement, Field Marshal von Rumsfeld’s insistence on fewer and fewer troops in the attack on Iraq, and Dr. Rice’s generally horrific judgment about foreign policy), he needs to branch out a bit.
At the end of the day, he needs to convince 60 Senators that his choice is a good one; that will prevent a filibuster. With 55 Republicans in the Senate, that means he needs 5 Democrats to play ball. There are conservatives among the Senate Democrats. All he needs to do to win (and avoid the nuclear option on judicial filibusters) is pick another John Roberts. And if he wants to really energize his base, he can pick a judicial Attila and dare the Democrats to fight. While the second term’s success still hinges on events in Iraq, a legacy on the bench can still be his if Mr. Bush shows some guts and some common sense. In this administration, the former has been plentiful while the latter has been rare as hens' teeth.
© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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