Miers’ nomination is now officially embarrassing

October 18, 2005

When reporters got a hold of Harriet Miers’ official correspondence from Texas, it was comical to see what a fawning sycophant our Supreme Court nominee has been towards the president. Documents surfaced showing Miers showering Bush with the kind of praise generally seen from a child who adores a parent. Miers told Bush he’s “the best governor ever,” who is “cool” and “the greatest.” At one point, Miers told the then-governor that “Texas is blessed” just to have him.

Unfortunately, the gushing admiration wasn’t reserved for Bush’s days as governor, nor was it limited to written correspondence.

“President Bush’s vision, his discipline and relentless dedication, his hard work and his likability have made it possible for all of us in this room to participate in the great enterprise we know as the United States,” she told a group of White House interns in June.

“Most importantly, these qualities in President Bush make a brighter future for our nation and people all around the world possible.”

“Serving President Bush and Mrs. Bush is an impossible-to-describe privilege,” she told Pepperdine Law School graduates in May.

The first couple “have inspired me long before he became president,” she told the interns.

“My admiration for the president’s leadership and Mrs. Bush’s leadership has been reaffirmed on virtually a daily basis,” she told a Washington law firm in July.

You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s one thing for a president to nominate a Supreme Court justice who has some personal connection to him; it’s another to nominate a justice who seems prepared to build a religion around him.

In fact, it gets slightly worse.

In one speech, she spoke of Bush’s little-known talent as an editor. “All those editing skills, and you would think the president was a lawyer himself. He works so constantly. We’ll keep an eye out and make sure he does not start keeping track of his billable hours,” she told the interns. “Time and time again, it seemed, the president was able to zero in on the most difficult aspect of an issue and provide exactly the direction needed. Guess that is why he is the president.”

She also spoke of how Bush hugged relatives of a soldier who had been killed in Iraq.

“This is a scene I will never forget for the selfless caring and value and sacrifice it depicted. So much of what is great about America is wrapped up in one big hug.”

I honestly have trouble believing that a professional adult could be so sycophantic towards a president. If this had appeared in The Onion, I’d be tempted to dismiss it as over-the-top exaggeration.

And yet, here we are.

The mind reels.

In my opinion, this is the most compelling reason to bar her from the Supreme Court.

  • She’s just got a crush. Surely, Carpetbagger, you were one of those who said that Clinton’s personal life shouldn’t be a factor in judging his performance as a president? So why is a woman’s personal life so different? Would it be better if, instead of coming over “all feminine” with the guy, she came over “all masculine”?

  • The FIRST question from the Dems’ lips now should be “Are you going to recuse yourself from any matters discussed while serving with Bush as governor and then as president?”

  • “Guess that is why he is the president.”

    Harriet, if you had an ounce of intelligence you’d damn well know that he’s president because his name is George Bush. Tack on a well-run campaign
    machine and you’ve got that machine and a name. Whatever he’s done after that is coincidence and interpretation.

    I’d be willing to bet that following the speech to the interns, Harriet separated the female interns and took them into a room and gave them another speech, using uber-embarassing words like “ta-tas” and “who-whos” and “you-know whats” and “urges” in her self-appointed “anti-Monica” role at the White House (also known as a cock-block).

  • This woman is the biggest FOOL in the world. She has NO buiness on the supreme court. Just as BUSH has NO business being our president.
    He has to be the winner hands down as the worst ever.

  • It’s not only the mind that’s reeling. Please, out of consideration for those of us out on the Left Coast (Bellingham WA), please wait to post this kind of treacle until we’ve had a chance to digest breakfast. I thought I had got used to such fawning from two of my siblings, but this really is beyond the pale, not just an ass kisser but a fully fledged brown nose. Justice of the Supreme Court? If Miers had the judicial wisdom of Marshall, Jefferson and Madison combined it wouldn’t be enough to overcome this obsequious retainer’s toadiness.

    The more I think about it, the more I wonder if we shouldn’t just cave on Roe v. Wade. It’s the only thing which has kept the GOP and all its creepy religious nutso allies politically alive year after year. The blue states had all decriminalized abortion prior to Roe v. Wade, so it’s hardly necessary. If red state Talibans want to use Miers’ deciding vote to re-criminalize, thereby acknowledging their own ignorance and superstition, so be it. The rest of us have already paid enough of a price to protect them from themselves.

  • The more I think about it, the more I wonder if we shouldn’t just cave on Roe v. Wade. It’s the only thing which has kept the GOP and all its creepy religious nutso allies politically alive year after year. The blue states had all decriminalized abortion prior to Roe v. Wade, so it’s hardly necessary. If red state Talibans want to use Miers’ deciding vote to re-criminalize, thereby acknowledging their own ignorance and superstition, so be it. The rest of us have already paid enough of a price to protect them from themselves.

    A few thoughts on this notion (which I’ve heard many times before):

    1) Don’t think that the battle won’t be joined in every single state, and that it won’t continue to be a Republican Fundamentalist rallying cry. As long as any woman can have an abortion anywhere in the country, they’ll never stop using it as a rallying point. They need a crusade, and simply eliminating one specific issue won’t remove the crusadability factor.

    2) As soon as RvW is overturned, any number of the 20-30 existing state law bans on abortion will spring back to life. They were never repealed — it wasn’t technically necessary, and you can imagine the Republican Fundamentalist howling over the symbolism had anyone tried. These bans will, of course, be imposed largely on poor and rural women, as the wealthy can always work something out.

    3) You can bet that the Republicans in Congress will immediately move to ban abortion nationwide, “federalism” be damned. The battle will then move to the states *and* Congress. And a Supreme Court willing to overturn RvW will hardly balk at upholding a nationwide ban on abortion.

    4) One of the ways that RvW could be overturned is for the fetus to be declared a person with all the rights accorded by the Constitution. This is, after all, the premise of the Republican Fundamentalist analogizing of RvW to Dred Scott. So, a truly radical Republican court could, with one stroke, eliminate the right to choose nationwide and lock it in for decades, barring a serious change in the composition of the court or a constitutional amendment. Again, the wealthy will always find ways to avoid the ban.

    5) Don’t think that RvW will be the only thing to go. Griswold will go, and likely any checks on executive power.

    Bailing on RvW solves nothing.

  • Golly, gee, isn’t this just peachy!!!

    GAG.

    Now all we need is to get the prez on the cover of Tiger Beat (or whatever) so she can cut out his picture and tape it to her bedroom wall.

  • Vision? Hard work? Relentless dedication? Is she talking about the same guy who’s been taking up space in the oval office for the last five years?

    She is a fool. Her nomination is an insult to the country. But we shouldn’t be surprised. Virtually everything this ass has done since his election has been an insult to the country.

    ET, I LOVE your idea about W on the cover of Tiger Beat. I think I will be grinning about it all day!

  • Boy does he ever love Dear Leader.

    This makes it strangely evident why Shrub has such a hard-on for two-bit petty dictators like Saddam and Kim who are “unfriendly”, and such a deep love for “friendly” two-bit petty dictators like Musharraf and the Al-Saud family.

  • All this drooling over a man who appears to be more and more in a drugged stupor in his public appearances. In the recent photo op with former Texas judges at the White House, he started to say, “I’m here with…”, paused looking confused and befuddled, then lamely continued, “…my fellow Texans…”. He couldn’t even remember who he was in the room with!!

    Same with that latest faked, scripted chat with the military people in Iraq. He sounded like he was barely there, hardly able to compose a complete sentence even though it was all prepared far in advance.

    He’s starting to come apart at the seams, trust me. All the people who have propped him up for the last five years are too busy with their own concerns to help him now, so he’s left with the dregs and bottom-scrappers who will only show him to be even more bogus and incompetent than he has already.

    How’s that working out for ya? 🙂

  • Oh, c’mon, why so glum? Dear Leader is fulfilling our country’s promise. Why, with his level of dedication, insight and hard, hard work–it proves that anyone can grow up to be president, or, at least, a presidential idolator. And now we’ve seen too that everything IS bigger in Texas. If these stories about Harriet are true, there sure never was a bigger asshole nominated to the SC.

  • To Catherine

    To my knowledge Monica Lewinsky was never a Supreme Court nominee. The goal is to get the least qualified people in powerful positions to make it easier for the corporations to control this country. Miers personality is exactly what they want. Abortion is just a smoke screen.

  • I had initially thought when the reported fawning was restricted to personal correspondence between Harriet and W, that she had made a calculated decision to kiss her way to the top. I didn’t see this as a sign of bad judgment rather I saw it as a good read on Bush and what it would take to ascend.

    I now officially retract that position. The public display of adoration suggests that it is genuine and pathological. She should never sit on the Supreme Court.

    There is another part of this. Bush apparently doesn’t see this behavior as pathology. That is a personality trait which is even more frightening
    .

  • Tired–

    I’m not comparing Miers to Lewinsky, I’m comparing her to Clinton. Clinton had foibles with his private life — macho “he man” foibles, one might say. Miers seems to have foibles with her private life — she seems to have something like what is called “a schoolgirl crush” on Bush. Notice the schoolgirl — a foible that is typically defined as a female flaw. So? Why assume that Miers’ romantic feelings for Bush will influence her professionalism? The correspondence in question wasn’t about her job. Just as any conversations Clinton had with Lewinsky about sex shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence that he was unable to do his job. I just think there’s a double standard here. Show me some evidence that the pretty face of an opposing lawyer has caused her not to do her job and then we’ll talk.

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