Harriet the spy: The ultimate reward for mediocrity?

October 8, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

Perhaps I am just paranoid, but I think the media may be reading too much into the alleged conservative revolt over Harriet Miers. I fear it’s a trap, and we in the progressive community are walking right into it.

Despite the headlines, not all conservatives are angry over Miers’ nomination. Some very important conservatives are quite happy with it — chiefly James Dobson, Pat Robertson and the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) — and that makes me nervous.

Nothing I have heard about Miers gives me any cause for hope that she’ll turn out to be a moderate. She attends a fundamentalist church and claims to be born again. She donated money to an anti-abortion group and opposed gay rights while on the Dallas City Council. She was once more liberal but became a conservative after her religious transformation. I’ve known people like this. It’s not good news. Mid-life converts like this are often the most zealous.

My first impression is that the new Miers is a grumpy old church lady who’s going to get along fine with Scalia and Thomas once on the court. I get the impression she’d like to punish us all — because let’s face it, we’ve all been very, very naughty.

The Dallas Morning News quoted Miers’ “longtime friend” Merrie Spaeth who said:

“Not only did Harriet never tell a joke, she never laughed. She might smile so she didn’t look stern. But she would never say anything snide. In the 22 years I’ve known her, I’ve never heard her use a curse word. Not even ‘hell’ or ‘damn.’ I’ve never heard her gossip. I’ve never heard her say a nasty word.”

Twenty-two years and not one “damn”? Never once gossiped? Not even a lame joke? This woman is some kind of robot.

I fear that Karl Rove or whoever persuaded Bush to put Miers on the court has outmaneuvered the left once again. Whining marginalized right-wingers, the faction that is never happy and apparently expected the seat to go to some nut like Roy Moore, provide cover for the administration. Meanwhile, the kook right faction the administration really cares about — Dobson, Robertson and the SBC — are assured that Miers is all right. (Max Blumenthal raised some of these issues on Tuesday, so if I’m paranoid, I’m not alone.)

As David Kirtkpatrick of The New York Times reported, Dobson and SBC official Richard Land got personal phone calls from Rove assuring them that Miers is a smack out of the park. Robertson and his top attorney, Jay Sekulow, love Miers and spent Tuesday and Wednesday singing her praises on the “700 Club.” (Robertson says he got a call from the White House as well.)

On Wednesday, Robertson went on an extended pro-Miers rant, remarking:

“Ladies and gentlemen, as Jay Sekulow pointed out yesterday, she will be the first evangelical Christian who has been elevated to the Supreme Court in well over 70 years. It’s been since the 1930s since an evangelical Christian has had that position. And I personally, the more I learn about this lady, the more I warmly endorse her. I think she will make an excellent Supreme Court justice and I think we should trust the president. He hasn’t missed yet. There hasn’t been one nominee for any court position that I find issue with and I think his picks have been absolutely superb, exactly what he says he’s going to do. And you know somebody as close to him as Harriet Miers has been that he knows a great deal about her judicial philosophy. When he says trust me on this one, you can trust him. And I think those that are so-called conservatives oughta get behind this nominee and the nation.”

Another cause for concern is that Miers appears to be the biggest Bush toady on the planet. Conservative activist David Frum asserted in the National Review, “In a White House that hero-worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.”

This means one of two things: Either Miers hangs out with the dumbest people who have ever lived, or she’s the biggest boot-licker in the galaxy. I think the latter is more likely, and it does not fill me with a sense of calm.

So are we being set up? Maybe. At the end of the day, the Bush administration does not have to placate interest groups to get Miers on the court. It must merely win the support of 51 senators. Right now, with so many Democrats making nice over her, that should not be hard to do. So what if 10 or 12 hard-right senators jump ship? Who cares if Paul Weyrich grumbles for a month? That actually helps the administration by making Miers look moderate.

Notice that all of this alleged infighting has distracted the country from the more compelling issue that I’m sure Bush would rather not discuss: Is Miers qualified? I say she’s not. Her record is unremarkable. It’s as if Bush had named his gardener Secretary of Interior.

There is precedent for rejecting unqualified nominees. President Richard M. Nixon put forth two Supreme Court nominees during his tenure that were rejected. One of them, G. Harold Carswell, was deemed unqualified for a slot on the highest court in the land due to mediocrity. Trying to defend Carswell, U.S. Sen. Roman Hruska, a Nebraska Republican, asserted that mediocre people deserve representation, too. (The actual quote appears to be in dispute; websites offer several different versions but agree on substance. I should also note that some sites say Hruska said this about another Nixon nominee, Clement F. Haynesworth, or possibly both of them. Does anyone have the straight dope here?)

Hruska was widely ridiculed for his claim, but it’s actually true. Mediocre people do deserve representation. But Hruska failed to understand a key point: They deserve to be represented by people who aren’t themselves mediocre. That’s kind of the whole point — and it’s reason enough to reject Harriet Miers.

I heard that Miers was born and raised Catholic, and later in life became an evangelical Christian? Is that true? Isn’t it kinda rare for someone to abandon Catholicsm for “being born again”?

  • Yes, Harriet Miers is an unqualified sycophant, like much of Bush’s other key appointments, but that has no bearing on whether or not she will be approved. Her nomination rests with the vote of Sen. Sam Brownback. The best comment he could come up with after meeting with her this week was that she was a nice lady. If Brownback doesn’t go for the ride, then Miers doesnt make it out of committee and the nomination dies. And with the president’s approval ratings at a robust 37%, I think Brownback may use this moment to shore up the homophobic whack job vote in the 2008 Republican primary.

  • There are two points of contention with Miers. The first point is whether or not she has a genuine religious conversion in 1979. As I have said here previously, I tend to think not. The fact that she is an incredible bootlick lends credence to the idea that the conversion was a convenient way to climb up the career ladder and not genuine. The second point is whether or not she is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. On this point there is no ambiguity. She is not.

    Democrats should not be twisting themselves in knots over what to do with this nomination. Her lack of qualifications is sufficient reason to oppose her. There is no reason to try to figure out if Rove is playing them. One step in blocking the nomination is to build a coalition of opponents based on her lack of qualifications. There are many Republicans who might be willing to vote against her on the grounds of lack of qualifications, Specter, McCain, and Hagel, for example.

    On the other hand, while Democrats should be helping rightwing Republicans as they contort themselves into pretzels over the question of whether Miers will deliver once she is on the bench. There are three possibilities concerning her behavior once on the bench. The first, and least likely in my mind, but the one Rove is trying to sell, is that she is a true believer who will advance the rightwing social agenda during her tenure. The second, and the one I think that Bush believes, is that she is a loyal Bushite. This would have the same outcome as the first, with the added benefit to Bush of having someone keep an eye on the independent Roberts. The third, and in my mind most likely, is that she is a bootlicking careerist who, once freed of the need to kiss ass on her way to the top, will be her own woman.

    Who would that woman be? My guess is a socially moderate corporatist. I would prefer, however, never to know the answer to this question. The key to never knowing is to convince the social conservatives that this is who she will be. The Rove machine is in the process of convincing the American Taliban that Miers is one of them. The Marrie Spaeth quote from the Houston Chronicle is mostly likely part of the PR campaign. We need a counter campaign which puts doubts in the small minds of the Religious Right while we hold firm to the unambiguous knowledge that she is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

    Stop our worrying that the mighty Rove is going to play us again. Use our time looking for evidence that she will not be the person Bush says she will be. Turn the right into the neurotic fools they have made the left.

  • this is my impression too. i think that many of us now, reflexively (and often, perceptively, because of the “outrage fatigue” symptoms) appreciate people the republican right nominates if there’s a lot of reaction from the evangelical right. that is, if they complain about it, i must like it. or more simply: the enemy of enemy is my friend. again, i understand this conviction and i sometimes fall for it, but in this case on miers, i believe it has too easily fooled us on the left and liberal ends of the spectra. rove asks the ultraright to whine and complain, and fox showcases it prominently, causing people to say: see, if the right complains, she must be ok! it is, exactly how you say, a trap.

  • The most fundamental qualification for being a Supreme Court justice — or a judge of any kind — is the ability to make decisions. She is know as someone who lacks this basic qualification, as discussed in the an article in Legal Times, published well before her nomination (when she became WH counsel).

    She has also earned a reputation as exacting, detail-oriented, and meticulous — to a fault, her critics say.

    “She can’t separate the forest from the trees,” says one former White House staffer….

    Her critics say the problem goes beyond what Miers does or doesn’t know about policy — and right back to a near-obsession with detail and process.

    “There’s a stalemate there,” says one person familiar with the chief of staff’s office. “The process can’t move forward because you have to get every conceivable piece of background before you can move onto the next level. People are talking about a focus on process that is so intense it gets in the way of substance.”

    One former White House official familiar with both the counsel’s office and Miers is more blunt.

    “She failed in Card’s office for two reasons,” the official says. “First, because she can’t make a decision, and second, because she can’t delegate, she can’t let anything go. And having failed for those two reasons, they move her to be the counsel for the president, which requires exactly those two talents.” [empahsis added]
    http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1102944936042

    This glaring shortcoming, along with her lack of knowledge of constitutional law, will become quite apparent during the hearings. I doubt she will get very far.

    She will withdraw her nomination — blaming the supposedly awful treatment by Liberals — thereby allowing the nomination process to further occupy our attention and help Bush distract the country from his many troubles.

  • It’s very likely that Miers would be very much like Clarence Thomas, which is saying it’s very likely that she would be an unbelievably awful judge. On the other hand, it is certain that Janice Brown and Priscilla Owen, for examples, and many others, would be unbelievably awful. Since it only requires 50 senators plus Dick Cheney to approve someone — assuming the filibuster would go as part of the battle — what Miers’ appointment really means is that there won’t be a battle over the filibuster rule and she’ll be approved with some Democratic votes because her future awfulness is still uncertain. And if you were a Democratic senator wouldn’t you prefer a “very likely” awful choice over a certain awful choice that you could fight, but that in the course of losing that fight, the filibuster rule would also go?

  • To me, the Democrats are overthinking this whole debate. The simple questions are:

    Are we as Americans satisfied with mediocrities? And do we believe the current president deserves the benefit of the doubt?

    The answer on both counts should be a resounding NO.

    Voting against Miers–and more broadly presenting her as a product of the same mindset that gave us Brownie and the myriad other toadies and cronies and the Bush Administration–shows our strength and commitment to principle. It also allows us to turn the tables on Republicans like Arlen Specter, who has basically said (see today’s NYT) that Miers isnt up to snuff on the great legal debates of this time, but probably in the end will vote for her anyway.

    The SCOTUS is not the place for on-the-job training.

  • I also think we’re overthinking it. When it comes down to it, I’m sure th GOP is trying to pull one over on us and their base. Duplicity is what they do. We can’t know what’s going on in their minds. What we can do is ask ourselves, if she is purely evil, and a stealth candidate, how do we stop her nomination? They have cleverly covered her tracks. I see very little hope of stopping her, outside of convincing right wing zealots she’s a moderate.

    Is she incompetent and unqualified? I fear that far less than another Scalaia, who is competent, qualified, and evil. And I fear whoever Bush will choose next even MORE.

    If Miers is shot down for being “too liberal”, then who do you think the NEXT nominee will be? A smart, well-qualified, and well documented conservative nutjob.

  • Do you really think there’s a chance in hell she won’t end up on the court no matter what the Republicans whine about? Reid sank any chance of that by endorsing her. We’re screwed. Might as well get used to it. Again.

  • You’d be a bit uptight too if you spent the last forty years walking around with your penis and testicles tucked between your legs. That can’t be terribly comfortable.

  • With everything I’ve read, watched in the past week I’ve come to the conclusion that the right-wing outrage over Miers is real. They’re pissed, they feel betrayed that Bush didn’t do what was expected of him, what he had promised them in the past 2 elections. He didn’t put up a Luttig or a Janice Rogers Brown and have a battle to end all battles, a battle they’ve been planning for years, he put someone up that wasn’t on any of their lists who known only to him.

    I think Dobson’s approval is at best lukewarm, he only came out in favor after some armtwisting.

    Frankly it doesn’t matter what the hell the Dems do, this is entirely in the hands of the GOP. If they reject her, Bush is going to be LIVID. They didn’t just reject his nominee, they rejected his “workwife.” Bush is undermining the solidarity in his own party, too many angry, ugly things have been said about her in one week alone. For pete’s sake, last night on Bill Maher Ann Coulter said she no longer backs Bush.

  • (Oops, didn’t mean to submit that yet.)

    Anyways, I think their outrage is real, it’s ugly, and Bush has betrayed them and their loyalty to him is badly damaged. The hard-core movement conservatives are not happy.

    All the Dems could vote against her and she could still get on the bench. It’s up the GOP now. The vote will be a statement about their loyalty to their lame duck mess-of-a-leader whose approval ratings can’t go much lower. This is a very volatile situation for the GOP, the Dems have little or nothing to lose.

    Personally, I’d rather have Miers than Luttig or JR Brown, at least when she’s on the bench she’s not going to be able to convince the other judges of anything, I can’t imagine that any of them are going to treat her as an equal.

  • morbo, my recollection is that haynsworth was defeated more or less on the merits (although i seem to recall that he did belong to a white’s only club), and in pique, nixon submitted carswell, whose utter mediocrity produced the hruska quote. I’d say i’m 98% certain.

    As for Miers, she’ll be approved, she’ll be an unutterably terrible judge, voting 99% of the time with roberts, scalia, and thomas, but with literally nothing in the way of independent thought to demonstrate, and there’s not a damn thing that dems can do about it.

    so i guess i don’t mind if the dems decide to sew seeds of discord in the right as the only upside to this certainty.

    well, ok, there is one other upside: seeing the so-called intellectuals of the right revealed as out of touch with the gop base. that’s worth something….

  • I reject much that was written in this post, mostly because it gets too deep into the reverse-reverse-reverse psychology, over-analyzing stuff that totally impairs our ability to make decisions in a timely fashion. But here’s something to think about: Many conservatives really are upset about this nomination. It’s quite easy to find conservative bloggers who are honestly upset about all this, and I kind of doubt that Rove included them in on the supposed switcheroo that we’re worried about here. Even if this is a trick, these people were not given the memo and aren’t trying to trick us. They are honestly upset.

    And the question is: Is it worth it? Assuming that this is a trick, and that conservative leaders were told to cast doubts on Miers; and that the followers took the baton and are now running with it: Is it worth it? This makes Bush look bad to the very people that Bush needs. Are they really going to risk burning these people and having them think ill of the President, all so they could trick the minority party into supporting her? It’s possible, but is it likely?

    I actually wrote a bunch more on this, but it got so long that I realized I had written a blog post, instead of the short comment I had intended. So if you want more of this, click on my bloglink and read on. But as my last line says: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and I think this one is blowing up in their face.

  • I think the revolt by conservatives is real, I just don’t think in the end it matters. It would not surprise me at all if GOP senators just get in line like little lemmings and jump over the cliff even if they think the nomination sucks.

    Ultimately, the only opinions that really matters are the 100 Senators in the U.S. Senate, Bush, and Rove. I don’t think that many Dem Senators will vote for her (Reid is a possible exception unless he has a personal strategy he isn’t telling people about) and if just a few Republican Senators hold onto their gonads in the face of administration and their hacks bullying then she won’t pass. However, depending on GOP Senators to remember that they aren’t invertebrates is a very risky strategy.

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