The gang that can’t shoot straight strikes again. Harriet Miers has had a couple of weeks to get a crash course in how to be a Supreme Court nominee, but she hasn’t been prepped well enough to know how to deal with a simple question about a basic constitutional right.
Miers spent much of Monday on Capitol Hill visiting with senators, among them Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter.
After their meeting, Specter told reporters that Miers said she believed the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut — a landmark ruling establishing the right to privacy — was “rightly decided.”
But when the White House took exception to Specter’s comments, the Pennsylvania Republican released a statement saying Miers later called him to tell him he had “misunderstood” her answer.
Forgive my skepticism, but this seems like a difficult issue to get wrong. Miers and Specter had a private meeting, Specter asked about the Griswold case that established a right to privacy, and Miers responded. Before the White House intervened, the answer Specter heard was for respect and support for the Supreme Court precedent. After the White House intervened, Specter believed the opposite.
This was no minor mix-up. Specter asked about the Griswold precedent because he said Miers’ perspective is important in understanding her judicial philosophy. As a relative moderate with a reputation for caring about legal details, Specter seemed pleased that Miers endorsed the court’s ruling in the case.
“She answered my questions on right to privacy, and she said she believes there is a right to privacy in the Constitution, and she backs Griswold, and she backs and [the 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird case, giving unmarried people the right to use contraception],” the Pennsylvania Republican said.
And yet, a few hours later, the White House said Specter had heard wrong and Miers called Specter to explain that he had misinterpreted her remarks. Specter issued a retraction.
Just when it seemed like the Miers nomination couldn’t get worse, here we are.
This “misunderstanding” between Miers and Specter only makes both sides more skeptical about the nomination. For the left, Miers seems to have gone to great lengths to distance herself from support for a right to privacy, which suggests she would be a rigid conservative. For the right, the fact that Miers apparently endorsed Griswold with pre-retraction Specter only reinforces conservatives’ worst fears.
Reacting to Specter’s statements about his conversations with Miers on Griswold, Jan LaRue, chief counsel for the conservative group Concerned Women for America, said she was puzzled because Specter has a reputation for being precise about constitutional law.
“It sounds like he’s being gracious. I mean, how could he get that wrong? It sounds funny to me,” said LaRue, whose group has raised sharp questions about the Miers nomination. “That’s artfully worded, isn’t it?
LaRue said she baffled by the idea that there could have a miscommunication over such a seminal privacy case.
Miers can’t even sit down for an hour with the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee without causing a controversy? Following two weeks of intensive preparation?
Can’t anyone here play this game?