{"id":5448,"date":"2005-10-05T11:21:30","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T15:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5448"},"modified":"2005-10-05T11:21:30","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T15:21:30","slug":"george-will-welcome-to-the-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/george-will-welcome-to-the-party\/","title":{"rendered":"George Will, welcome to the party"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not entirely certain, but I think George Will’s column<\/a> today said the president is incompetent.<\/p>\n

First things first. Will’s column was about Harriet Miers and the undeniable reality that she’s unqualified for the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

[T]here is no reason to believe that Miers’s nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers’s name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists. […]<\/p>\n

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court’s role.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kos’ Armando notes<\/a> that this helps elucidate some of the conservative anger of Miers’ nomination. That’s true, but I think the even more important point is that Will’s column only tangentially skewers Miers — this column is actually a harsh repudiation of Bush<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The president’s “argument” for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.<\/p>\n

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I knew conservative deference for Bush had slipped of late, but for one of the nation’s most widely read conservative columnists to question, in print, the president’s “ability to make sophisticated judgments” is a very pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n

It’s taken five years, but apparently skepticism over the president’s limited intellectual prowess is reaching bi-partisan consensus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not entirely certain, but I think George Will’s column today said the president is incompetent. First things first. Will’s column was about Harriet Miers and the undeniable reality that she’s unqualified for the Supreme Court. [T]here is no reason to believe that Miers’s nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}