{"id":5509,"date":"2005-10-12T10:05:49","date_gmt":"2005-10-12T14:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5509"},"modified":"2005-10-12T10:05:49","modified_gmt":"2005-10-12T14:05:49","slug":"anatomy-of-a-bogus-talking-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/anatomy-of-a-bogus-talking-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a bogus talking point"},"content":{"rendered":"

While chatting with NBC’s Matt Lauer yesterday, Bush touted Harriet Miers’ qualifications for the Supreme Court by noting<\/a> the praise she’s won from others about her skills as an attorney.<\/p>\n

“I would remind those, one, that Harriet is an extraordinary, accomplished woman who has done a lot. As a matter of fact, she has consistently ranked as one of the top 50 women lawyers in the United States.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s become a familiar claim. In the president’s weekly radio address four days ago, Bush used an almost identical line, saying<\/a>, “Beginning in the 1990s, Harriet Miers was regularly rated one of the top 100 lawyers in America, and one of the top 50 women lawyers in the country.” A few days prior, at a rare press conference, Bush said<\/a> Miers has “consistently rated as one of the top 50 women lawyers in the United States.”<\/p>\n

There’s only one problem with the talking point: it’s not true.<\/p>\n

The source of this talking point is the National Law Journal, which didn’t name Miers one of the best attorneys, but rather, in 1998, listed her as one of the most powerful<\/i> attorneys. In this instance, that makes a big difference.<\/p>\n

The ranking has little do with merit and everything to do with access. The National Law Journal, in noting Miers’ “power,” merely acknowledged reality: that George W. Bush had given this woman a great deal of authority. What does this have to do with qualifications for the Supreme Court? Absolutely nothing.<\/p>\n

By repeating this bogus talking point incessantly, Bush hopes to convince people that Miers is one of the nation’s great legal minds. As Salon’s Tim Grieve put it<\/a>, being a “top lawyer” suggests “suggests someone unusually brilliant and well schooled in the law.” But that’s not the case here at all.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the entire talking point follows typical Bush-like circular reasoning. Bush gives Miers power, which makes Miers powerful, which gets noticed by a legal magazine, which Bush uses as a justification to put her on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The president can (and no doubt, will) repeat the line as the process continues to unfold, but that won’t make it true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While chatting with NBC’s Matt Lauer yesterday, Bush touted Harriet Miers’ qualifications for the Supreme Court by noting the praise she’s won from others about her skills as an attorney. “I would remind those, one, that Harriet is an extraordinary, accomplished woman who has done a lot. As a matter of fact, she has consistently […]<\/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-5509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509","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=5509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}