Miers' Qualifications II
People who are commenting negatively on Miers' qualifications should also consider the following likely calculus that went on in the White House:
1. We are replacing Sandra Day O'Connor.
2. Because we are replacing a woman, and because we recently named the apotheosis of the buttoned-down white male Republican, John Roberts, to the Court, there is pressure to name a woman to replace Justice O'Connor. This pressure may not be right in some alternative universe, but the politics of gender, wrong-headed as such politics often are, are nevertheless real politics, and the pressure on the White House to name a woman was real pressure.
3. Republicans already have difficulty attracting women voters. (Not as much as Democrats have attracting male voters, but that's a different story.) How many Republican Senators running for re-election in 2006 want to have commercials against them saying that the only woman on the Supreme Court was nominated by a Democrat (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and if you want more women on the Supreme Court, you'd better elect more Democratic Senators? How many of them communicated that they wanted to see a woman nominated to the President?
4. So, we had better nominate a woman. But who should that be? Let's look at federal appellate court judges.... hmmmm, Janice Rogers Brown? She hasn't been on the court all that long and is a bit of a loose cannon. Maura Corrigan? No one knows her. Edith Jones? Edith Clement? I interviewed them before and they weren't so hot. Diane Sykes? Criminy, she's a divorced woman who was married to a right-wing talk show host... do we really need that crap. Come to think of it, we vetted all of these names before when we were considering Roberts, and some of them said thanks, but no thanks, and others had serious problems that might come up in their confirmation hearings! And, for the rest, we frankly don't trust them much not to turn into another O'Connor or another Souter. What do we do now?
What you do now is nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers, with whom you have worked closely for ten years and whom you trust.
In sum, what if all of the conservative punditry is simply wrong. Harriet Miers might not have been the best candidate in the best of all possible worlds (which we don't live in). But she might have been the best nominee available on the particular planet on which we live.
UPDATE: John Fund in the Wall Street Journal echoes this conjecture, albeit with some actual reporting:
What is clear is that the same White House that says it won't listen to senators who tell them the Miers nomination should be withdrawn was highly solicitous of Senate objections to other qualified nominees. One federal judge was nixed by a powerful senator over a judicial opinion that would have been attacked by feminists. Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, both of whom won tough confirmation battles for seats on appellate courts only this spring, were nixed by other GOP Senators as too tough a battle for the high court. Alice Batchelder of the Sixth Circuit was deep-sixed by an old Ohio political rival, Republican National Committee co-chairman Jo Ann Davidson. The White House and some senators deemed Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit too difficult to confirm. Given Mr. Bush's idée fixe that the nominee had to be a woman, it's possible the White House allowed itself to be pushed into a corner in which Ms. Miers was literally the only female left.
1. We are replacing Sandra Day O'Connor.
2. Because we are replacing a woman, and because we recently named the apotheosis of the buttoned-down white male Republican, John Roberts, to the Court, there is pressure to name a woman to replace Justice O'Connor. This pressure may not be right in some alternative universe, but the politics of gender, wrong-headed as such politics often are, are nevertheless real politics, and the pressure on the White House to name a woman was real pressure.
3. Republicans already have difficulty attracting women voters. (Not as much as Democrats have attracting male voters, but that's a different story.) How many Republican Senators running for re-election in 2006 want to have commercials against them saying that the only woman on the Supreme Court was nominated by a Democrat (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and if you want more women on the Supreme Court, you'd better elect more Democratic Senators? How many of them communicated that they wanted to see a woman nominated to the President?
4. So, we had better nominate a woman. But who should that be? Let's look at federal appellate court judges.... hmmmm, Janice Rogers Brown? She hasn't been on the court all that long and is a bit of a loose cannon. Maura Corrigan? No one knows her. Edith Jones? Edith Clement? I interviewed them before and they weren't so hot. Diane Sykes? Criminy, she's a divorced woman who was married to a right-wing talk show host... do we really need that crap. Come to think of it, we vetted all of these names before when we were considering Roberts, and some of them said thanks, but no thanks, and others had serious problems that might come up in their confirmation hearings! And, for the rest, we frankly don't trust them much not to turn into another O'Connor or another Souter. What do we do now?
What you do now is nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers, with whom you have worked closely for ten years and whom you trust.
In sum, what if all of the conservative punditry is simply wrong. Harriet Miers might not have been the best candidate in the best of all possible worlds (which we don't live in). But she might have been the best nominee available on the particular planet on which we live.
UPDATE: John Fund in the Wall Street Journal echoes this conjecture, albeit with some actual reporting:
What is clear is that the same White House that says it won't listen to senators who tell them the Miers nomination should be withdrawn was highly solicitous of Senate objections to other qualified nominees. One federal judge was nixed by a powerful senator over a judicial opinion that would have been attacked by feminists. Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, both of whom won tough confirmation battles for seats on appellate courts only this spring, were nixed by other GOP Senators as too tough a battle for the high court. Alice Batchelder of the Sixth Circuit was deep-sixed by an old Ohio political rival, Republican National Committee co-chairman Jo Ann Davidson. The White House and some senators deemed Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit too difficult to confirm. Given Mr. Bush's idée fixe that the nominee had to be a woman, it's possible the White House allowed itself to be pushed into a corner in which Ms. Miers was literally the only female left.
posted by PDB at 11:42 AM
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