Annie
Diamond Member
- Nov 22, 2003
- 50,848
- 4,828
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None of this is boding well for GW. If she is as loyal as some are saying, why doesn't she just withdraw her name?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007384
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007384
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Miers Remorse
Conservatives are right to be skeptical.
Monday, October 10, 2005 12:01 a.m.
I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal's Political Diary that "while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself."
But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now--and loudly--because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. "She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.
White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president's views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, "Behind my back, people say . . .," she responded, ". . . they can't figure me out."
Conservatives shouldn't care about her personal views on issues if they can convince themselves that she agrees with Chief Justice John Roberts's view of a judge's role: that cases should be decided the way an umpire calls balls and strikes, without rooting for either team. But the evidence of Ms. Miers's views on jurisprudence resemble a beach on which someone has walked without leaving any footprints: no court opinions, no law review articles, and no internal memos that President Bush is going to share with the Senate.
It is traditional for nominees to remain silent until their confirmation hearings. But previous nominees, while unable to speak for themselves, have been able to deploy an array of people to speak persuasively on their behalf. In this case, the White House spin team has been pathetic, dismissing much of the criticism of Ms. Miers as "elitism" or even echoing Democratic senators who view it as "sexist." But it was Richard Land , president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who went so far as to paint Ms. Miers as virtually a tool of the man who has been her client for the past decade. "In Texas, we have two important values, courage and loyalty," he told a conference call of conservative leaders last Thursday. "If Harriet Miers didn't rule the way George W. Bush thought she would, he would see that as an act of betrayal and so would she." That is an argument in her favor. It sounds more like a blood oath than a dignified nomination process aimed at finding the most qualified individual possible .
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter says he has no doubt Ms. Miers is taking "a crash course" in constitutional law. She will be primed with talking points and her compelling success story when the hearings begin. The presumption that she should be confirmed will weigh heavily on Republican senators who will be constantly reminded that the president has made dozens of good judicial picks for lower courts.
But that ignores the fact that every Republican president over the past half century has stumbled when it comes to naming nominees to the high court. Consider the record:
After leaving office, Dwight Eisenhower was asked by a reporter if he had made any mistakes as president. "Two," Ike replied. "They are both on the Supreme Court." He referred to Earl Warren and William Brennan, both of whom became liberal icons.
Richard Nixon personally assured conservatives that Harry Blackmun would vote the same way as his childhood friend, Warren Burger. Within four years, Justice Blackmun had spun Roe v. Wade out of whole constitutional cloth. Chief Justice Burger concurred in Roe, and made clear he didn't even understand what the court was deciding: "Plainly," he wrote, "the Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortions on demand."
Gerald Ford personally told members of his staff that John Paul Stevens was "a good Republican, and would vote like one." Justice Stevens has since become the leader of the court's liberal wing.
An upcoming biography of Sandra Day O'Connor by Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic includes correspondence from Ronald Reagan to conservative senators concerned about her scant paper trail. The message was, in effect: Trust me. She's a traditional conservative. From Roe v. Wade to racial preferences, she has proved not to be. Similarly, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation recalls the hard sell the Reagan White House made on behalf of Anthony Kennedy in 1987, after the Senate rejected Robert Bork. "They even put his priest on the phone with us to assure us he was solid on everything," Mr. Weyrich recalls. From term limits to abortion to the juvenile death penalty to the overturning of a state referendum on gay rights, Justice Kennedy has often disappointed conservatives.
Most famously, White House chief of staff John Sununu told Pat McGuigan, an aide to Mr. Weyrich, that the appointment of David Souter in 1990 would please conservatives. "This is a home run, and the ball is still ascending. In fact, it's just about to leave earth orbit," he told Mr. McGuigan. At the press conference announcing the appointment, the elder President Bush asserted five times that Justice Souter was "committed to interpreting, not making the law." The rest is history.
Harriet Miers is unquestionably a fine lawyer and a woman of great character. But her record on constitutional issues is nil, and it is therefore understandable that conservatives, having been burned at least seven times in the past 50 years, would be hesitant about supporting her nomination.
The scantiness of her philosophical record has led reporters to focus on the two years of her career where she had to take stands: her one term as a member of the Dallas City Council during 1990 and 1991. There she established a record as an advocate of good government, increased funding for the arts, and building a light-rail system. Her one moment of high drama came when she quieted an angry crowd alleging police brutality. She apologized to the protesters on behalf of the city and called the behavior of the officers "unprovoked and inexcusable."
Reactions to her from her former colleagues were mixed. Craig McDaniel, a liberal council member, praises her ability to get along with diverse groups of people and tells the Dallas Voice, a gay newspaper, "This is as good as we would ever get out of a Republican administration." Jerry Bartos, a conservative council colleague, rated her effectiveness at "zero" and called her "the consummate loner." But Sharon Boyd, a longtime friend and GOP activist, says many conservatives resented her solely because she had remained a Democrat until 1988. Ms. Boyd calls Ms. Miers's record on the council "very conservative." Yet when pressed for examples, she could only offer Ms. Miers's opposition to civil unions for gays and support for a constitutional amendment against flag burning.
On other issues, Ms. Miers's record is one of initially supporting a conservative position and then abandoning it. She started out backing a plan to redistrict the City Council that had received the endorsement of two-thirds of Dallas voters in a 1989 referendum. When it appeared that plan would lose a court case on account of its alleged effect on minority representation, she backed a plan for single-member districts supported by liberals. "I formally debated her on the issue," recalls Tom Pauken, a former chairman of the Texas Republican Party. "She was a liberal then. I don't know about today, but in the last week all the liberals who've been on the council have been singing her praises."
Similarly, Ms. Miers was originally part of a council majority that urged Congress to repeal the Wright Amendment, a law that restricts flights from Dallas Love Field. Southwest Airlines and free-market advocates had long attacked the restriction as favoritism toward American Airlines, which has a hub at Dallas-Fort Worth International. Ms. Miers reversed her position after 10 months and sponsored a resolution in favor of the Wright Amendment. She called her move "a triumph of reason over rhetoric" and cited two studies that claimed flying more planes out of Love would lead to traffic congestion. Most aviation experts dispute that conclusion.
Finally, a 1990 budget crunch forced the Dallas City Council to consider a property tax increase--its third in four years. Ms. Miers initially resisted the tax increase, then came around to the view that a property tax hike would be the fairest. The key vote came when the council voted 6-5 to add $900,000 to the budget proposed by the city manager as part of a 7% increase in the tax rate. Ms. Miers cast the deciding vote. Mr. Bartos, who had proposed an alternate plan for 5% across-the-board spending cuts on all departments except the police, was bitter that almost all of the proposed $900,000 budget increase was slated for library and arts funding rather than public safety.
Some of the complaints about Harriet Miers are more flashy than substantive. While she contributed to the campaigns of Sens. Al Gore and Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, they were universally viewed as moderate Democrats at the time. Her contribution to the Democratic National Committee that same year could easily have been at the behest of a senior partner, a frequent occurrence at law firms.
What is clear is that her association with George W. Bush has affected her worldview. Accompanied by her longtime friend Nathan Hecht, she first met Mr. Bush at a dinner in Austin in January 1989. Mr. Bush's father was about to become president, Justice Hecht was just beginning his first term on the Texas Supreme Court, and Ms. Miers had just been elected to the City Council. Justice Hecht recalls that they both spent an hour socializing with George and Laura Bush at the dinner. They kept in touch after that, and Ms. Miers continued her meteoric rise to become the first female president of the Texas Bar Association. In 1994 Mr. Bush, running for governor, appointed her his campaign counsel. Jim Francis, the campaign chairman, recalls telling Mr. Bush, "Look, we need to have a campaign general counsel. We're running against a popular female governor. We need a woman." As has happened often in her life, Ms. Miers' has joined her talent with luck at just the right moment for advancement.
Over and over, people who know Harriet Miers praise her intelligence, her ability to work with people, and her good heart. "She never gossips, she never has a harsh word for anyone," says Merrie Spaeth, a friend of 20 years who was director of media relations in the Reagan White House. Dan Branch, a Texas state representative, says, "She'd make a great poker partner. S he forces you to reveal your hand while she gives up nothing."
After giving her effusive praise, her friends are a little nonplussed when asked if she is a conservative. "She is a person of great integrity," says Ms. Spaeth. "I have never had a political conversation with her." While many of the Bush judicial nominees she has helped shepherd to confirmation are affiliated with the Federalist Society, Ms. Miers herself has been ambivalent about the influential conservative legal group. In 1990, she almost anticipated how much of a lightning rod the group would become to the left. She testified in a court case that she would not join the society because "it's better not to be involved in organizations that seem to color your view one way or the other for people who are examining you."
The White House professes to be sanguine about Ms. Miers's reliability, while at the same time expressing irritation with conservatives who won't fall into line. Time magazine quotes a Bush adviser as saying that the "driving force" behind Ms. Miers's appointment was White House chief of staff Andy Card, not Karl Rove. "This is something that Andy and the president cooked up," the adviser told Time. "Andy knew it would appeal to the president because he loves appointing his own people and being supersecret and stealthy about it." Despite his lack of hands-on involvement, Mr. Rove has stoutly defended the Miers pick to allies as a brilliant "Trojan horse"--a conservative nominee who will avoid any possible Democratic filibuster.
David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, who describes Ms. Miers's role in the White House as largely that of a "bureaucrat who couldn't see the forest for the trees," nonetheless believes that Team Bush is right--but only for a while. He believes she will be remain a conservative justice at least until Mr. Bush leaves office in early 2009. "But then the Bushies will have gone home, and she will develop new friends, and then the inevitable tug to the left may prove irresistible."
A friend of both Mr. Bush and Ms. Miers disagrees. He notes that for eight years Justice O'Connor remained largely true to Ronald Reagan's judicial views, even though she had no personal ties to him. "I think Harriet has morphed her views into those of the president," he told me. "I think she will be pretty much the same justice she starts out being for 10 or 15 years. And she is now 60."
Indeed, in many ways, Ms. Miers resembles the early Sandra Day O'Connor, another elected official who backed some liberal positions during her time in the Arizona Legislature. As Justice O'Connor began drifting to the center she became the crucial swing vote on a host of cases. Legal scholars began referring to the "O'Connor Court." Now, with Ms. Miers slated to take the O'Connor seat it may become the "Miers Court."
"This is the most closely divided court in history," says Jay Sekulow , a conservative legal activist who backs Ms. Miers. "Everybody knows what is at stake here." With such high stakes, it should disappoint everyone that the Senate will now have to debate the confirmation of a nominee who, when it comes to Constitutional law, resembles a secret agent more than a scholar.
