Posted on 10/04/2005 3:35:22 PM PDT by maximusaurelius
No, you are right. If he didn't know her, she wouldn't be on his radar screen. You got me there. Can't argue that point. He had to know her to know her.
I'm saying there is no evidence that he picked her BECAUSE she is a close friend. That is not equivalent to saying he would have picked her if she WASN"T a close friend.
I'm sure he has lots of close lawyer friends who he did NOT consider for the court. But he said it was his relationship with her that convinced him she was right for the job. NOT that she was right for the job BECAUSE SHE HAD A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
The relationship is what gave Bush the insight into her character. The CHARACTER is what got her the nomination.
The relationship got her through the door. Her qualities got her the nomination.
The best-qualified person for the Supreme Court is probably out there fixing cars in Montana right now. He will never get the job because he is unknown. But if we found him, trained him, nurtured him, he became our best buddy, and we discovered his talent, we would never say he was getting the job simply because we are close friends with him.
I don't even know how you would measure that. Thomas wasn't the most qualified nominee either, but that worked out OK.
If you asked here who was the most qualified nominee, you would get 20 different answers. It's OK to argue that she isn't in the top tier, but the concept of the 'most qualified' candidate for a post like the supreme court is meaningless.
Levin put it better than this, pointing out that there were MANY candidates who could be well qualified, and she wasn't in the top 1000. I'm not saying I agree with him, just saying that he didn't buy the "most qualified" red herring.
If you start with the presumption that the number one goal was "no Souter", then it could be she is the most qualified, because Bush is absolutely positive that she will not be swayed in any way by the position. He couldn't say that of any other nominee. Maybe for him that trumped superior constitutional background and all the other things Miers doesn't bring to the table.
I can speak only for myself. I can critisize Miers. She isn't my pick. I wish she was younger. I wish I knew more about what it is Bush sees in her. I wish she wasn't an insider because I hate the Democrats arguing cronyism and don't like picking fights.
I guess for me its more that I'm not going to be against her, and abandon Bush, because of what I don't know. Especially when there really isn't anything I can do about it. Because, like the war in Iraq, whether you like it or not, now its here, and we have to deal with it, and rejecting her nomination in the absense of clear disqualifying factors would eliminate the chance of EVER getting a conservative on the bench without 60 much more conservative senators than we have now.
Because if we got the republicans to reject her because she wasn't conservative enough, we would be validating the last 4 years of Democrats using an ideological litmus test, while we've been arguing the right of the president to pick a nominee.
Note that Will claims that Bush has no right to pick his own nominee, because he signed Campaign Finance Reform. Apparently Will thinks that constitutional obligations and powers are things that can be taken away from the president if he doesn't use them the way King George thinks they should be used.
Sorry, Bush is president. He gets to nominate anybody he wants. The Senate gets to confirm or reject them. If Miers is unqualified to be a jurist, she should be rejected, and I will be writing my senators to urge that.
I suppose there are some who just support her because they would support anything Bush does, but most here seem to be merely arguing for restraint on the side of those who seem ready to lynch Bush for daring to pick someone not on their short list.
I've already addressed this in several posts, since several people brought it up. He had no experience as a Judge before SCOTUS, but his legal experience wasn't exclusively as an attorney. He had considerable administrative experience in the legal field. He was an assistant attorney general of a department, and was the lead legal counsel for Goldwater.
And, as I said, no experience doesn't mean she will necessarily be bad. It just gives more reason to be skeptical, since there is less to examine, which is cause for worry. That's it.
Valid points.
Well, you have to admit that the nomination comes a bit out of left field. And that there are/were some red flags. But those who say we need to wait for more info to come out are right. I think that you are right that a lot of us (including me previous to this) were over-reacting a little bit, forming a bit of a lynch mob mentality. The bottom line is we need more to go on, either way.
Thank you for a thoughtful post. I have watched with some dismay the increasingly vitriolic and combative tenor - on BOTH sides - in the posts regarding this nomination.
I believe that Hariet Miers also has more administrative experience than has been reported thus far - she presided over a large firm in Dallas through a merger-of-peers with a Houston firm. I will concede that I would have loved to see a nominee with a much clearer paper trail. In the end, though, I still think I need to learn more before I can make my mind up on her nomination.
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