LOL!
Obviously a controversial one, at that. ;)
Posted on 10/14/2005 4:55:21 AM PDT by G.Mason
Los Angeles
WHITE House speechwriters first learned the name Harriet Miers in January 2001, when drafts started reappearing full of corrections, instructions and particularly annoying requests for factual substantiation. In the campaign, life had been simpler, the editing and fact-checking a little more casual. Now the old ways wouldn't do anymore because "Harriet said" this or "Harriet said" that. Who was this woman, and could the staff secretary please confine herself to secretarial duties?
We had a few things to learn about the job of the staff secretary - the person who controls all paper passing through the Oval Office - and above all about the caliber of the woman behind the editing. And now that fellow conservatives in Washington are asking variations of the same question about President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court - Who is this "crony," "cipher," "hack," "functionary" or, as my former speechwriting colleague David Frum has called her, this "petty bureaucrat"? - I think I can help with the answer.
When you know Harriet Miers, it's funny to think of her as the subject of such controversy. Yet already her notoriety is such that even the most innocent of virtues can be thrown back at her as inadequate - "not even second-rate," as a National Review Online posting said, "but third-rate." She's a detail person. Diligent and dependable. Honest, kind, modest, devout and all that. A real mediocrity.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wow. Someone at the New York Times thinks conservatives should back Miers.
Harriet is a FReeper????
This guy worked in the Bush administration and his article was published in the New York Times.
Knowing little about Harriet, it's hard to oppose or support her. But, whoever has the job to sell her to Americans is asleep at the switch.
LOL!
Obviously a controversial one, at that. ;)
Wow. Someone at the New York Times thinks conservatives should back Miers.
More like 'Another Bush White House Speechwriter Weighs in on Miers'. Frum worked there for 13 months. This guy worked there for four years.
Agreed.
The Whitehouse has shown that it is better, sometimes, to say nothing.
What is that saying about politics makes for strange bedfellows?
Well stated.
n/p ;)
This is a great article and I didn't want it to slip under your radar.
Can't have that now can we?
Wonder how many times Frum got his speeches kicked back to him for further revision.
I couldn't help wondering the exact same thing. Suppose little Frummie got his fingers slapped for some big boo boos and is hitting back like the little snot that he is?
The president I voted for deserves my support on this. The woman he nominated deserves a fair hearing before the committee. She also deserves to get at least one word out of her mouth before being condemned.
I am willing to be loyal and to be fair.
I will make up my mind at the hearings.
"Or maybe he remembered how the hardest-working person in the White House found time to prepare the will of a terminally ill 27-year-old colleague, and to spend nights and mornings staying with her and praying with her. "
My office cleaning lady is also hard working and compassionate. Thank God she doesn't work at the White House or she'd be a Supreme Court nominee.
How did your heart get so cold?
This author may have uncovered the axe Frum has to grind with Miers. How many times were his speeches sent back to him covered in red?
Was he offended that a "mere" SMU graduate was questioning the the writing of an Ivy League wordsmith. How dare she?
Wow!
Reason and sanity?
I fear the end of the world is nigh. ;)
Nahh. Me, neither.
Thank you for posting this article. I look forward to watching the hearings. It sure takes a bite out of flip-flop Frum's statements.
You just keep saying what I feel..Thank you and again.. Amen!
Sorry but we can't. NYT is now excerpt-only.
No need to sell her to the John Q. Public's....just to the pack of wolves called the U.S. Senate.
You have Freepmail.
I find it most interesting, as has been pointed out by more than one Freeper here, that Fund may well have given us all the real reason that he is so intent in sinking Harriets "ship".
"It is true that Harriet Miers, in everything she does, gives high attention to detail. And the trait came in handy with drafts of presidential speeches, in which she routinely exposed weak arguments, bogus statistics and claims inconsistent with previous remarks long forgotten by the rest of us. If one speech declared X "our most urgent domestic priority," and another speech seven months earlier had said it was Y, it would be Harriet Miers alone who noted the contradiction."
That would beg the question ... Would a forensic expert find sufficient Whitehouse carpet fibers on Mr. Fund for a jury to find him guilty of being called on that same carpet so many times that it resulted in his being dismissed? And would it be remotely possible that Ms Miers did the dismissing?
Nah ... I didn't think so. ;)
Good grief. That must've kept Harriet franticly busy...
but it makes me wonder why Dubya would ignore her.
"This lady is no Souter."
My sentiments exactly. Everyone is saying: "We don't know that much about her." So what? Look how much we knew about Souter and O'Connor and what disasters they turned out to be.
I truly believe this lady is a person of integrity, loyal to her values and principles. That's a prized commodity in Washington, D.C.; the nation's bastion of political whores who are accustomed to selling out to the highest bidder. I guess the Bill Kristols of the world would have been happy had The Prez tapped Tom Delay for the SCOTUS.
Give me a break!!!!!
I believe all would be better served watching, listening and learning from the hearings.
A few elitist "Conservatives" and a slew of leftists? Now that's another thing. ;)
That is odd. I click on it and I get the entire page.
Hmmmmm ... Could it be that I have a "stealth" computer? ;)
Frum's petulent never ending carping against this woman makes one wonder which one is the woman in this matter.
"The last shall be first, and the first shall be last..."
"Blessed are the meek.."
Well, of course that's just a religious analogy, and I am certain some will come along to knock it down. I do, however, look foward to hearing from her at the hearings.
And there are some really subtle slams to Frum and Kristol in this article. I was glad to read this just for those comments! (Probably not very Christian of me, but I have been sorely tried the last 10 days.)
I want someone like this on the court. I'm sick and tired of the typical Beltway BS.
Read the damn article. It's not "Someone from the N. Y. Times." It's a former Bush staff member, obviously a conservative, who unlike you and the other bandwagon harpies, worked with Miers and knows exactly what and who she is.
No doubt.
Well, here's another irony, along the lines of what you said.
Here's Bill Clinton, Rhodes Scholar, a supposed list of accomplishments and endorsements a yard long. What'd we say? "You idiots -- character matters!"
Then here's Harriet Miers. Not a long list of FLASHY accomplishments, endorsements mixed with denunciations. But an almost universally, overwhelmingly attested golden character.
And what are a bunch of FReepers saying?
"Character doesn't count!"
Dan
BTTT
Scully's part of the Bush offensive -- no pun intended.
http://www.matthewscully.com/matthew.htm
Matthew Scully served until August 2004 as special assistant to the president and deputy director of presidential speechwriting. He worked for President George W. Bush a total of five years, including 18 months in the 2000 campaign, and was part of the team that drafted the President’s post-September 11th addresses and every major speech of the first term. http://www.matthewscully.com/matthew.htm
>My office cleaning lady is also hard working and compassionate. Thank God she doesn't work at the White House or she'd be a Supreme Court nominee.<
Bet that the fact she is the cleaning lady is the only thing you know about her.
My appologies to Mr. Fund. ;)
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