Once again, it's a fine line between genius and stupidity.
This morning, President Bush tapped a bootlicking toady for the Supreme Court slot recently vacated by O'Connor. Harriet Miers is White House counsel and has known Bush since forever, having served with him while he was governer of Texas. She is reputed to be one of the Bush camp's most fervent believers (that's really sayin' som'n), and David Frum has quoted her as telling him that Bush is the most brilliant man she's ever met.
Now, really. That's just over the damn top.
What game could Bush possibly be playing by nominating not only a crony, and not only an unknown, but an unknown crony who thinks he hangs the moon and whose qualifications for the Supreme Court are, well, tissue-thin? Well, I'll tell you.
A hundred dollars says that Bush has floated Miers' name as an "eff you" to all and sundry who think he's headed in the wrong direction. He takes loyalty very seriously and obviously tends to reward faithfulness over competence, and also famously hates to hear bad news or be contradicted. So there's that dynamic at play, this time nationwide rather than in the confines of staff meetings.
But there's something deeper here. Her nomination is likely to piss off his opponents and supporters alike. If she goes down in flames, well, so what? Bush wins whether Miers gets the confirmation or not. If she does, it's a lovely gift for a close personal friend whose heart he has looked into deeply and seen the good inside (viz. Putin), and as he sees it probably a lock on someone dependable to cement his legacy for the next two decades or so.
And if Miers goes down the loser, Bush is banking that in the aftermath of a failed confirmation fight, nobody but nobody will have the stomach to fight a brutal, extended, and potentially politically suicidal second round over the inevitable super-conservative follow-up candidate like, say, Janice Rogers Brown.
If that fight happens and his second choice is blocked (or even if things start looking shaky for that second choice) Bush & co. are betting that this will give him a chance to go to the nation with hands raised in despair over the flotilla of cranks, radicals, and secular-humanist faggot-lovers (present!) that make up the other side these days. Advantage: Bush!
Or, he could just be a cronyist idiot.
[wik] Obsidian Wings has a rundown of reactions from across the web. Guess what: they're mostly negative. Either W is playing a very long and subtle hand, or his failings of imagination are bigger than I'd ever thought.
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J:
J:
There's merit in your thoughts, but if he'd really wanted to do the two-fingered sneak like that, the better to put JRB on the Court after the dust settled, he'd have picked Gonzalez.
Oh, wait - if he'd picked Gonzalez (Alberto, not Elian), the Senate would have, just as a "screw you", probably let him sail right through, and the rightmost fringes of the GOP base don't actually get a vote in the Senate so all he'd do is irk the base. So, no, that can't be it.
Thus, you could be right, if not on the first half of the theory, then certainly on the last.
p.s. Miers' judicial qualifications aren't noticeably thinner than those of another never-been-a-judge who hung out at the court for 33 years. That said, she's going to be savaged in the Senate, I think.
p.p.s. She might think Bush hung the moon because the only men she's spent much time with are, well, attorneys. I don't think he's anything like a moron, and I balance that by thinking he's not anything like a genius. He's a politician, fer Gaia's sake.