perfidy

Two more conservative heavyweights have, uh, weighed in on the Miers nomination. On both sides.

Newt Gingrich tells us to trust the President. For liberals, this presents something of a conundrum. They already don't trust the President, so does that mean the nominee will be a Souter or an Anti-Souter? Fear or relief? For conservatives, the problem is less stark, but still a problem. The core of Gingrich's argument is this: Bush ran as a conservative, and has held true to that over the last five years. He assembled a team of conservatives. He said that he'd appoint conservative judges, and has consistently done so to the dismay of many liberals. Miers is the one who helped him do this, and he's known Miers for years. Trust George. As far as the conservative judges go, 'ol Newt has a point. But Bush has not been consistently conservative, though I'll buy mostly conservative. But the spectre of steel tariffs, the prescription drug entitlement and other misteps haunts.

So far, this is the strongest argument I have seen in favor of Miers, aside from Patton's point that the Constitution says that the President can pick whomever he damn well pleases.

Charles Krauthammer has a rather different take. In an essay entitled, "Withdraw this nominee," the Kraut says - and I quote at length:

There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president? To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous.

It will be argued that this criticism is elitist. But this is not about the Ivy League. The issue is not the venue of Miers's constitutional scholarship, experience and engagement. The issue is their nonexistence.

Moreover, the Supreme Court is an elite institution. It is not one of the "popular" branches of government. That is the reason Sen. Roman Hruska achieved such unsought immortality when he declared, in support of an undistinguished Nixon nominee to the court, that, yes, G. Harrold Carswell is a mediocrity but mediocre Americans deserve representation on the court as well.

To serve in Congress, or even as president, there is no requirement for scholarship and brilliance. For good reason. It is not needed. It can even be a hindrance, as we learned from our experience with Woodrow Wilson, the most intellectually accomplished president of the 20th century and also the worst.

But constitutional jurisprudence is different. It is, by definition, an exercise of intellect steeped in scholarship. Otherwise it is nothing but raw politics. And is it not the conservative complaint that liberals have abused the courts by having them exercise raw super-legislative power, the most egregious example of which is the court's most intellectually bankrupt ruling, Roe v. Wade?

The President has a right to choose the nominee. But I have a right to carp and whinge that it is not a good choice. And I don't think that this one is a winner, not when there are so many other clearly distinguished candidates.