Amid apparent rumors and seeming trial balloons that the White House is looking for a way to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, the political equivalent of the La Brea tarpits continues to ensnarl the Bush administration.
For instance, this Knight-Ridder story alleging Texas just happened to overpay Miers’ family for a land sale is not going to exactly help her image or her case when she comes before Congress:
WASHINGTON — Texas officials paid Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’ family more than $100,000 for a small piece of land in 2000 – 10 times the land’s worth – despite the state’s objections to the way the price was determined, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported Saturday.
The three-member committee that determined the price included Peggy Lundy, a friend of Miers, and property-rights activist Cathie Adams, Knight Ridder reported. They were appointed to the panel by state District Judge David Evans, who had received at least $5,000 in campaign contributions from Miers’ law firm.
The land in question was part of a parcel in west Dallas owned by Miers’ mother, Sally; Harriet Miers had the authority to represent her mother’s interests. Texas needed the northeast corner of the parcel to build an interstate highway off-ramp.
According to Knight Ridder, the land – which was part of a large Superfund pollution cleanup site – was valued at less than 30 cents a square foot. But the panel recommended paying nearly $5 a square foot for it.
And, of course, there is an explanation for it — but the point is there is a drip-drip-drip of opposition (leading conservatives, conservative judges such as Robert Bork, conservative publications such as the Wall Street Journal) and negative stories (Congress returning her questionnaire and basically flunking her on it, Senators who met with her being less-than-bowled-over by her, reports of GOP staffers on the Hill and in the White House being lukewarm or downright hostile to her) about Miers. Nothing favorable of substance has surfaced to make the headlines about her in recent days.
Then, there’s this story that will please some moderates and liberals but upset many conservatives:
When Harriet E. Miers, President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, was moving toward the presidency of the State Bar of Texas in 1992, she enthusiastically supported an effort by the group to guarantee positions on its board of directors to female and minority lawyers, her two immediate predecessors said on Saturday.
The two former presidents said Ms. Miers had recognized the value in making sure the group’s leadership reflected the state’s diversity.
Ms. Miers’s position at the time, which was reported in The Washington Post on Saturday, concerns some conservative groups, who fear that her support for diversity may veil sympathies for affirmative action and quota systems and indicate how she may vote on the Supreme Court.
How bad is the press coverage?
Even when there’s a story that should be positive, it has a negative within it. To wit, the Houston Chronicle’s piece here:
WASHINGTON – More Texas friends of embattled Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers vouched for her Friday on Capitol Hill as the White House denied reports that Miers would stop paying courtesy calls on senators so she could cram for her confirmation hearings.
White House spokesman Jim Dyke said Miers will meet the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Wednesday deadline for supplementing her answers to a questionnaire that the committee found insufficient and will resume visiting senators next week.
“She had meetings last week. She had meetings this week. She will have meetings next week,” he said. “She continues to prepare for the hearings. … She’s doing fine.”…..
Appearing at a Capitol news conference with 13 former Dallas and Texas state bar presidents who traveled to Washington to defend the nomination, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Miers will be ready. If anyone doubts it, he said, “they may find the joke is on them.”
“Harriet Miers is more than able to hold her own,” Cornyn said. “…She’s probably never been tested like this before. But few people have, and I believe that she is tough enough, she’ll be prepared enough and she is good enough that she’ll be confirmed.”
The story SHOULD be people saying how solid she is. Instead, the White House is having to play defense (or, as it’s called in football, DEfense). And note this further sign of how the story is anchored in the prevailing conventional wisdom:
So far, no Republican in the GOP-led Senate that will vote on Miers’ confirmation has publicly come out against the 60-year-old White House counsel who was tapped by President Bush to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
But many Republican senators have expressed doubts about Miers’ qualifications and senators of both parties have indicated they were unimpressed after their get-acquainted meetings with the nominee.
None of this is a good sign. Taken altogether, it suggests the main reasons for confirming her are:
- If she’s not confirmed, it’ll hurt George Bush. To preserve his (and the GOP’s) power and clout, she must be confirmed.
- The President knows what’s in her heart and she won’t change while on the bench. (CODE WORDS: She’ll vote the way conservatives want her to on Roe Versus Wade).
- The President says he knows what’s in her heart and she won’t change while on the bench but maybe he’s wrong and she might not be as hideous as another nominee he might pick (the DEMOCRATS’s reason for backing her).
- She’s the closest to a less-extreme candidate that can be expected out of a White House being pressured to pick someone on the hard right (reason the bipartisan group of moderates in Congress would be backing her).
How bad is it? Whoever would have thought George Will, who has already written some scathing denunciations of the nomination, would not only take his gloves off but sharpen his nails like this:
Such is the perfect perversity of the nomination of Harriet Miers that it discredits, and even degrades, all who toil at justifying it. Many of their justifications cannot be dignified as arguments. Of those that can be, some reveal a deficit of constitutional understanding commensurate with that which it is, unfortunately, reasonable to impute to Miers. Other arguments betray a gross misunderstanding of conservatism on the part of persons masquerading as its defenders.
Will recounts the various arguments made (and quickly abandoned for new ones) to defend Miers, then ends his piece with this rhetorical KO to the jaws of the Republican AND Democratic parties:
Still, Miers must begin with 22 Democratic votes against her. Surely no Democrat can retain a shred of self-respect if, having voted against John Roberts, he or she then declares Miers fit for the court. All Democrats who so declare will forfeit a right and an issue — their right to criticize the administration’s cronyism.
And Democrats, with their zest for gender politics, need this reminder: To give a woman a seat on a crowded bus because she is a woman is gallantry. To give a woman a seat on the Supreme Court because she is a woman is a dereliction of senatorial duty. It also is an affront to mature feminism, which may bridle at gallantry but should recoil from condescension.
As for Republicans, any who vote for Miers will thereafter be ineligible to argue that it is important to elect Republicans because they are conscientious conservers of the judicial branch’s invaluable dignity. Finally, any Republican senator who supinely acquiesces in President Bush’s reckless abuse of presidential discretion — or who does not recognize the Miers nomination as such — can never be considered presidential material.
Uh, oh…another problem for Bill Frist…
Why is the battle over Miers’ nomination so fascinating to watch?
It’s the political equivalent of watching a car careen off of a cliff. There COULD be survivors but the car will never be the same again.
It seems a reflection of that overused word “hubris” — the natural manifestation of a President who clearly feels that whatever he feels should be good enough for the nation and those who disagree can take a hike…including members of his own party who worked their guts out to elect and re-elect him. (Well: where else do they have to go?)
And it’s because Republicans backing her have put aside any pretense of demanding qualifications they would have demanded from a court nominee put up by any Democrat. And because Democrats, fearing a worse candidate, seem ready to agree to lower the bar as they privately get down on their knees and beg the Lord that she secretly supports Roe V Wade and is as unconservative as conservatives fear.
But mostly it’s because the White House has so totally bungled the case it’s trying to make for her confirmation, changing its justification almost as many times as Al Gore changed his personality during the 2000 debates. One day political science students will study this nomination; it is now on the same footing as Bob Shrum’s “management” of John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
Miers is not a “steath candidate” since no one (except Bush) seems to know where she truly stands. She’s more of a “chameleon candidate” since the reasons given as to why she could be confirmed seemingly change every day.
If she’s confirmed, the bar is lowered. And a Democratic president, one day, will most certainly take advantage of this new (sub)standard.
UPDATE: Is this a case of like father, like son?
UPDATE II: Martin Nolan, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, blasts Bush’s critics — and says they’re using it as an excuse to distance themselves from a President who performed in a way that’ll damage them:
This scandal is not just about snobbery and sexism, nor about the acrobatic reversal of former Bush groupies.
The president’s philosophy on Supreme Court nominees, obscured by his unpopularity and ineptitude, is intellectually superior to that of his newly energized critics.
These right-wing critics, many intelligent and sophisticated, are guided by the French slogan “sauve qui peut,” which might roughly be translated as “stab the wounded.” If his reputation sinks, theirs might, too. Bush’s former friends treat him as not only a lame duck, but as a walking bucket of avian flu.
A war poorly explained and badly run could not derail their devotion, nor could a shaky economy. As war and weather plague the president and perils lurk in Baghdad and a Washington grand jury room, the Miers nomination offers former sycophants an exit strategy.
If Bush were 25 or 30 points higher in the polls, the right’s television troubadours and op-ed bards would still be describing Miers as Mother Teresa and Madame Curie combined…..
Miers may or may not be confirmed, but President Bush, abandoned by so many intellectuals he had eagerly courted, can ponder the wisdom of a predecessor. “If you want a friend in Washington,” Harry Truman said, “get a dog.”
–Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer says that if the vote was held today Miers would flop:
WASHINGTON – A Democrat on the Senate committee that will consider Harriet Miers’ nomination said Sunday that President Bush’s Supreme Court choice lacks the votes now to be confirmed, saying there are too many questions about her qualifications.
“If you held the vote today, she would not get a majority either in the Judiciary Committee or the floor,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), D-New York. On the 18-member GOP-controlled committee, “there are one or two who said they’d support her as of now.”….
“The hearings will be make or break for Harriet Miers in a way they haven’t been for any other nominee,” Schumer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “She’ll have to do very well there. She has a tough road to hoe.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,R-Texas, rejected suggestions that the White House was considering whether to withdraw Miers’ nomination. Hutchison said the former Dallas lawyer is highly qualified and deserves to present her case. Confirmation hearings are set to begin Nov. 7.
“She is the only one whose entire career is in private practice,” Hutchison said, in contrast to the current justices. “I can’t imagine not having someone with practical real-world experience.”
TMV NOTES: Hutchison is basically a human version of whatever the White House line is. She’s the one out fighting in the trenches to get the spin out loud enough to be heard over the naysayers…who are from both parties these days. If you had to go to Vegas and bet money on the which of these two’s comments come true, put your money on Schumer, in this case.
SOME OTHER VOICES:
—Michelle Malkin urges bloggers to take their stand…and Truth Laid Bear has set up THIS SPECIAL TRACKING PAGE for bloggers who want to do so.
—Taegan Goddard predicts the Republicans can try to withdraw the nomination — then blame it not going through on Democrats..who are beginning to change their original stance as well:
If Miers doesn’t make it out of committee, Republicans may still try to position it “like a couple incidental defections led by the Democrats to stop a fair up or down vote, rather than a revolt by Republicans.” This is something that some Democratic Senators are worried about. Nonetheless, Democrats “are starting to figure that it will be better to have a right-wing appointment to campaign against in ’06, than be beaten up for confirming an ‘unqualified Bush crony.'”
—-Again, you can get a ton of links to blogs, broken down by their stands on Miers, by going to the Truth Laid Bear tracking page. Check out Don Surber’s endorsement of Miers.
—The Heretik (a truly zesty, informative and fun site):”AS FRANKEN’S CHARACTER Stuart Smalley would say, “I’m smart enough, I’m good enough . . . and gosh darn it, people like me.â€? But in the case of Miers, apparently not enough of The Right People do. Miers show cancelled after pilot bombs.”
—Big Brass Blog:”That’s the headline at the WaTimes. As all over the Harriet Makeover ProjectsTM have spontaneously combusted, the backup plans are under way in case she pulls out before the hearings, or more likely if she melts down during the hearings. Considering the events over the last week (the questionnaire “do-over”), I suppose even the dunces in the White House know this nomination is toast.”
–Blog of the Moderate Left:”Amid signs that Bush is searching for an exit strategy on Miers somewhat more assiduously than he is in Iraq, I think it’s prudent to remember the good times. Ah, Harriet. You’ll always have Austin.”
—Kos points to the land sale story and writes:”The administration can’t roll out Miers 3.0 (appealing to party unity) soon enough. Because if this thing rests on things like “legal mind” and “accomplishments”, her nomination is sunk.”
—Captain Ed who does not like the Miers nomination but reluctantly supports it on the grounds that to not do so could damage the GOP writes of his concern over her stance on affirmative action:
Coming as this does with Miers’ use of the term “proportional representation” in her Senate questionnaire, I’d say that conservatives should be concerned about Miers’ approach to affirmative action. She appears quite amenable to de facto quota systems as a matter of policy, making it highly unlikely that she would find anything unconstitutional about them when ruling on the issue on the Supreme Court — even though the plain text of the 14th Amendment makes it clear that race-based solutions in law should be barred.
I don’t think Miers is a Quota Queen, but she’s not even an O’Connor on this issue. It’s yet another red flag on a nomination that seems to have sprouted a number of them recently.
-GOP Bloggers’ Mark Noonan:
Of course, the Supreme Court has been – quite mistakenly, in my view – elevated in the minds of some as the be-all and end-all of politics…the place where political battles are really lost or won. My guess is that some conservatives have seen various conservative legislative enactments voided by a Court, and thus see winning the Court as crucial to winning conservatism. Wrong. The key is to reform the Courts, for which task we already have ample political power…we just haven’t worked up a movement to get it going (hint: Kelo gives us all the populist ammo we need).
A withdrawl of Miers may or may not help – keep in mind, fellow conservatives, that if the replacement for Miers is a movement conservative we can’t get past the weak sisters in the Senatorial GOP, then we’ve dealt ourselves a body blow. Personally, I still think that conservatives should lay off for a bit and see what developes over the next week.
–John In Carolina notes that this post of his still holds up.
—All Spin Zone:”Financial factoids such as profiteering from a questionable land deal (at taxpayer’s expense) don’t just leak out from under a rock – someone pushes them out there. Come to think of it, didn’t the whole Whitewater investigation of Bill Clinton start with the presumption of shady real estate dealings? Anyway, this is just one more nail in the coffin of the Miers nomination that was DOA to begin with…”
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.