\"She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man...\"
This from David Frum on the National Review web site:
I believe I was the first to float the name of Harriet Miers, White House counsel, as a possible Supreme Court. Today her name is all over the news. I have to confess that at the time, I was mostly joking. Harriet Miers is a capable lawyer, a hard worker, and a kind and generous person. She would be an reasonable choice for a generalist attorney, which is indeed how George W. Bush first met her. She would make an excellent trial judge: She is a careful and fair-minded listener. But US Supreme Court?
In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. She served Bush well, but she is not the person to lead the court in new directions - or to stand up under the criticism that a conservative justice must expect.
The harsh truth is, at this 5 year mark in the administration's life, that its domestic achievements are very few. The most important, the tax cut, will likely prove temporary, undermined by the administration's overspending. The education bill, the faith-based initiative, and the rest do not amount to much. Social Security reform will not happen; work on tax reform has not even begun; the immigration proposals are disasters that will never become law.
Civil justice reform should be credited to Congress, not the White House. After that, what is there other than the Patriot Act and of course judicial nominations? But even on judicial nominations, thus far the president has only preserved the old balance on the court. If he is actually to advance his principles, he will need a real conservative leader: a Luttig, for example, a Michael McConnell - or perhaps Senator Mitch McConnell if the president is concerned about confirmability. The Senate will always confirm a fellow-senator, and McConnell is one of the body's outstanding conservative intellects. This is no time for the president to indulge his loyalty to his friends. All this year, the president has been testing the limits of his support. Well we are at the limit now, and anything less than a superb choice for the O'Connor vacancy will overstep it.
|