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Jewish World Review Oct. 7, 2005 / 4 Tishrei, 5766 Miers Will Be Nobody's Dummy By Froma Harrop
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Harriet E. Miers is the sort of woman I might like to go out
with for lunch and a movie. That in no way qualifies her for a seat on the
Supreme Court, I know. But your author appreciates movie companions who
offer independent opinions. Miers — may I call you Harriet? — looks to be
a lady with her own mind, and that is a good trait in a Supreme Court
justice, too. As for her other qualifications, we'll see.
Do not dismiss my personal-gut response as unserious. Other
observers are wearing down the keyboards with confident analyses of Miers'
politics. They haven't any less foggy an idea than I do. No one knows what
Miers thinks about the abortion, religion or free-speech issues the court
will confront. She was neither a judge nor, obviously, the talkative type.
Despite the dearth of hard information, movement conservatives
have declared her nomination a defeat for them. That Miers is President
Bush's White House lawyer offers little comfort. Bush, everyone knows, is
damaged goods. He's been weakened by the Katrina mess, the inconclusive Iraq
war, spreading government scandals and budget deficits that no true
conservative would tolerate. He can't afford to fight on another front. He
needs a relatively peaceful Supreme Court nominating process.
The conservatives' problem with Miers isn't how she thinks,
because they have no idea. It's that she's not like them. Miers is not an
energizer-conservative, beating the drums under the windows of the liberal
enemy.
Liberals do seem to be sleeping well over the Miers choice. No
less a left-leaner than Sen. Charles Schumer has responded to her nomination
with, "It could have been a lot worse." That's New York-ese for "what a nice
surprise."
All this pains the right-wing warriors, as their delusions of
permanent power continue to crack. Their batteries badly needed recharging
with an in-your-face conservative along the lines of an Antonin Scalia or
Clarence Thomas.
"It really disappointed us," a right-wing friend told me. "We
were looking forward to a filibuster by liberals against a qualified black
woman candidate."
He was speaking of Janice Rogers Brown, one of the women on the
conservatives' short list. His assumption that conservatives could
successfully repackage opposition to Brown as racism is rather dated. The
trick of finding a minority to represent the right wing's most outrageous
views is pretty shopworn. Liberals didn't give Clarence Thomas a free pass
because he was black, and that was 14 years ago. Only the public revulsion
at Anita Hill's opportunistic sexual-harassment charges against Thomas
caused them to cave.
I'm no big fan of affirmative action, but I do like the idea of
a female justice replacing another pioneer, Sandra Day O'Connor. At age 60,
Miers remembers the days when law firms asked women applicants whether they
were on birth control. As she rose to power in the Texas legal
establishment, Miers became the first woman this and the first woman that.
She knows how things were for women with ambition.
She also knows how things were for women without legal access to
abortion. Third parties tell us that Miers personally opposes abortion. That
could be true or not. But there are lots of people who are against abortion
but want it kept legal. O'Connor seems to be one.
Nor should we read anything into Miers' resistance to the
American Bar Association's policy supporting abortion rights. As president
of the Texas Bar in the early '90s, she thought the ABA should be neutral on
the subject, or at least base its position on a vote by the association's
members. That was a principled stance, which had the support of some
pro-choice members.
So while conservatives describe themselves as "depressed" over
the Miers nomination, I declare myself initially impressed. I would love to
share these feelings with Harriet over a tuna salad.
We could talk about her time on the Dallas City Council, her
pro-bono legal work and the reasons she once gave money to Al Gore. And I'd
tell her how nice it is to see a Supreme Court nominee who has never been a
jurist.
As for her deepest politics, I imagine she would keep me
guessing. But one thing about her would seem a fairly solid proposition:
Given the security of a lifetime job on the Supreme Court, Miers would be
nobody's robot.
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© 2005 Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
