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Jewish World Review Oct. 7, 2005 / 4 Tishrei, 5766 Mired in capitulation By Marianne M. Jennings
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Capitulation breeds mediocrity. Post-Katrina and New Orleans tongue lashings, Mr. Bush has that deer-in-the-Kenworth-headlights countenance, and the result, beyond the $2,000 FEMA grants for Louis Vuitton bags and strip club activities (for which no environmental impact statements were filed), is that we get Harriet Miers, a U.S. Supreme Court nominee whose greatest credential is activity in the Texas and American Bar Associations. I lasted in the ABA about three years before I realized it was no place for a lady or a conservative. Ms. Miers could not even bring herself to resign from the group when it adopted a position on abortion without a membership vote!
Mr. Bush dismissed the ABA out-of-hand in his first term when he did away with its advance review of judicial nominees. What he once tossed to the winds he now touts as his nominee's qualification. For pity's sake, Harry Reid suggested this woman!
Bush 43 offered up to a cantankerous Senate, controlled by his own party, a nominee with no judicial experience. How can a man who outlasted the John Ashcroft jokes for four years not have the stomach for a Senate confirmation battle? What can explain this move? How much more can we conservatives be asked to endure? Frist, Delay, Brownie, Dopey, Sneezy!
I have long been a critic of the Bush blind spot on personnel. George Tenet, the former CIA director, was a disaster in a post well beyond his ability. Years passed as our criticism fell on Bush's two tinhorn ears and Tenet bungled more and more. The Bush management style consists of three elements: (1) get good people in the right positions, (2) demand loyalty from them (Powell was problematic here), and (3) have them work at clear and simple goals. "Good people in the right positions" proves problematic with this nomination. This one even gave to the Gore campaign. Youth's transgressions aside, few conservatives ever sunk to this level of political depravity.
Beyond the inexplicable cowardice in this nomination rests a far greater problem. The signal Mr. Bush sends with both the Roberts and the Miers nominations is that if you seek a conservative's nomination for a judicial position, don't write anything down, have no convictions, curb faith so that nothing emerges on your sleeve, and, above all, stay away from that blasted Federalist Society. The "Help Wanted" ad for Supreme Court justices should include this new conservative approach on nominations, "Eunuchs encouraged to apply."
The Roberts hearings were painful to watch because of his obsequiousness. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), a member of our team, was reduced to asking this question of Judge Roberts, "Would you agree that the opposite of being dead is being alive?" The guy still waffled because he was sure Coburn was going to haul him into a syllogism that might reveal his tendency to think about abortion as, oh, say, the taking of life! We knew little of the man before the hearings and, oddly, less afterwards.
The precedent the Bush administration has established with these nominations makes the conservative movement and its many coups seem to have all been for naught. Without change in the judicial branch, we fight the legislative and executive battles in futility. Stealth nominees will now lurk, cloak and mask their constant companions.
Stay low, stay quiet, stay uncommitted, or no nod shall come your way. Some data from the Federalist Society over the next few years should be an eye-opener. I would say the Federalist Society will experience some exodus as well as a decline in new members because affiliation with this nefarious group will get you tossed from a judicial nomination short list.
Bush signals for a bumper crop of Souters. Sycophantic nominees, who said all the right things, knew all the right people, and, perhaps most importantly, did it all without writing anything down or joining radical groups ,will percolate to our courts. A card-carrying member of the thoughtful Federalist Society will net you the same reputation as Red did in Hollywood. You will be blacklisted from wearing a black robe.
Few can imagine the systemic effects of these signals on judicial appointment. The best and the brightest law students will hesitate to accept thoughtful and scholarly law review pieces that create controversy, let alone write comments that present conservative views (something already severely limited by the liberal political views and affiliations of law school faculty who are 80% Democrat, according to a campaign contributions study by Prof. John McGinnis of Northwestern). Panel discussions at symposia and bar association meetings will take on a monolithic quality as those who have bench aspirations tout only politically correct views. Those events are recorded!
If the Democrats in the Senate are emboldened by this latest Bush kowtowing, liberal scholars surely rejoice. They have the assurance of an intellectual monologue.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and Republicans sailed her right through with a gracious hearing and overwhelming 96-3 approval vote. Aspirational judicial nominees take note: Heed the call for silence and mediocrity. Either that, or join the other side if you expect a slot on the bench.
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JWR contributor Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State
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© 2005, Marianne M. Jennings |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
