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Jewish World Review Oct. 28, 2005 / 25 Tishrei, 5766 Starting Over By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Within hours of the withdrawal of the Harriet Miers nomination, commentators were labeling President Bush a "lame duck." They have their analysis exactly backward. Continuing a debilitating fight with his own political base over a weak Supreme Court nominee would have hastened the day that Bush lost his political juice entirely.
Withdrawing Miers is the first step toward recovery.
It shows that the White House has not lost all of its political judgment, that it has no mad design to try to govern without its most loyal supporters, and that it is still — despite all the pressure it's facing and some of the inevitable sclerosis that sets in after five years in power — supple enough to readjust after a mistake. Indeed, one of the first rules of politics is not to persist in an error for persistence's sake.
And the Miers nomination was a mistake. Some of her supporters claim that she was "borked," the famous verb created after Ronald Reagan nominee Robert Bork was taken down in a hail of misrepresentations. But it was difficult to misrepresent Miers's positions, because she had so few of them, and, as we learned in recent weeks, they often were contradictory or incoherent (against "the right to choose," and for women's "self-determination"; against the Federalist Society, and for it). No one disputed, as Miers's supporters argued, that she is kind to pets and small children and goes to church every Sunday. It's just that those are qualifications for a neighbor, not a Supreme Court justice.
Backers of Miers didn't give Bush enough credit. They argued that he would never withdraw Miers, because once he is set on a given course, he never changes direction. In this, they adopted a version of the Left's view of Bush — an unthinking political brute, lumbering on with no regard to truth or consequence. In fact, Bush adjusts. He endorsed the Homeland Security Department after opposing it, and removed Michael Brown from the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after praising him. Bush persists when he thinks it's right and important — say, in fighting in Iraq or in preserving his tax cuts. The Miers nomination was neither.
That's not to say that the White House didn't need nudging. When most Republican senators were either supinely supporting the nomination or snippily dismissing Miers's critics ("what business do these mere mortals have trying to affect Senate business?") or wringing their hands and resorting to mealy mouthed evasion over a nomination they privately thought was a disaster, Kansas Republican Sam Brownback was more vocal about his doubts than anyone else. If it wasn't quite a profile in courage, it was a profile in more bravery than his Senate colleagues could muster.
During the Miers imbroglio, there was much talk of a conservative crackup. But the nomination created no deep, lasting splits on the Right, despite some harsh words in the blogosphere between Miers's critics and supporters who had the attitude "My president, right or wrong." Many of the arguments used to try to bolster her nomination — practically anyone can be a Supreme Court justice; valuing top-flight credentials is "elitist" — will be quickly retired, which will be a relief since they never should have been advanced in the first place.
The Miers nomination will be forgotten as quickly as the Kerik nomination (remember it?), especially if Bush now picks a supremely qualified judicial conservative. In considering his options, Bush should roam free of the constraints of gender politics — it's quality that matters most. But a solid pick will heal only one of Bush's wounds. The gravest political threat to his presidency is that he has no popular, high-profile initiatives. The Iraq war, if necessary and right, is unpopular. His Social Security initiative is dead. His guest-worker proposal might, unlike Miers, truly fracture the Right. The initial proposal floated out of his tax-reform commission, limiting the mortgage-interest-rate deduction, is a non-starter.
After Miers, there is adjusting still left to do.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
