Bush goes crony again

Bush nominated his next Supreme Court justice today, and revealed to the world his complete and utter commitment to the concept of cronyism. The news said, prior to the announcement, that there were stories Laura Bush was pushing for a woman to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Surely there are other women somewhere out there in the judiciary that have even a drop more experience that Miers? Even a week on the bench would give them an edge. This is slightly more legitimate than making Brown the head of FEMA, since at least this woman is a lawyer and presumably understands law, but you think there’d be a little more care taken after the recent Hurricane Katrina debacle. After all, even the Economist has run an op-ed piece about the obvious and dangerous Bush tendency to elevate incompetent people to high posts, just because he knows them.

I suspect there were two forces at work that led to this woman’s nomination. The first was that Bush knows her. He is presumably aware to a great degree of where she stands on issues that are near and dear to his heart, though if I were him, I wouldn’t rely on her views being precisely his, even if she has appeared to support him wholeheartedly. My experience with lawyers has suggested that they are a somewhat flexible lot, fitting themselves into the proper mode to give their clients exactly what they need. Like hired gunfighters in all those Old West movies, they defend their clients the best they know how and generally don’t let absolute truth and a rigid set of morals confine them in their activities. There is legal truth, after all, and a truth of the greater world. Legal truth is what has been decided in a court of law and depends on previous judgements and only what is presented in the court at the time of the trial. If an attorney can get something barred from testimony, no matter how true it is, then it doesn’t exist.

No, I’m not saying all lawyers are like this. In fact, I have a fairly balanced view of lawyers for your average doctor. I have found in my dealings with them, that they tend to have supple minds, and are often found of argumentation. Trial lawyers in particular are far more tolerant of confrontation than ordinary people. They seem to relish it, and even get a charge from a good battle in court. It’s not clear they need to be crusading for any particular cause to get that adrenaline hit. Yes, some lawyers will go on a crusade, and there are plenty of people with a law degree who never appear in court. There are other things in law they enjoy. I think Perry Mason has done the general population a disservice, though, by making us expect such principled behavior from all trial lawyers.

To the point, Mier’s compliance and agreement with all things GW may not run quite as deep as he would like to think. I’m sure she’s not a flaming liberal, because such a person wouldn’t have been able to survive being so closely associated with him for so long. She may, however, harbor a somewhat more moderate soul. Of course, she could be the Genghis Khan of frothing-at-the-mouth conservatives, too. We can’t be sure. What we can be sure of, is that if she’s nominated, we will find out. Once she’s on the Supreme Court, she will have to answer to no one except her own conscience, whichever deity she follows, and her own understanding of the law.

This leads directly to the second force at work. Bush managed to neatly nominate someone who had such good credentials and was so unshakeable, he slid through Congress sleeker than a greased pig in shit. There aren’t really that many candidates like Roberts out there. What better way to go than to nominate someone who has almost no public record for anyone to object to? I’m sure Bush has learned the lesson taught by his conservative buddies when running against Kerry—if you have many years of public service, which includes some of the compromises you need to make to get things done, you’re vulnerable to anyone who wants to reinterpret what happened and spin it in the direction they want it to go. Pretty soon they’ll be wanted to nominate someone just out of law school, and eventually, why not get them when they’re pre-law? Or wait—that may not work. What if they’re like me and publish a blog that is available to the public, even if no one bothers to read it?

I expect Bush will get this nomination confirmed. At this point, he owns the Congress, more or less. Perhaps some of the more ideologically driven Congressmen on the far right will be as uncomfortable as the Democrats are bound to be, but I suspect they won’t oppose their president on this. And the Democrats may decide they just can’t stand it and commence a filibuster, but they’re too far in the minority for that to be ultimately effective.

In the best of all possible worlds, Mier would be nominated and prove herself to be a capable, moderate and thoughtful justice. Too bad things don’t usually happen like that.