Pat Buchanan believes that by withdrawing from the brewing battle over her confirmation to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers May Have Helped Save Bush’s Presidency by (Human Events).
By withdrawing her nomination, Harriet Miers spared herself an agonizing inquisition and probable rejection by the Senate and did George W. Bush the greatest service of her career. She may just have helped him save his presidency.
Like a school marm indulging a teacher̢۪s pet, Miss Miers just gave George Bush permission to retake the final exam he booted badly. She has given him a second chance to succeed where Nixon, Ford, Reagan and his father all failed: To become the president who rang down the curtain on 50 years of judicial tyranny and reshaped the Supreme Court into the great constitutionalist body the Founding Fathers intended.
George Bush is a lucky man to have a friend like Harriet Miers.
Had her nomination been pursued through the judiciary committee to the full Senate, it would have meant civil war inside the party. President Bush would have been forced to watch members of his Congressional party and conservatives publicly call for rejection and defeat of the woman who had given him a decade of devoted service. The fallout from this fratricidal war could have lasted for years. By standing down, Miers called off the family fight about to erupt inside the president̢۪s own household.
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Given Miers̢۪ absence of a judicial record or a deeply embedded philosophy of judicial restraint, her expressed sympathy for jurists who order legislators to act, her sympathy for feminist causes, it is hard to see how a conservative senator could vote to make her the decisive voice on the Supreme Court for the next generation. If they voted her down they would split the party and enrage the president. If they voted her onto the court, they would betray the voters to whom they had pledged to support only strict constructionists and constitutionalists of proven merit and ability. It was lose, lose. The president, his party and the Right were all marching grimly toward First Manassas when Sister Harriet saved us all.
Sens. Kennedy, Leahy and Boxer are urging President Bush to “show strength,†by appointing a moderate. But, if I am not mistaken, didn’t Bush just do that? And how did the nominee that made Harry Reid a happy man turn out?
President Bush just survived a barrel ride over Niagara Falls. A man of reasonable intelligence would not risk it a second time.
With the nominations of John Roberts and Bernard Bernanke, Bush appointed men of experience and proven capacity who shared his beliefs. Given this heaven-sent second chance, he should do the same with the Supreme Court: Pick a justice whose credentials are unimpeachable and whose judicial philosophy reads likes an excerpt from The Collected Works of Antonin Scalia.
While I only occasionally agree with Buchanan these days, he’s right on the money here. The president should avoid appointing someone who has a reputation for stridency and activism. Even in his weakened state, however, he can easily get a John Roberts-type nominee confirmed.
