Miers and Other Matters
In the current National Review, the egregious Frum offers
his reasons for disliking President Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers for
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He then says Marvin Olansky is
"worse than silly" (the egregious Frum is fond of exaggerations) for saying
that Harriet Miers is unlikely to "grow" in office, because "The pressures
of the left are strongest on those that want what the left can provide."
In other words, Harriet Miers has never aspired to
acceptance at fancy law schools as commencement speaker, or invitations to
New York dinner parties. She is far more likely to covet the esteem of her
fellow Christian conservatives in Dallas, and fear their rejection, than to
want to be the commencement speaker at Harvard.
Nonsense, says the egregious Frum. Miers is insecure,
accused of not knowing the law, not being cool enough, and of course she
will thirst for acceptance from the left establishment. It never occurs to
the egregious Frum that there are people who really don’t want acceptance
from Columbia – and who know that no matter how much they "grow" they will
never be acceptable to the Enlightened anyway. The egregious Frum says we
cannot know what really motivates Miers. Which is odd, because whatever else
we do know about Miers, we know that George Bush knows her well, and he’s
quite certain that Miers is a strict constructionist.
Now he goes on to say that it would have been better for
Bush to nominate someone like Bork, someone with credentials and a history.
The odds are favorable, the prize worthy, and we could win this one, perhaps
with the nuclear option.
Perhaps. My view is that taunting the Democrats and moving
toward the nuclear option is dangerous. I am sufficiently conservative that
I do not want to change the rules of the Senate. I do want the Senate to go
back to where it was before Bork; where there is some deference to the
minority, and not steamrolling through, but the minority also understands
that the majority has rights as well. In our ideological climate I suppose
all this is impossible, but I would not go out of my way to provoke
confrontation.
I am hardly content with the modern Republicans and their
spending. I do not believe there is any such thing as Big Government
Conservatism.
The question is, are we more likely to have limited
government with Republicans or Democrats? There was a time when that would
be a silly question. It’s no longer silly, and indeed we don’t even have an
answer. But one thing I am very certain of: I’d rather have Harriet Miers,
and take a chance that she will grow in office to become a liberal activist,
than whomever a Democrat president would appoint. Such as Larry Tribe.
Whomever the Democrats appointed, the new Associate Justice wouldn’t have to
grow. He’d be full grown activist leftist before he even started.
The egregious Frum, having read out of the conservative
movement all those who were skeptical about the Iraqi War and who were not
enthusiastic about supporting Mr. Bush in his war, is now turning on the
President, has his doubts about the President’s ability to fight "this right
and necessary war", and continues in his egregious way.
And now John O’Sullivan is piling on; but for much better
reasons than the egregious Frum. O’Sullivan thinks the three great issues
are: halting the regulator state; restoring national unity to an
increasingly Balkanized America; and preventing the rise of an anti-American
united Europe that would divide the West. Bush has failed in all those, says
O’Sullivan.
But of course the Iraq War is responsible for much of
that. We rushed into The Patriot Act, and War, both of which make increased
regulation well nigh inevitable; and the War certainly alienated Europe, and
yes, I know, the French opposition to the War stemmed from a number of
reasons some quite sordid. The War endangered the tax cuts. Yet support for
the war was, according to the egregious Frum, the acid test for being a
conservative. If you didn’t support the war, said Frum in National Review,
"we turn our backs on you."
I will agree with O’Sullivan’s wishes for the future.
Ending the divisions in America is extremely important, perhaps the most
important thing for our history. I am not as concerned with the territorial
disputes of Europe, or entangling alliances, and my guess is that European
unity is unlikely unless we give them good reasons to unite against us. If
we think we have divisive influences in the USA, we have only to look to
Europe to see how bad things could be.
But unity in the US requires, oddly enough, diversity:
that is, Federalism. It is much easier to be unified against foreign
enemies, and in favor of the constitution, if you live in a state that has
laws you like. Consent of the governed doesn’t mean forcing a majority
opinion on everyone in the nation. The only way we will get national unity
back is to allow some real power to the states; and that means reducing
Federal power and cutting back or eliminating Federal regulations. It also
means that some states will do things that will cause sheer hatred in other
states. So be it.
We need to reduce Federal Power, and increase national
unity; and devolving many divisive matters to the states is about the best
way I know of to do that.
So. Is Ms. Miers likely to do that? She’s a Texan, and the
President knows her well. Sure, I could come up with candidates for Supreme
Court other than Miers; but I am not the President. He thinks that is
exactly what she will do and he knows her well. And he is the President.
But, I suppose, the egregious Frum, having read those of
us who had doubts about The Iraqi War out of the conservative movement, will
next attack as worse than silly all those who don’t consider opposing the
Miers appointment another acid test of true conservatism.
I’m willing to disagree with the President, but I prefer
my disagreements to be along the lines of O’Sullivan’s.
