The Miersian paradigm.
OK, it's time for some post-deadline handwaving.
First, what's with Harry Reid? Is he genuinely giddy over the nomination, did he genuinely lobby for it, or is this a world-class headfake -- he knew it was coming and wanted to discombobulate the right? Given how cautious senators always are, Reid's HELL YEAH, HARRIET!!! is both bizarre and kind of heartening.
Reid surely wouldn't want to be on record shilling for the next Scalia. And Pat Buchanan is upset. That's good too.
So since this is my blog, here is my take on all this. It's good. It's fraught with meaning. In the Bush era, there's two basic paradigms. You get embarrassing. Or you get terrifying. Miers is embarrassingly unqualified (Texas Lottery Commissioner???), but embarrassing is a small price to pay when the alternative is... Luttig, who is terrifying.
That is, Miers represents one side of Bush, and it's the relative good side -- the side that has Cheney rushing out on Limbaugh to calm the rubes, the bizarre, clueless, politically oblivious side, the self-absorbed but supremely un-self-aware, Loyalty Above All Else side. This was the side we saw mainly during the 2000 campaign and the early days before 911. Those were the relative good days, when the problems with Bush were mainly aesthetic. At the end of the 2000 campaign, The New Republic wrote:
If [Gore] loses on November 7, it will not simply set America on an ideological course that we consider perilous and unworthy of our best traditions. It will be a sign that we are not living in a serious age.
That was it. Bush was a really, deeply unserious guy and his election signaled a move away from what those TNR killjoys considered "our best traditions". It would be mildly embarrassing for Americans to talk to Canadians* or travel in Europe for the next four years. Bush would blunder around and waste the surplus on tax cuts for rich people, appoint people like Joe Allbaugh to run FEMA, make awful appointments to the lower courts. He'd mangle his syntax and take too many vacations. He wouldn't write his own speeches. His daughters would get drunk in public. He'd be the perfect harbinger, the perfect mascot, of a frivolous, petty mini-era, Reaganism without Peggy Noonan, without the communists, the struggle, the purpose. That is, without the frightening sense that such a clown could bring on nuclear holocaust if he got it in his empty head. It was an awful prospect for goo-goos but not a terrifying one because it wasn't a terrifying world.
Then came 911 and it changed everything. Bush stopped being embarrassing and starting being terrifying. Those long months with stratospheric approval ratings, and that awful certainty they all had. Not even the late night comics would make fun of Bush. It was an awful time. It had awful consequences.
And now... well, it didn't end with the bang of a Kerry victory, but it ended with the whimper of Michael Brown's FEMA, of Tom Delay getting shoved aside to make way for the next crooked zombie, of the big speech that couldn't turn the polls around. It's over. And Harriet Miers is living proof. There's nothing terrifying about Harriet Miers that I can see. She wears too much makeup. She doesn't photograph very well. She's sort of church ladyish. But the embarrassment of the sitution really is Bush's -- his self-indulgence, his insecurity -- not hers. I don't think anyone's arguing she's not bright. Her position and action on trying to convince the ABA to nullify its support of abortion rights was (I think) pretty defensible from a moderate conservative perspective, which is the best we can hope for. (That said, I'm guessing she'll vote to overturn Roe and that it's going to be up to Kennedy.)
And, via Ryan Lizza (again), Miers once wrote this:
How does a free society prevent a man from climbing to the top of a tower on a university campus and randomly killing whoever is in sight? How does a free society prevent a man from driving a truck into a cafeteria and executing patrons? How does a free society prevent a man from entering a courtroom and opening fire? We are loath to hear the answer to these questions as it comes from our lips, because the suggested solutions usually infringe on precious, constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
...Additionally, we are reminded that success in fighting crime in our nation is more than treating symptoms. We will be successful in solving our massive crime problems only when we attack the root causes. All of us, men and women, young and old, must pledge ourselves to address the ills that surround us in our communities.
That's defintitely not Scaliaesque. That's not even O'Connoresque. I can't say for sure that Miers is not a winger (how would I know?), but at the very least I don't see any reason to think she's a "stealth" winger. As far as I can tell, Bush isn't in stealth mode -- actually, I don't think he has a stealth mode. But at the very least, stealth takes self-awareness, some sense of mission, and I think the mission is over now. Most presidents would be embarrassed by the Abe Fortas references Miers is going to provoke. Most presidents' demand for loyalty would at least extend to someone who didn't once vote against their father (ok, it's a guess based on the DNC contribution). Bush couldn't care less about any of that. Contra Ezra, I don't think this is another indication of Bush's manevolence -- it's not another Rove situation. I don't think he's fucking with the base or with the neocons or the liberatarian lawyer brigade; he's just oblivious to them all. It's his weird, insular loyalty, his love of sychophants -- it's the force that drives all else before it. Bush is deeply, deeply clueless. It's embarrassing. But it's not terrifying, and its not exactly mean anymore. The mean, terrifying Bush would have given us Luttig, or Owen. Or Rogers Brown. That Bush is somewhere else right now. Maybe Katrina and Iraq and Bin Laden and Rove and the polls and House that Jack Built have sent him underground. Maybe we're really back to the compassionate conservative, changing-the-tone-in-Washington chimp, the one that stumbled out of the frathouse, past some unprofitable oilwells onto the stage at the RNC convention. They were right back then about his being "electable". Yeah, it's embarrassing. God is it ever embarrassing. But when it's not embarrassing, it's a whole lot worse.
* Just as a note, it's been really fantastic for the first time in my lifetime for my country of first citizenship to have the least embarrassing leader in North America. It sends the smugness levels through the roof.
First, what's with Harry Reid? Is he genuinely giddy over the nomination, did he genuinely lobby for it, or is this a world-class headfake -- he knew it was coming and wanted to discombobulate the right? Given how cautious senators always are, Reid's HELL YEAH, HARRIET!!! is both bizarre and kind of heartening.
Reid surely wouldn't want to be on record shilling for the next Scalia. And Pat Buchanan is upset. That's good too.
So since this is my blog, here is my take on all this. It's good. It's fraught with meaning. In the Bush era, there's two basic paradigms. You get embarrassing. Or you get terrifying. Miers is embarrassingly unqualified (Texas Lottery Commissioner???), but embarrassing is a small price to pay when the alternative is... Luttig, who is terrifying.
That is, Miers represents one side of Bush, and it's the relative good side -- the side that has Cheney rushing out on Limbaugh to calm the rubes, the bizarre, clueless, politically oblivious side, the self-absorbed but supremely un-self-aware, Loyalty Above All Else side. This was the side we saw mainly during the 2000 campaign and the early days before 911. Those were the relative good days, when the problems with Bush were mainly aesthetic. At the end of the 2000 campaign, The New Republic wrote:
If [Gore] loses on November 7, it will not simply set America on an ideological course that we consider perilous and unworthy of our best traditions. It will be a sign that we are not living in a serious age.
That was it. Bush was a really, deeply unserious guy and his election signaled a move away from what those TNR killjoys considered "our best traditions". It would be mildly embarrassing for Americans to talk to Canadians* or travel in Europe for the next four years. Bush would blunder around and waste the surplus on tax cuts for rich people, appoint people like Joe Allbaugh to run FEMA, make awful appointments to the lower courts. He'd mangle his syntax and take too many vacations. He wouldn't write his own speeches. His daughters would get drunk in public. He'd be the perfect harbinger, the perfect mascot, of a frivolous, petty mini-era, Reaganism without Peggy Noonan, without the communists, the struggle, the purpose. That is, without the frightening sense that such a clown could bring on nuclear holocaust if he got it in his empty head. It was an awful prospect for goo-goos but not a terrifying one because it wasn't a terrifying world.
Then came 911 and it changed everything. Bush stopped being embarrassing and starting being terrifying. Those long months with stratospheric approval ratings, and that awful certainty they all had. Not even the late night comics would make fun of Bush. It was an awful time. It had awful consequences.
And now... well, it didn't end with the bang of a Kerry victory, but it ended with the whimper of Michael Brown's FEMA, of Tom Delay getting shoved aside to make way for the next crooked zombie, of the big speech that couldn't turn the polls around. It's over. And Harriet Miers is living proof. There's nothing terrifying about Harriet Miers that I can see. She wears too much makeup. She doesn't photograph very well. She's sort of church ladyish. But the embarrassment of the sitution really is Bush's -- his self-indulgence, his insecurity -- not hers. I don't think anyone's arguing she's not bright. Her position and action on trying to convince the ABA to nullify its support of abortion rights was (I think) pretty defensible from a moderate conservative perspective, which is the best we can hope for. (That said, I'm guessing she'll vote to overturn Roe and that it's going to be up to Kennedy.)
And, via Ryan Lizza (again), Miers once wrote this:
How does a free society prevent a man from climbing to the top of a tower on a university campus and randomly killing whoever is in sight? How does a free society prevent a man from driving a truck into a cafeteria and executing patrons? How does a free society prevent a man from entering a courtroom and opening fire? We are loath to hear the answer to these questions as it comes from our lips, because the suggested solutions usually infringe on precious, constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
...Additionally, we are reminded that success in fighting crime in our nation is more than treating symptoms. We will be successful in solving our massive crime problems only when we attack the root causes. All of us, men and women, young and old, must pledge ourselves to address the ills that surround us in our communities.
That's defintitely not Scaliaesque. That's not even O'Connoresque. I can't say for sure that Miers is not a winger (how would I know?), but at the very least I don't see any reason to think she's a "stealth" winger. As far as I can tell, Bush isn't in stealth mode -- actually, I don't think he has a stealth mode. But at the very least, stealth takes self-awareness, some sense of mission, and I think the mission is over now. Most presidents would be embarrassed by the Abe Fortas references Miers is going to provoke. Most presidents' demand for loyalty would at least extend to someone who didn't once vote against their father (ok, it's a guess based on the DNC contribution). Bush couldn't care less about any of that. Contra Ezra, I don't think this is another indication of Bush's manevolence -- it's not another Rove situation. I don't think he's fucking with the base or with the neocons or the liberatarian lawyer brigade; he's just oblivious to them all. It's his weird, insular loyalty, his love of sychophants -- it's the force that drives all else before it. Bush is deeply, deeply clueless. It's embarrassing. But it's not terrifying, and its not exactly mean anymore. The mean, terrifying Bush would have given us Luttig, or Owen. Or Rogers Brown. That Bush is somewhere else right now. Maybe Katrina and Iraq and Bin Laden and Rove and the polls and House that Jack Built have sent him underground. Maybe we're really back to the compassionate conservative, changing-the-tone-in-Washington chimp, the one that stumbled out of the frathouse, past some unprofitable oilwells onto the stage at the RNC convention. They were right back then about his being "electable". Yeah, it's embarrassing. God is it ever embarrassing. But when it's not embarrassing, it's a whole lot worse.
* Just as a note, it's been really fantastic for the first time in my lifetime for my country of first citizenship to have the least embarrassing leader in North America. It sends the smugness levels through the roof.
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