Houston, We Have a Problem

I disagree with the New York Times's David Brooks about nearly everything, but today his column was one hundred per cent on target. His evaluation of Harriet Miers should spell the death of this imposter's unbelievable pretension that she is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, but it probably won't.

Miers is, to put it as simply as possible, the most blatantly unqualified candidate for the Supreme Court ever. Lots of mediocre judges, such as Melvin Fuller, have held seats on the highest bench, but Miers doesn't even achieve mediocrity.

Not even close.

Brooks says, "Of all the words written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself.

"In the early 90's, while she was president of the Texas bar association, Miers wrote a column called 'President's Opinion' for The Texas Bar Journal. It is the largest body of public writing we have from her, and sad to say, the quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian.

Of course, we have to make allowances for the fact that the first job of any association president is to not offend her members. Still, nothing excuses sentences like this:

More and more, the intractable problems in our society have one answer: broad--based intolerance of unacceptable conditions and a commitment by many to fix problems.

"Or this: When consensus of diverse leadership can be achieved on issues of importance, the greatest impact can be achieved.

"Or passages like this: An organization must also implement programs to fulfill strategies established through its goals and mission. Methods for evaluation of these strategies are a necessity. With the framework of mission, goals, strategies, programs, and methods for evaluation in place, a meaningful budgeting process can begin.

"Or, finally, this: We have to understand and appreciate that achieving justice for all is in jeopardy before a call to arms to assist in obtaining support for the justice system will be effective. Achieving the necessary understanding and appreciation of why the challenge is so important, we can then turn to the task of providing the much needed support.

"I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers's prose," Brooks observes. "Nearly every idea is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided. It's not that Miers didn't attempt to tackle interesting subjects. She wrote about unequal access to the justice system, about the underrepresentation of minorities in the law and about whether pro bono work should be mandatory. But she presents no arguments or ideas, except the repetition of the bromide that bad things can be eliminated if people of good will come together to eliminate bad things. Or as she puts it, 'There is always a necessity to tend to a myriad of responsibilities on a number of cases as well as matters not directly related to the practice of law.' And that, 'Disciplining ourselves to provide the opportunity for thought and analysis has to rise again to a high priority.'

"Throw aside ideology. Surely the threshold skill required of a Supreme Court justice is the ability to write clearly and argue incisively. Miers's columns provide no evidence of that," the Times columnist concludes with what can only be described as understatement.

But let's not understate the case. Harriet Miers is, to put it bluntly, a dummy, as evidenced by her gushy adulation of Bush. She's nothing more than a hard working bureaucrat who can't think, except in cliches, and can't write, except with abstract nouns and passive verbs, which isn't really writing at all, since these kinds of empty squiggles on paper are the stuff of empty sentences which convey no ideas.

Furthermore, the Miers nomination proves that everything anybody ever said about Bush is true. He's a moron; he's incompetent; he has no understanding of the processes or purposes, much less the history and traditions, of American government. I had students in my high school civics classes who understand American government and the Constitution much better than George ever will, but of course, these are subjects that hold no interest for him.

Now that Karl and Dick are no longer around to run things, he's in charge, and it shows. This court nomination is the administration's biggest strategic blunder since the launching of the Iraq War, and that was, as Teddy Kennedy correctly called it, the worst blunder in the history of U.S. foreign relations.