Director Mitch offers a metaphorical scenario that rephrases the "trust Bush" argument.
You have an important job opening that you need to fill. Failure of this person in this position has HUGE ramifications. The stakes are high. Which way would you go for your selection:1. Someone who has a personal recommendation from someone you highly trust, but who has a resume that you consider run-of-the-mill.
2. Someone with a stellar resume, but otherwise know absolutely nothing about.
Think about this and pick one, and only one, for your important job opening. There is no "right" answer.
The problem is, I don't "highly" trust President Bush. How can I, when the process appears to be so corrupt? It's just coincidence that the most qualified nominee was the woman who was supposed to be running the search committee? What's more, as for the trusting the President: spending is out of control; he signed Campaign Finance Reform, which shows he doesn't care much about the Constitution; he's a no-show on illegal immigration; etc. He doesn't appear to care a great deal about the issues that are important to me, and absent any other information there's no reason to expect Miers to either.
Furthermore, this isn't a typical job interview where you receive applications and sort though them on a limited budget. Bush has his pick of every lawyer in the country, and a staff of hundreds and a budget of millions to help him find the best person. He must have gotten really lucky to hook up with Harriet Miers 30 years ago, thereby pre-positioning the best nominee directly under his own nose! For some reason, though, Miers wasn't so qualified that she got nominated to an appellate judgeship over the course of the past five years.
I'm suspicious of a process that just happens to result in the nomination of the person who's supposed to be making the recommendation. It happened with Dick Cheney, but he was a known quantity and everyone agreed that, whether you liked his politics or not, he was highly qualified to be Vice President. Further, he wasn't a long-time employee of Bush whose career had depended on Bush for decades. That Harriet Miers even allowed herself to be nominated, given her position, speaks volumes about her character. Does she really think she's the best choice, or was she simply too flattered to say no? I can understand that. I'd love to be nominated too!
I like Ann Coulter's take. I'm no elitist, but Bush should recognize that he's the tip of an enormous pyramid, and thousands of people have labored for years to make his presidency possible.
First, Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years. Among the coalitions that elected Bush are people who have been laboring in the trenches for a quarter-century to change the legal order in America. While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right.To casually spurn the people who have been taking slings and arrows all these years and instead reward the former commissioner of the Texas Lottery with a Supreme Court appointment is like pinning a medal of honor on some flunky paper-pusher with a desk job at the Pentagon — or on John Kerry — while ignoring your infantrymen doing the fighting and dying.
I think being president for too long scrambles one's brain. Power corrupts, and President Bush appears to have forgotten that just because everyone around him bows and scrapes it takes more than one man to govern a nation.
I agree with Professor Bainbridge who says this is a battle conservatives can afford to fight. (HT: Randy Barnett.)
Nor is the main risk the very reasl prospect that letting Miers sail through without conservative opposition will let Bush and the party leaders feel confident they can continue shafting the base, which would eventually backfire if angry activists sit out the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. The risk is that we'll never again have as good a chance as we do right now to fight and win the battle to, as Henninger put it, "confirm someone who had participated in this conservative legal reconstruction and who would describe its tenets in a confirmation hearing," so that that "vote would stand as an institutional validation of those ideas. This would become a conservatism worth aspiring to." Indeed.This is a fight we can afford. It's the right fight. Those of us who oppose Miers need to keep on fighting.
Don't answer the question as a supreme court nomination, answer the question as asked for a business position: if you were a CEO, would you pick someone you know or a complete stranger to run one of your divisions?
If you would pick a complete stranger, good for you. But the fact of the matter is that most CEO's don't do this. At the company I work with 4 out of the 5 VPs all worked with the CEO previously in other companies. The new board members he brought on he has known from before. This isn't unique, it is how the World operates. And this is because that when the price for failure is high, executives go to people they trust rather than someone with just credentials.
You'll find this more and more as you get further along in your career, which is why the number one rule of advancing it is "network, network, network".
Coming back to the Surpremes, your premise is that some candidates you don't know with "better resumes" are better than a candidate you don't know without a "good resume" (by your definition). From your position - you don't know any of them - your decision makes sense.
From my persepective, Bush has more information than you, so at this time trusting his decision makes more sense to me than trusting yours. Hopefully I will gain more insight at the hearings to decide whether this is justified or not.
DM: As for business in general, it's good to be reminded to network :)
Maybe this is Bush's business school training revealing itself? Anyway, the government isn't a business, and maybe this is one example of a situation in which it should differ. He isn't picking an employee.
Further, Bush's greater information only matters if you trust him to make a good decision based on the information. I'm not sure I do. To that extent, it doesn't matter how much more he knows than I do.
Maybe we, the conservatives who have waited for this moment, need to be clear on what we are hoping for from the decision. Is it all about Roe. If yes, and this is worth fighting for, have her state her position as clearly as she can without stepping over the line per the Ginsberg rule.
If we are just interested in the general proposition of judicial "strict constructionism" then let the hearings begin.
If we have other specific go/no go areas, lets at least know what they are an how important they are. Right now the fight, even in your post, seems far to ephemeral.
Neither is Miers. By the time she and Bush crossed paths, she'd already had a very distinguished career as a laywer. They only met in the first place because she had excelled at what she did, and if they never had met, she wouldn't have the same career she has now, but she certainly would have an equally successful one, and a far more lucrative one, to boot.