Moving on

It’s hard to overstate how disappointing the nomination of Harriet Miers is, and I don’t think we have. But one of the many things that distinguishes conservative blogs from their left-wing counterparts is the recognition that our state of mind isn’t the story. Miers is the nominee, and it doesn’t matter much at this point whether we think she is a first rate selection.
The two most relevant issues now are (1) is she qualified and (2) is she conservative (and if so, in what sense). We don’t know the answer to either question, which confirms how bad Bush’s decision was. And given the way the process works, we probably won’t learn the answer to the second question until Miers already is on the Court.
One plus for Miers, I suspect, is that she’s not likely to “grow in office.” Having been through five years of combat with President Bush, I doubt that she cares much how the Washington Post or the liberal Washington social establishment views about her. Nor is she likely to be influenced by the liberal Justices, particularly the ones who voted against Bush in Bush v. Gore. Whatever kind of conservative Miers is now, if any, she’s likely to remain.
UPDATE: Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker presents a worthwhile but ultimately unpersuasive defense of the Miers nomination. Since I’m “moving on,” I’ll leave a discussion of the merits of this piece to others. I found it interesting, though, that Lifson takes Miers’ critics to task for elitism (largely a straw man, I think) even though a central theme of his piece is that Bush, as a result of his training at the Harvard Business School, has outsmarted the world with this nomination.

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