[Mb-civic] The FOG factor - Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

The FOG factor

By Ellen Goodman  |  October 7, 2005

I ONCE had a neighbor in Maine who operated a divining rod with a fine 
hand. If you were looking for water, he was the go-to guy with a better 
track record than the well-digger.

Where is Martin when you need him? Every since the president picked his 
own counsel for the Supreme Court, people have been trying to divine 
where Harriet Miers stands.

The one thing we know for sure is that the Texan is a certified FOG, 
Friend of George. In this case, the acronym is all too apt.

In the last days, she's been described as the president's ''work wife," 
''pit bull," ''fixer," and ''a capable indentured servant of the Bush 
family." The word that has now attached itself to her hem is ''crony." 
As one Republican strategist griped to Slate, the choice was ''crony or 
wing nut? Crony or wing nut? OK, this time we'll go with the crony."

It's progress of a sort when a woman can be called a ''crony." It's 
better than being called a crone. But I am reminded of what Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg said last week when asked whether she wanted another woman on 
the bench. Yes, she said, but ''any woman will not do. . . . Some women 
who might be appointed who would not advance human rights or women's 
rights."

My own internal divining rod is twitching all over the terrain.

Twitch left: When the president introduced the woman who parks her red 
Mercedes in the White House lot, he listed the string of ''firsts" 
behind her name: first female hired and first to head her big time 
Dallas law firm, first female to head the Dallas and Texas bar 
associations. She has some shards from the glass ceiling in her 
briefcase. Not a bad souvenir to take to the court.

Twitch right: The day after her announcement, her longtime companion, 
Texas Supreme Court Judge Nathan Hecht, sought to assure conservatives. 
Miers belongs and tithes to an antiabortion evangelical church and is 
honestly, truly prolife. When the conservatives ''find out what this 
president knows about Harriet," he said, ''they are going to be happy as 
clams." Uh-oh.

Since there is no paper trail, the divining rod is drawn back and forth. 
On the one hand, Rush Limbaugh is finding it ''hard to resist the pull 
to be depressed over this." So why not feel elated? The folks at 
Operation Rescue are foaming at the mouth. So the prochoice folks should 
be breathing a sigh of relief. Conservatives like William Kristol find 
this choice ''demoralizing," and liberal demonizers like Richard 
Viguerie are ranting that the president ''blinked." The demonized should 
be smiling.

On the other twitching hand, why did Jay Sekulow, the honcho of the 
archconservative American Center for Law and Justice, call her ascension 
a ''big opportunity"? What does James Dobson, the head of Focus on the 
Family, know that we don't know: ''I have reason to believe she is prolife."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/07/the_fog_factor/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051007/f74a327d/attachment.htm