[Mb-civic] Bush's faith-based nominee - Cathy Young - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Bush's faith-based nominee

By Cathy Young  |  October 10, 2005

THE NOMINATION of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court 
ignited an unexpected controversy, mainly among Bush supporters. The 
debate has not focused on Miers's ideology, since no one seems to know 
much about it. But if Bush's choice for the high court seems lackluster, 
the political reaction to it has been far more interesting.

The outcry has focused in large part on Miers's qualifications, or lack 
thereof. She has never held a federal judgeship and has spent most of 
her career in the private sector (though one could argue that this may 
bring diversity to the court). Her few writings show little if any 
intellectual flair.

But the storm on the right has another subtext. Miers is suspected of 
being too moderate, in particular of not being a reliable vote to repeal 
Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion. Some social 
conservatives are complaining that Bush relies on their political 
support while doing little to pursue their agenda -- the perennial 
lamentation of the religious right in the Reagan years and under the 
first President Bush. Many observers believe the Bush administration, in 
fact, does not want an anti-Roe majority on the court, because striking 
down Roe would spell turmoil and political disaster for Republicans.

Meanwhile, the administration has tried to reassure the conservative 
base by stressing that Miers is an evangelical Christian. According to 
press reports, White House staffers even arranged for an old friend of 
Miers, Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan L. Hecht, to talk to some 
social conservative organizers about her faith and her conversion from 
Catholicism to born-again Christianity.

This is both unnerving and ironic. In recent years, conservatives have 
often accused Democrats of improperly making religion an issue in 
debating judicial nominations and have argued that questioning a 
nominee's faith-based views on policy issues such as abortion is not 
only ''religious bigotry" but a violation of the constitutional ban on 
religious tests for public office. Yet now, as George Mason University 
law professor David Bernstein puts it on the Volokh Conspiracy website, 
''The president sends his minions to drum up support based on her 
personal religious philosophy." If Republicans can use Miers's personal 
faith as a signal to conservative voters that she can be trusted to rule 
the ''right way" on social issues, why can't those who don't agree with 
that agenda be suspicious for the same reason?

Based on what we currently know, Miers (like John Roberts) seems more of 
a pragmatist than someone who would legislate her personal morality from 
the bench. But still, the double standard is blatant.

Besides faith, the other obvious issue is gender. Even many 
conservatives who have been sharply critical of Bush's pick have 
stressed that there are many better-qualified women. After selecting 
Roberts to fill the vacancy left by Sandra Day O'Connor, Bush was under 
intense pressure to nominate another woman to replace the late William 
Rehnquist.

Curiously, the nastiest gender-based swipe at Miers so far has come from 
a liberal feminist, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Dowd calls 
the women on the Bush team ''self-sacrificing, buttoned-up nannies 
serving as adoring work wives, catering to W's every political, legal, 
and ego-affirming need." So Bush's male friends are just cronies, but 
his female friends are described in blatantly sexist terms. Just imagine 
the reaction if a conservative male journalist wrote something like that 
about the women in a Democratic administration.

Such ''liberal" sexism aside, one can argue that the Miers pick 
illustrates the worst of affirmative action: identity over 
qualifications. But does that apply here? There were definitely other, 
well-qualified conservative women to choose from. The deciding factor in 
Miers's favor was personal loyalty, otherwise known as cronyism -- just 
as it would have been with Bush's other frequently mentioned possible 
choice, Alberto Gonzales.

Undistinguished men have been appointed to the Supreme Court before; 
maybe it's a sign that women have arrived when a mediocre woman has as 
much of a chance of advancement as a mediocre man. Of course, that 
doesn't seem like a good reason for Miers to be confirmed. A better 
reason, perhaps, is that some of the conservatives who are savaging her 
nomination openly admit that they want a culture war over the Supreme 
Court vacancy. But, polarized as the country already is, the last thing 
we need is one more war -- even a culture war.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/10/bushs_faith_based_nominee/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051010/db3ef656/attachment.htm