As usual, Peggy Noonan writes a great essay, this time on the Miers nomination and asks a very interesting question:
The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They’re in uproar over Ms. Meirs, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.
An interesting question indeed. Noonan comes up with some possible answers:
Here are some maybes. Maybe the president has simply concluded he has no more elections to face and no longer needs his own troops to wage the ground war and contribute money. Maybe with no more elections to face he’s indulging a desire to show them who’s boss. Maybe he has concluded he has a deep and unwavering strain of support within the party that, come what may, will stick with him no matter what. Maybe he isn’t all that conservative a fellow, or at least all that conservative in the old, usual ways, and has been waiting for someone to notice. Maybe he has decided the era of hoping for small government is over. Maybe he is a big-government Republican who has a shrewder and more deeply informed sense of the right than his father did, but who ultimately sees the right not as a thing he is of but a thing he must appease, defy, please or manipulate. Maybe after five years he is fully revealing himself. Maybe he is unveiling a new path that he has not fully articulated–he’ll call the shots from his gut and leave the commentary to the eggheads. Maybe he’s totally blowing it with his base, and in so doing endangering the present meaning and future prospects of his party.
Personally, I think the last maybe is the most likely explanation. Face it, prior to 9/11, the story of the 7 month old Bush Administration was a story of mis-steps and bungling. They lost control of the Senate and spent an entire summer trying to come up with a policy on stem-cell research that ended up pleasing nobody. Heck, even his Vice-Presidential pick, reaffirmed in 2004, showed little concern for the future of the party. Is the Miers nomination really surprising in this context ?
Noonan goes on to make some excellent points about Miers and the fact that we really don’t know anything about her, which seems to be the rule for Supreme Court nominees and closes with what I think is an excellent suggestion:
I find myself lately not passionately supporting or opposing any particular nominee. But I’d give a great deal to see Supreme Court justices term-limited. They should be picked not for life but for a specific term of specific length, and then be released back into the community. This would involve amending the Constitution. Why not? We’d amend it to ban flag-burning, even though a fool burning a flag can’t possibly harm our country. But a Kelo decision and a court unrebuked for it can really tear the fabric of a nation.
I’ve said before that Supreme Court terms should be limited. Hopefully, people will start thinking seriously about this idea.
Read the whole thing.
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