The Politics of Laura

David Frum makes a very important point, beyond the "sexism" charge:

In the first week of the battle, the White House sent out James Dobson to woo evangelical conservatives. That didn't work out too well. So now the White House has switched strategies. It has turned its back on conservative evangelicals and is instead using Laura Bush to woo suburban moderates. But remember: Laura Bush is on record as a supporter - not just of abortion rights - but of the Roe v. Wade decision. Interviewed on the Today program in January 2001, Mrs. Bush was asked point blank about the case. Her answer: "No, I don't think it should be overturned." Is it credible that Mrs. Bush would be endorsing Harriet Miers if the first lady thought that Miers would really do what James Dobson thinks she'll do?

A Call for Reasoned Debate

Proposed: Born To Run is the greatest rock song of all time.

Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your dreams and visions
Just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims
and strap your hands across my engines . . .

Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard
The girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors
And the boys try to look so hard
The amusement park rises bold and stark
Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist
I wanna die with you Wendy on the streets tonight
In an everlasting kiss

The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybody's out on the run tonight
but there's no place left to hide
Together Wendy we'll live with the sadness
I'll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl I don't know when
we're gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go
and we'll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
baby we were born to run

It is epic, lovelorn poetry. Discuss.

God Loves a Cowgirl

Let it not be said that I don't face reality. From Galley Friend L.B.:

Let me stipulate that 1) I didn't see the game - have only read recaps and looked at stats; 2) Philly is still a better team than Dallas at this point and certainly has a better shot at winning it all this year; 3) McNabb is hurting, and every team has a bad/listless day occasionally...

Now, having said all that: this is the kind of win that says a franchise is on its way back to the top (though it may still take a while to get there). I think about the way Philly's offense has been putting up points lately and then I look at the stats from yesterday: *19* yards rushing for the Eagles? McNabb sacked 4 times? Only 5 catches for T.O. and no touchdowns?

And then on the other side of the ball: Drew Bledsoe is barely touched, and embarrasses the vaunted Eagles secondary? Our free-agent rookie running back (who, I'll grant, was a steal -- he's a real burner) racks up 75 yards rushing after Julius Jones tweaks his ankle? The Cowboys pick up 28 (!!) first downs to the Eagles' paltry 6, and dominate time of possession 40 minutes to 20?

That, my friend, was just an old-fashioned whippin', of the likes the Eagles have handed to the Cowboys all too often in recent years. Now I'm sure the Eagles will repay the favor back in Philly in a few weeks, but at least the Cowboys will be coming off their bye week going into that one. . . . If I were you, besides McNabb's health I'd be most worried about the Eagles' apparent lack of a running game. Westbrook is fantastic but he's not the type of RB who can put a team on his shoulders, grind out first downs and burn clock on long drives to take pressure off of McNabb.

Strong stuff, but I can take it. I know that the Birds will rebound and finish 12-4 before losing McNabb in the final game of the season and blowing it in the NFC championship game. Again.

Bonus insider note: I'm happy to take my licks from L.B. and Jenny, but if anyone else throws in a cheap shot, well, I won't ban you from comments, but I'll be very hurt. I haven't felt this delicate since the final days of Richie the K.

The WorldwideStandard

If I haven't mentioned it already, please do go and bookmark WorldwideStandard.com, the new foreign-policy blog being run by Dan McKivergan.

It's fantastic stuff.

It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and a warm breeze was blowing down the Strip. I spent part of that day, however, hunkered down at the Aladdin Sports Book, watching the Redskins/Broncos game. Next to me and my wife sat a woman who was smoking up a storm, drinking beer, and watching the game while simultaneously playing video poker. Now that's what I call living.

With all the other games going on and fans yelling at Keyshawn Johnson who was yelling at Drew Bledsoe, it was hard to notice the security guard who came up to a man at the bar and told him to leave. Even though he wasn't bothering anyone, the old man was clearly getting blitzed and was just sitting there in a daze. Luckily he left before they called in Mr. Happy and a cattle prod.

I picked the Skins who lost (19-21) but beat the spread (Denver by 7).

Firefly in 30 Minutes

I got a sad reminder of the paucity of anecdotal evidence on Saturday night when I went to see Serenity at the local movie palace. The show was sold out--not a single seat was empty. After being disappointed by the movie's opening weekend, I had a glimmer of hope, thinking that maybe this meant that Serenity had found its audience and would have long legs.

No such luck. Serenity declined by 46 percent, which is a little worse than average for a film with its release pattern. Deaniacs take note.

Not that any of this will stop my Whedon evangelism. If you're thinking about seeing Serenity, but haven't watched the Firefly DVDs yet, Galley Friend M.R. sends along this link to an "essential Firefly" reel. Enjoy.

Suck-Up Watch

Serial flattery is never a one-time offense; suck-ups have an incredibly high rate of recidivism. So after seeing Harriet Miers's gushing about George W. Bush's brilliance, today's New York Times story comes as no surprise. But still: Whoa. Highlights:

* "You are the best governor ever - deserving of great respect," Harriet E. Miers wrote to George W. Bush days after his 51st birthday in July 1997.

* A few days later, Ms. Miers wrote to thank the Bushes, saying, "Texas has a very popular governor and first lady!" She recalled a little girl who collected Mr. Bush's autograph and said, "I was struck by the tremendous impact you have on the children whose lives you touch."

* On March 25, on the letterhead of her Dallas law firm, Locke Purnell Rain Harrell, Ms. Miers wrote to thank him "for taking the time to visit in the office and on the plane back - cool!"

"Keep up all the great work," she wrote. "The state is in great hands. Thanks also for yours and your family's personal sacrifice."

* In October 1997, Ms. Miers sent Mr. Bush a flowery greeting card in thanks for a letter that he had written on her behalf. In it, she said of his daughters: "Hopefully Jenna and Barbara recognize that their parents are 'cool' - as do the rest of us."

She added, "All I hear is how great you and Laura are doing," and ended, "Texas is blessed."

You can pick your own favorite, but personally I can't decide if I'm more horrified by Miers invoking "the children" whose lives Bush has touched (Hey, I hear they're our future!) or her putting quotes around the word "cool."

Laura to Conservatives: You Sexist Pigs!

From the Today Show this morning:

Matt Lauer: Some are suggesting there’s a little possible sexism in the [conservative] criticism of Judge Miers. How do you feel about that?

MRS. BUSH: That’s possible. I think that’s possible.

On Souls and Knowing

Just a thought from a Mike Kelly column in July of 2001. It's a reminder that this isn't the first time we've seen the "trust me" attitude from President Bush. And it isn't the first time he's been very wrong, either:

"I looked the man in the eye; I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul. . . . He's an honest, straightforward man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values."
-- George W. Bush, June 16, 2001, on Russian President Vladimir Putin

"Mr. Putin was far from deserving the powerful political prestige and influence that comes from an excessively personal endorsement by the president of the United States."
-- Sen. Jesse M. Helms, June 20, 2001

To understand what put Sen. Helms in such a tizzy that he felt compelled to publicly spank a president of his own party, you have to first consider the matter of Sammy Sosa.

In 1989, Sammy Sosa played for the Texas Rangers, a baseball team partially owned by one George W. Bush. Bush, who had only recently been made the Rangers' chief executive and who had much to learn, took a sense of Sosa's soul and traded him to the Chicago White Sox. Considering that nine years later with the Chicago Cubs, Sosa was in a chase for the home run record, this was a mistake.

To further grasp the implications of Bush's judgment of Putin, and of Helms's unhappiness over that judgment, you have to consider that baseball was something with which Bush had some experience. He came from a baseball family -- his father played for Yale; his great-uncle George Herbert Walker once owned 6 percent of the New York Mets -- and he had played the game himself in Little League and on a varsity level at prep school. He was a lifelong avid fan, and he would turn out to be a natural at running a ball team.

As the Putin example shows, Bush puts great stock in his gut instinct -- his ability to look into other people's eyes (he is forever talking about this) and getting a sense of their souls. As the Sosa example shows, he is quite capable of getting the sense completely wrong -- even where he is knowledgeable.

Now you come to the presidency, Russia and Putin. Here, inarguably, Bush knows very little. He cannot know a lot (at least firsthand) about being president, because he has not been president for very long. He cannot know a lot about Russia, because he has never been there. He cannot know a lot about Putin, because he had never met him before this month's trip.

So what you have here is a situation in which a prudent man would begin by knowing his limitations -- by admitting ignorance, proceeding with study and basing eventual judgments on facts, not first impressions. . . .

. . . what is worrisome is that Bush -- and in this he seems dangerously to resemble the foreign-policy-disaster-prone John F. Kennedy -- does not seem to understand, or care about, the limits of gut. He does not seem to want to bother with the tedious business of study and fact-assessment that is the process by which right decisions are most often arrived at -- which is even then not so often. He does not seem to want to work at the thing.

The idea that he does not know what he does not know does not seem to ever occur to Bush. This is a problem and one that is a great deal more consequential in the case of Putin than in the case of Sosa.

First, Let Us Save All the Lawyers

Maybe I should just turn Galley Slaves over to Patterico for the coming week. More good stuff from him here where he finds a January 1993 Texas Bar Journal article by Miers, who wrote:

In his October [1992] Opinion in this Journal my colleague, TYLA President Steve Martin, artfully assailed the Republican administration for seizing “the perceived low public regard for lawyers to fashion a campaign strategy based on the disparagement of lawyers.” Lawyers, in large number, want the State Bar and other organizations to “fight back.”

Patterico says the rest of the article "is devoted to explaining how the State Bar can help find an 'antidote' for 'lawyer bashing'.”

Why SMU Matters (a little), Part 2

Patterico has more good stuff, including Dan Coats defending Miers:

“If great intellectual powerhouse is a qualification to be a member of the court and represent the American people and the wishes of the American people and to interpret the Constitution, then I think we have a court so skewed on the intellectual side that we may not be getting representation of America as a whole,” Mr. Coats said in a CNN interview.

PoliticalSherpa.com

A big welcome to Gary Andres, a wise old Washington hand (oh, he's not that old), who just launched a blog, PoliticalSherpa.com.

My Life, My Card

Level 3 is the devil.

The Virtual Reserve Room

The Wolverine Law Library has put up the complete archive of Miers's writings. To which John Lindgren says:

I have read about a half dozen of Miers' pieces so far--nothing particularly good or bad about any of them. They are pretty standard practitioner fare, apparently fully competent, but seemingly no better or worse than a thousand lawyers at good firms in Chicago would do. There is none of the flair that showed in many of Roberts' memos in the Reagan Administration. I've read nothing intellectually substantial by Miers so far, but then I've just started working through the list. If she has any sharp analytical skills, they are not apparent in the pieces I've read. Given Miers' genuine success in practice, I suspect that she is a better advisor and negotiator than writer.

Which prompts this reply from Patterico:

That’s okay. I have little doubt that the Miers defenders will soon tell us that it’s not important for a Supreme Court Justice to be a good writer. They have law clerks to draft their opinions, after all; the important thing is the vote, not the writing; do you want someone who’s good at grammar or someone who’s good for the country; stop being an elitist. Etc.

Yea or Nay?

Paul Mirengoff gives what I consider to be the most persuasive argument for voting for Miers:

My view (subject to possible revision as the process continues) is that the Senate should confirm Miers. Under all past standards, she is qualified for the position, and the suspicion that she may not be a true conservative does not constitute sufficient reason to oppose the nomination.

It may well be that, from a senator's perspective, this is the final and decisive question. That's why in an ideal world, the president would withdraw the nomination.

No chance of that, of course.

Can't You Be a Stripper AND Chief Justice?

I know, it's thin. But this anecdote is pretty excellent. Asked her favorite Justice, Harriet Miers responded "Warren." Asked to clarify--did she mean Earl Warren or Warren Burger (who can keep them straight!)--she said she meant Warren Burger. Here then is Jim Lindgren:

I find this story disturbing on many levels. Perhaps Miers couldn't think of anyone appropriate off the top of her head and thought that Leahy would like it if she said Earl Warren, but then caught herself when she realized that (rightly or wrongly) he was the poster boy for judicial activism. It would be odd to refer to Chief Justice Burger simply as "Warren." So perhaps the question was too difficult for her to answer without stumbling (of course, we all stumble in answering questions some time).

A second possibility is that she really does admire Earl Warren the most, but was unwilling to admit it to Leahy. That would seem a reasonable choice for a Democratic nominee, but not for a Republican. Further, to try to hide her choice from Leahy would show both cravenness and a lack of candor.

The third possibility is that she genuinely admires Chief Justice Warren Burger more than any other Justice that she could think of. If so, one wonders about the quality of Miers' judgment or whether she has read enough Supreme Court cases to form a reasonable opinion.

Burger was reputed to have done a good job running the federal court system, but is usually viewed as an indifferent or poor justice. I have never met anyone (conservative or liberal) who said that they really admired him, but I expect that many of his former clerks do.

Miers Wins the Expectations Game

Not that she needs to; I'll be shocked if she isn't confirmed. But Charles Krauthammer makes some good points:

To serve in Congress, or even as president, there is no requirement for scholarship and brilliance. For good reason. It is not needed. It can even be a hindrance, as we learned from our experience with Woodrow Wilson, the most intellectually accomplished president of the 20th century and also the worst.

But constitutional jurisprudence is different. It is, by definition, an exercise of intellect steeped in scholarship. Otherwise it is nothing but raw politics. And is it not the conservative complaint that liberals have abused the courts by having them exercise raw super-legislative power, the most egregious example of which is the court's most intellectually bankrupt ruling, Roe v. Wade ?

Miers will surely shine in her Judiciary Committee hearings, but that is because expectations have been set so low. If she can give a fairly good facsimile of John Roberts's testimony, she'll be considered a surprisingly good witness. But what does she bring to the bench?

Monorail!

This James Thayer piece on Seattle's failed monorail project (they already have one monorail, some song and dance guy convinced them they needed another) just tickles me.

Bill Simmons, Diety

Bryan Curtis has a great profile of Bill Simmons up at Slate.

Personally, I've always thought of Simmons as the Matt Labash of sports writing.

It's like before plastic surgery and after. Get rid of those wrinkles!