Better Off With Miers

When you know some of the things that I know -- that I probably shouldn't know -- you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice. (Okay, hat tip to Rev. James Dobson for that phrasing.)

Actually, I got the final word last night from Sen. Arnold Vinick, a Republican who would like to be president. He also happens to be pro-choice. He told me that Republicans will sometimes lie to the Religious Right in order to get elected, with no intention of doing the mullahs' bidding. In fact, he himself has lied to "the reverends," as he calls them. He told their leader (not James Dobson, incidentally) he would allow them to pick and/or approve judge appointments.

Seems like we've already reached that point in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free. That's what it looks like right now -- that a deal has been struck between "the reverends" and El Presidente. So much so that the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Specter, says he'll possibly subpoena Rev. Dobson, since the Rev. apparently knows more about Harriet Miers than any U.S. Senator. Dobson says he knows a secret that proves Miers will vote the "right way" on abortion rights.

Yesterday on "Meet the Press," Pat Buchanan told Russert, "Tim, on abortion, I am not sure the president the United States wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. His wife does not, his mother does not. He refuses to say whether he wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. There are a number of Republicans, moderate Republicans, who say, 'Well this would be a political disaster.' I'm not sure the president of the United States wants the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade."

I have a lot of respect for Pat Buchanan. I agree with him on precious little. But he's an honest man, sometimes an astute political analyst, and he absolutely does not spin. I believe he may be onto something.

All the scrambling by the White House after the Miers nomination to promote her as "born again" may be just another Arnold Vinick moment. And Pat Buchanan sees through it. (Rev. Dobson doesn't, but then his degree is in childhood development, not political science.)

If Ole Pat is correct, that makes all the wink-wink code speech coming out of Miers-supporting conservatives just an exercise in transparent equivocation. Rev. Richand Land, the big-faced Southern Baptist of iVoteValues fame, who was on "Meet the Press" yesterday with Buchanan as a supporter of Bush's trustworthiness, spoke a classic equivocator's line: "...he [Bush] knows that she [Miers] will vote the way he would want her to vote."

I had to laugh at that. It reminded me so much of the equivocation I've used in writing recommendations for C-minus students: "When you get to know ______ as I've gotten to know him, I'm sure you'll think of him as I do."

Presidential equivocation -- the making of statements that are deliberately ambiguous and misleading -- would help explain the supremely odd thing Bush said about Miers on camera last Tuesday at his news conference: "I know her well enough to be able to say that she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today .... I don't want to put somebody on the bench who is this way today, and changes. That's not what I'm interested in."

It was very strange of Bush to saddle Miers in that way (as Tony Mauro has written). But not so strange if he was merely equivocating: "I know she's not going to suddenly join a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court to end federal abortion rights and thereby plunge this country into another bloody awful 50-year struggle, set women back, which would end for the foreseeable future the dominance of the Republican Party."

'Course, if Pat Buchanan is wrong, and if El Presidente really wants to go against the most important women in his life and overturn Roe v. Wade, then we're no worse off than if he'd appointed Michael Luttig or Priscilla Owens in the first place. And that's become precisely my worry. If Harriet Miers is voted down, who comes next?

I'll go with Miers and the possibility that Arnold Vinick is right. Sometimes it's necessary -- and even salutary -- for presidents to lie. The fact that the reverends Dobson and Land don't think El Presidente is capable of lying is their particular problem.