Bush defends the single most discreditable act of his presidency

In an interview with the editors and writers of National Review, President Bush says that Harriet Miers was a good pick for the Supreme Court, and that he regrets that he had to withdraw her nomination because of opposition from conservatives. (See Bush remark below.) If Bush still stands by his view that the flagrantly unqualified, flagrantly liberal Miers was an excellent choice, then we must also suppose that his wife still stands by her statement that conservative opposition to Miers’s nomination was driven by hostility to women.

Although I withheld my vote from Bush in 2000 (as well as in 2004), I did not think he would turn out as badly as he did. I thought that he had good character and good judgment. As shown by the Miers nomination, the most disgraceful act of commission of his presidency, I was wrong. The most disgraceful act of omission of his presidency was his failure to give the country an accounting of the absence of WMDs in Iraq.

Here are VFR articles referencing Miers. In particular, see “Miers’s worse than mediocre writing ability,” and follow the link to further writing samples of Miers provided at The Volokh Conspiracy.

From Bush interview with NR:

Asked whether he believes Harriet Miers “would have been excellent on the court,” the president quickly responded, “Absolutely. Absolutely, no question in my mind … and there’s no doubt in my mind that my dear friend, Harriet Miers, would have had the same judicial philosophy 20 years after I went home, and had the intellectual firepower to do the job.” Bush said he felt it was important to pick a judicial candidate who was “not part of the judicial-nominee club—she went to SMU Law School” and who was a pioneer in her own law firm. His regret about the Miers case, he told us, was that “this really, really good person got chucked out there and, man, the lions tore her up.”

Those voracious lions Bush is referring to happen to be his conservative base to whom he had pledged that he would nominate judges of the mettle of Thomas and Scalia.

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Terry Morris writes:

His regret about the Miers case, he told us, was that “this really, really good person got chucked out there and, man, the lions tore her up.”

Yeah, just like the lions tore up the Senate Amnesty bill, a.k.a, “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” You know, that really, really good and noble immigration initiative got chucked out there, and we good little whelps were just supposed to ignore it and allow it to pass with not the slightest bit of resistance.

Jed W. writes:

It’s a pretty safe bet that Mrs. Bush stands by her brilliant analysis of the Miers rejection by conservatives. She is an incredibly shallow, uncurious, PC-constrained woman who did her best to restrain her husband’s better instincts at the outset of the war. She famously chided him for his appropriate bellicose threats to the Muslim fanatics (a.k.a. “terrorists”) and had him rein in his rhetoric. He said he regretted saying, “Dead or alive.” That’s what he regrets?

Anyway, a very telling example of Mrs. Bush’s folly is her foray into Muslim “women’s issues.” She went to Muslim countries where women can be legally beaten by their husbands, can’t vote, drive, go to school, divorce their husbands, inherit property etc., and rather than pointing out their total lack of civil rights, she brings them mammograms. That’s cutting to core of women’s issues in Islam.

I’m by no means defending Bush himself. For my money, he will go down in history as our worst president. And I voted for him and campaigned for him twice. His legacy includes:

1. On 9/12/01, he told us (and continued to tell us) that Islam “means peace.”

2. In response to the fact that the hijackers were all illegal aliens, he refused to protect the country and control our borders.

3. He waged a PC war against a made up enemy—“The terrorists.”

4. He bogged us down in a nutty nation-building exercise in Iraq that will ultimately set up a sharia-based government under the influence of Iran.

5. He legitimized the Palestinian terrorists and brought us the concept of giving them a state from which they will export terror.

6. He empowered a Mediocre woman (who despised Israel) as Sec. Of State who responded to the Jihad by demonizing and isolating our only democratic ally in the Middle East

7. He allowed Iran to develop nuclear weapons unopposed.

8. He appeased North Korea giving them oil for empty, unfulfilled promises to stop making nukes.

9. He brought us the financial break down through his spirited support of the CRA to close the “home owner gap.”

10. He brought us massive deficits by signing every pork laden budget that landed on his desk

11. His last act was to panic in the face of the economic crisis and socialize our economy.

12. He blew Republican majorities in both houses of Congress

13. He allowed Sandy Berger to get away with stealing and destroying documents from the National Archive, yet put Ramos and Compeon in prison for ten years for defending our borders.

14. And (not his entirely his fault but irritating), his idiot father rehabilitated the reprehensible Bill Clinton.

I would give a lot to know what drove him all but to destroy the Republican party, bankrupt the country, waste good men’s lives in PC-constrained combat situations where they fear future legal actions more than the enemies they confront, and all the rest of it.

What a disaster this guy was. And now we’ve got Obama.

LA writes:

I’ve often fantasized someone asking her: “Mrs. Bush, do you still believe that conservatives opposed Miers because they are anti-woman”? I wonder if ANYONE has ever asked her that.

What wimps conservatives are.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

His regret about the Miers case, he told us, was that “this really, really good person got chucked out there and, man, the lions tore her up.”

Man, oh man, does that quote stand out. Poor Harriet! The horror!

He sounds as if Miers was the victim of a vicious, Clarence-Thomas-style personal assassination campaign. This “good person” was apparently so good a person that merely noticing her lack of any real qualifications was simply beyond the pale. This illustrates the intensely personalized, monarchical style of governance for which Bush has become infamous. And it will be important to remind the Bushites of this when we start seeing the exact same thing from Obama (as we surely will when the SCOTUS nomination circus gets ramped up again).

His use of the words “chucked out there” to describe advancing a key nomination—for what is arguably the most powerful post in our present political constellation—also reveals the insouciant recklessness of his whole approach to political decision-making. Decider-in-Chief indeed. This lax, let-them-eat-cake hauteur reveals something twisted and disproportionate in the man, and I’ll be glad when we’re finally, at long last, done with it, whatever it is.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 26, 2008 09:12 AM | Send