Armchair Entertainment: Conservative Rage

It’s always been a challenge to not simply write Bush off as a moron, someone who graduated at the very bottom of his Village Idiot class. And I still think it’s a mistake to make that belittling assumption. We’re not living in “Being There,” and Bush is not Chance. But he has the knack of coming up with new brainstorms — the latest represented by Harriet Miers — that are sort of breathtaking for their pure defiance of opinion, of common sense, of the way the rest of the world might weigh reality. It’s not so much that he chose Miers, really; it’s that after choosing her, he could stand up and declare, “I picked the best person I could find.” He acts like he’s explaining why he chose Sam the plumber over Roto-Rooter to unstop the presidential plumbing.

Anyway, that’s all predictable liberal froth. What’s entertaining is to listen to conservatives voice their pique at the chief’s caprice (Bush’s insistence on war as the answer to the Saddam problem, and getting 2,000 Americans and 20-some thousand Iraqis blown to pieces over the last 30 months, hasn’t been quite enough to ignite their outrage). Here’s George Will in today’s Washington Post:

“The president’s ‘argument’ for [Miers] amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

“He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.

“Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’s nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers’s name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.”

Here’s the thing: Bush can choose whom he wants. He’s not compelled to pick from the 10,000 names on Will’s imaginary lists. In fact, it’s possible to imagine him winning praise for going outside the conventional wisdom to find an original thinker, and for acknowledging that that’s what he’s doing and explaining in detail why he’s doing it.

One of the memorable phrases at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence states that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires” the American colonies to “declare the causes which impel them to the separation” from Great Britain. That’s what’s lacking in Bush — ” a decent respect to the opinions” of those who must live with the effects of his decisions.

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3 Replies to “Armchair Entertainment: Conservative Rage”

  1. Living in Japan and witnessing another country’s politics first-hand has made me question myself quite often: What is worse a leader that makes stupid decisions that lead the world onto even more shakey ground but seems to believe what he is doing is good (Bush) or a leader that makes stupid decisions about things of no consequence that upset other countries in the region and focuses more on his hair than on fixing social security (Koizumi). I always choose Bush but I have to say it feels like a close call sometimes.

  2. As nearly as I can tell, Meirs’s only qualification is that she is a crony of Bush. Her constitutional experience and scholarship are nonexistent. Would that scholarship and brilliance were a requirement for president.
    K-

  3. This is a pretty good piece about the Republican/neo-con rage over the nomination of Miers. As for me, I think the President is at his best when he says she (Miers) is the “most qualified person” for the job. Echos of his father’s nomination of Clarence Thomas. His gifts for dissembling are breathtaking.
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9623557/

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