Dalia Lithwick Sheds Light on Motivations for Miers Nomination

Sometimes I manage to convince myself that even though President Bush is the worst president we’ve ever had, he’s not going to be able to destroy this country. Then I read something like this article by Dalia Lithwick.

Lithwick’s analysis of the situation is that while Roberts and Miers look very different on the surface, they both reflect a troubling trend in President Bush’s policies regarding the judiciary.

Says Lithwick:

The president has long claimed that Congress and the courts were usurping his powers. The hallmark of his presidency has been efforts to reclaim those powers, be it through Patriot Act provisions that curtail judicial oversight, his invention of new courts to deliver justice-lite to Guantánamo detainees or threats to veto legislation that would prohibit torture.

Consider this: Chief Justice Roberts’s judicial philosophy - to the extent he admits to one - is of “modesty.” Throughout his public life, an overwhelming jurisprudential concern has been the constraint of judicial power. He made it clear at his hearings and in rulings from the federal bench that the court exists not to act - not even to react - but chiefly to interpret passively. He has defended court-stripping legislation and argued for limiting judicial remedies.

If you think of John Roberts as the justice who will urge a far more sweeping judicial deference - particularly to the executive branch - the subsequent Miers nomination makes sense. If Mr. Bush wants to refashion the courts into a weaker, passive entity that exists primarily to check its own institutional prerogatives, then a former White House counsel like Ms. Miers is the perfect choice.

Justice Roberts and Ms. Miers represent a one-two punch for presidential supremacy: Justice Roberts would turn the Supreme Court into a body of nine constitutional plumbers - tinkerers around the margins with no affirmative place on the national stage. And Ms. Miers is a plumber - a perfectly competent lawyer with no national distinction. Her nomination would be an insult to the court if the court’s work still mattered. But President Bush doesn’t want it to matter.

So basically Bush wants a “toothless” Supreme Court and a Congress full of yes men - just like his cabinet. My only consolation is that if he tries to get rid of the 22nd Amendment, Bill Clinton can run again and kick his ass. I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist here - but this presidency becomes more and more Orwellian by the day.

But Bush does have the right to nominate the kinds of justices he wants. Because unfortunately, this country actually made him president. And it’s not because red staters are idiots or yokels - it’s because the right wing has become extremely good at manipulating people of faith at election time.

But what religious Americans need to start realizing is that the Republican Party doesn’t give a shit about you once elections are over. If Bush’s greatest priority was to nominate an anti-abortion conservative like Pryor or Rogers Brown to the Supreme Court, he could have done it. But instead he’s decided that he wants to take power away from the courts and consolidate it in the executive.

And it’s not so he can create a the great fundamentalist Christian state that y’all want. It’s not so he can protect the unborn or keep boys from marrying other boys in San Francisco. It’s so he can take the taxes that you hardworking middle Americans pay and give the money to the rich. And he’s winning.

Wake up, America!

[UPDATE:12:11] I changed a spelling mistake or two and tweaked some bad prose and html. Shame on me for editing my posts after they’re up!