Conservative Reaction To The Miers Nomination

Harold Myerson has a [mostly] perceptive article in the Washington Post on the way in which Bush dissed the conservative intellectual establishment. He writes:

Bypassing all manner of stellar Scalia look-alikes, the president settled on his own in-house lawyer.... Miers has authored no legal opinions that can be dissected, no Supreme Court briefs that can be parsed, no law review articles that can be torn apart.

Which, I suspect, is why her selection cuts so deep in right-wing circles. The problem isn't only that Miers is not openly a movement conservative but that she's as far from a public intellectual as anyone could possibly be. In one fell swoop, Bush flouted both his supporters' ideology and their sense of meritocracy.

Worse, he bypassed the opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual seriousness -- conservatism's intellectual seriousness.

Read the whole thing here.

And, as Myerson notes, Bush was right to do so. Just as the nation demonstrated in its refusal to have a debate over Social Security, it is not spoiling for a fight over choice, however much conservative ideologues might wantsuch a confrontation. Nor does the general public place much confidence in those credentials -- those lines on the vita -- that are so highly prized by intellectuals. The conservatives' objections, however deeply felt, are just not politically functional, moreover they are likely to be disastrous.

As Myerson notes:

[J]ust because the conservative intellectuals are itching for a fight over first principles doesn't mean their country is. The conservative legal movement may have been waiting for this moment, as Frum wrote, for two decades, but the conservative economic movement had also been waiting for more than two decades for its moment, its fight over Social Security. Bush indulged the economic right, and look what happened: Armed with the best thinking of Heritage, Cato and all the right-wing think tanks, the president took on the New Deal and has not yet recovered.

Now the legal right wants -- what? A public debate over the right to choice? A frontal assault on the right to privacy? A nominee who'll argue, as right-wing darling Janice Rogers Brown has, that the minimum wage and Social Security are unconstitutional? Is it any wonder that Bush, particularly in his weakened state, chose to sidestep those fights? Most of the right wing's legal agenda commands minority support in the country and provokes majority opposition. How many battles of ideas can Bush afford to lose?

The world of the mind is a wonderful place, but it has its place, and that is in the sheltered groves of academe -- not in the corridors of power. Far too many bright young things in the conservative movement have been seduced by the Marxist vision of intellectuals as the vanguard of revolution. In fact they are more like the Decembrists. Every once in a while it is useful for someone like Bush, who actually has to govern responsibly, to slap them upside the head and remind them of how inconsequential they really are in the larger scheme of things.