That is the
working assumption, and it is fatal to argumentation to challenge
an assumption. Within the rules, then, we have to ask: How to
effect the disappearance of Ms. Miers?
John Fund
of The Wall Street Journal has privately hinted at one
way to do it. Not without pain -- there is almost always pain
in such matters, but how to make the pain tolerable?
Begin with
corollary assumptions, namely that Miers is eager to lessen the
humiliation of Bush -- and that Bush is eager to lessen the humiliation
of Miers. If she announced that, on second thought, she did not
wish to serve on the Supreme Court, the public assumption would
be that Bush had pressured her to withdraw. That would effect
humiliation in approximately 50-50 doses: the president for having
backed down, Miers for having collaborated in his submission to
pressure. They would both be better off than if he simply withdrew
the nomination, or she simply changed her mind about her willingness
to serve.
Along comes
a fresh idea by which the dilution of blame, and therefore of
humiliation, might be effected. The question has actually presented
itself: Might the Senate Judiciary Committee play horse to her
Lady Godiva -- to appropriate the old legend? If she is willing
to ride naked through the streets to prove her fidelity to her
cause, would Congress consent to serve as the horse that would
bear the burden of the bared lady?
The road
is well paved for an impasse. Senate committee members, as prominent
as Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter, have asked to examine some
of the work Miers did for the president. Republican senators Sam
Brownback and Lindsey Graham have joined in asking to see such
work. The position of the senators is that they cannot adequately
review her experience without having some idea of what she actually
did in counseling the president.
Mr. Bush
has replied with a dramatic refusal. To do such a thing would
be forever to compromise the essential privacy of the Oval Office.
If someone giving advice to the president had reason to believe
that that advice might one day be the object of public scrutiny,
said advice would be attenuated by any prospect of full exposure.
The president said that he could take no steps that would diminish
the resources of the executive to seek advice.
The inquiring
senators have said that theirs is the obligation to assess the
work done by the nominee, and someone was tactless enough to remind
the White House that Nixon's tapes, in which he figured, along
with friends, advisers and counselors, were judged to be public
property by the Supreme Court, leading of course to the presidential
resignation, the ultimate flowering of Watergate.
One spots
the opportunity here. There are 18 members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, eight Democrats and 10 Republicans. Suppose that the
other seven Democrats join Senator Leahy in insisting on access
to the Oval Office records, and that one Republican senator joins
with them. That would make for a tie. A second Republican (Senator
Graham? Senator Brownback?) voting with the Democrats? The result:
Hearings would be frozen in the matter of Harriet Miers.
See then
the resulting apportionment of blame/humiliation. The president
is seen doing nothing more dramatic or sensational than defending
executive rights, the same rights championed by other presidents,
for instance President Eisenhower against Senator McCarthy. The
Senate committee would be seen championing a right that it believed
consistent with its obligation to investigate the qualifications
of a presidential nominee.
In this fight,
attention is drawn away from Bush-Miers. Both the president and
Ms. Miers escape humiliation. And Congress has saved the day.
