October
9, 2005
So Much for Merit
By Ruben
Navarrette Jr.
``I
think it ought to be based on merit.''
-- President Bush, Aug. 6, 2004
SAN DIEGO
-- President Bush almost had me convinced. For a while, it looked
like the nation's first MBA president put a high premium on merit.
Of course,
that was before last week and Bush's underwhelming choice of his
underqualified friend from Texas, Harriet Miers, to fill a vacancy
on the Supreme Court.
Now I feel
like I've been punk'ed.
Article
Continues Below
You see, I heard
Bush defend, before a group of minority journalists, his administration's
decision to challenge an affirmative action plan at the University
of Michigan because, he said, the plan was a quota system that
discriminated against white students.
When the subject
of legacy admissions came up, Bush praised the idea of merit selection.
He told the journalists that he opposed the idea that anyone could
get into college based on who their parents were.
But, of course, no
one thought to ask Bush the real question -- how he felt about
the idea that individuals could get onto the Supreme Court because
of who their friends were.
Now we know the answer.
We see evidence of a mutant strain of affirmative action -- for
FOBs, or Friends of Bush.
So much for merit.
For the last 20 years,
I've heard conservatives whine about how all the best opportunities
go to minorities and how more qualified candidates are aced out
by an insidious system of racial preferences that lowers the bar
in pursuit of diversity.
Now, given Bush's
choice of Miers, I'm not sure the bar can get much lower.
And it's not because
she's a woman. The president was right to try to make that a priority
in his selection. Yet, there are any number of other more qualified
women that Bush could have chosen for this position, including
one or two federal appellate judges whose only liabilities seem
to have been that they didn't hit it off with the president in
interviews.
As it is, I'm wondering
what happened to all the lofty rhetoric about how merit should
carry the day and win out over all other considerations. And I'm
stunned at how quickly Bush's supporters -- after playing up Chief
Justice John Roberts' indisputably Grade-A resume -- can now turn
on a dime and start praising a candidate who has never even been
a judge before. Not in federal court, state court, municipal court
or even traffic court.
I had assumed some
sort of judicial experience might be good preparation for taking
a seat on the Supreme Court. The administration knows the fact
that Miers has never been a judge is the single most damning thing
about her nomination. The concern that she's not sufficiently
conservative is getting all the attention at the moment, but it's
the fact that she's never worn a black robe that is really her
Achilles' heel. That's why the White House spent the first hours
after the announcement spinning the line that this isn't the first
time a novice had been appointed to the Supreme Court.
True. But you have
to go back 33 years to the last time it happened with a young
nominee named William Rehnquist. A whole generation -- mine --
has grown accustomed to the thought that only judges should be
considered for the Supreme Court. Besides, Rehnquist was assistant
U.S. attorney general at the time, arguably a more powerful and
prestigious post than White House counsel.
Experience counts.
John Roberts sat on the federal appeals court for just two years
before his nomination, and that was something that led some of
his critics to argue that he needed more seasoning before ascending
to the high court. Two years isn't much. Still, next to Miers,
Roberts looks like Oliver Wendell Holmes.
And remember Miguel
Estrada? He is the powerhouse Washington lawyer with the Ivy League
degrees, the clerkship with the Supreme Court, the experience
in the U.S. attorney's office and the office of the U.S. solicitor
general whose nomination to a federal appellate judgeship was
killed by Senate Democrats. One line that Democrats offered up
for public consumption was that Estrada was unacceptable because,
despite the fact that he seemed to be one heck of a lawyer, he
had never been a judge.
Now if any Democrats
turn around and support Miers, what will that say about them --
and the real reason they opposed Estrada? And for Republicans
who support Miers, what does that say about their commitment to
merit?
©
2005, The San Diego Union-Tribune
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