Bye-Bye Harriet

Well, Ms. Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the United Status Supreme Court. Here we see her, as usual, a step or two behind her chief; do you suppose her offer to withdraw was just another way of following him? Gee, I wonder...



I've been reading some of the comments on this incident. Kos thinks she lost because of simple incompetence; it's not immediately clear to me just why he thinks she bowed out, but it seems like he thinks she just came to the realization she couldn't win after her dismal performance on her questionnaire and with the Senators. Slate points out that this withdrawal gives the White House an excellent issue with which to distract the country from the possible upcoming indictments in the Plame case. Krauthammer evidently thinks that, whatever the real goings-on behind the scenes, the president's partisans can make the case that it was a fight over document privilege.

I'm not as well-informed as these folks, but all that really means at the moment is that I have no mandate to prove my conjectures, so here goes: I think Harriet Miers submitted her withdrawal because, in private, Dubya asked her to. He may be angry about having to ask, but everybody knows that nothing gets out of his office without his say-so on pain of immediate political death. What's more, whatever her virtues, Ms. Miers has spent a good many years as another one of Dubya's lap dogs; asking us to assume that she's retained the ability to think independently in his presence is laughable.


That's just a guess, of course. Whatever's really going on in there, I still feel a thrill from the Dark Side of the Force as I watch this administration duck and cover.

Benshlomo says, I have respect for my enemies if they're respectable.