Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Disputing George Will's Column On Miers

The argument over the Miers nomination to the Supreme Court continues to rage across the blogosphere. There's really no way to capture all of the discussion in a single post, so I'll focus on an interesting slice of the discussion.

At townhall, George Will blasted the president's choice, in a column title Miers is the wrong pick. Not surprisingly coming from George Will, the crux of his argument centers around intellectual superiority and how Harriet Miers has not demonstrated that she has any. Specifically he notes:
Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers' nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.
Basically he's saying if you asked a bunch of smart people, none of them would pick Miers.

Reginald Brown has responded negatively to Will's column. His response has been posted at the Volokh Conspiracy. Brown takes Will to task on each an every point. It is an interesting read so I suggest you follow the link and read the whole thing. Specifically, in response to the point I singled out above, Brown writes:
Will’s second argument is that the President didn’t consult with serious people before making the choice of Miers. This is also a silly argument. We know that the President consulted with eighty members of the Senate, including all of the Republicans on Senate Judiciary. He also reached out to people like Leonard Leo and Jay Sekulow. And he has serious, principled conservatives, like Bill Kelley, on the White House Counsel’s Office staff. These aren’t cronies or toadies who will only tell the President what he wants to hear.
I think Brown sums it up the best at the end of his response:
I love George Will’s work, and he’s a great conservative, but he’s way off-base with today’s column.
Absolutely.

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