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October 05, 2005
Birds of a feather...
While perusing the Washington Post's various commentaries this morning I began to wonder if there might not be a common thread amongst the disparate issues being pitched. A common thread which might shed more light on each of the varied issues.
Indulge me for a moment...
George Will essentially argues that George W. Bush isn't bright enough to make an informed decision on the merits of a future Associate Justice Harriet Miers and that therefore Senate Republicans needn't take this nominee very seriously.
He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution.
Harold Meyerson points out that president Bush has a track record of favoring loyalists over conservative intellectuals.
But the conservative intellectuals have misread their president and misread their country. Four and a half years into the presidency of George W. Bush, how could they still entertain the idea that the president takes merit, much less intellectual seriousness, seriously?
Robert Samuelson observes that when Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" he was stark naked and in fact is more accurately described as furthering a "cynical conservatism" agenda.
The outlook is for tokenism. Just what conservative values Bush's approach embodies is unclear. He has not tried to purge government of ineffective or unneeded programs. He has not laid a foundation for permanent tax reductions. He has not been straightforward with the public. He has not shown a true regard for the future. He has mostly been expedient or, more pointedly, cynical.
David Ignatius tries to paint NYT reporter Judith Miller as a passionate idealist who was the victim of poor editorial control.
When Miller emerged from prison, she urged passage of a federal shield law, and she's right about that. But while we're waiting for a media-friendly Congress, we journalists should look more closely at our own rules. Reporters and their sources shouldn't determine a newspaper's agenda, much less whether a reporter should go to jail in defiance of a grand jury subpoena. That's a job for editors and their publishers.
The common thread? Judith Miller. Or, more precisely, why she spent 85 days in prison when the source that she was allegedly protecting, Scooter Libby, had already released her before she was found in contempt of court.
Kevin Featherly has written a superb essay on The Strange Case of Judith Miller which leaves one with more questions than answers. Her proffered explanation doesn't hold water, as Kevin eloquently explains. What does seem to hold water is the notion that what she was really holding out for was the agreement with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to narrowly limit the scope of what she would be questioned about. Which leaves me to wonder who Ms. Miller was really protecting?
As George W. Bush's legal council surely Ms. Miers was intimately involved in the Plamegate scandal. Which means that if Ms. Miller was protecting someone other than Scooter Libby, Ms. Miers is on a very short list of people that know who and why.
Posted by Kevin at October 5, 2005 09:39 AM
