By Lee Cullum, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-485729.mp3
Commentary: Harriet Miers
Dallas, TX –
What is going on with Harriet Miers? This is a person of enormous stature in this community and in legal circles around the nation. She ran a major downtown law firm, the Dallas Bar Association, the Texas Bar and the State Lottery Commission and she served a term on the City Council. She also is a serious conservative and faithful member of an evangelical church. Yet from all we hear, she is incompetent, a crony of President Bush and not to be trusted on critical issues.
This is ridiculous. Harriet Miers didn't get where she is being stupid. Few women do. Nor is she anybody's crony in the current understanding of the word. Its true meaning is close friend of long standing, but today people think of cronies as sycophants hanging around for improper favors. Miers has too much integrity, is too much her own woman, to operate at such a level.
As for competence, Miers has spent 30 years in commercial litigation involving matters of antitrust, securities, intellectual property, products liability, banking and real estate. She has been named one of the top 100 lawyers in the country, and she served as chair of the American Bar Association rules committee as well editor of the ABA journal. At the White House she has dealt with legal and policy questions of the highest importance, many with constitutional implications. Could a person of no competence function year after year much less succeed in arenas as tough as these? To question her intellectual acumen is not only insulting. It's ignorant.
The most subtle complaint is that she doesn't have a judicial mind. And how does one acquire a judicial mind? Some believe there is only one narrow road to this achievement and it is through the appellate process, hearing and deciding cases on appeal. Certainly this is desirable experience for the Supreme Court, but it not the only world view that is needed. Also indispensable is practical work in the vineyards of business which have their own kinds of discipline and excellence to impart.
The same thing is true of politics. It may well be that Sandra Day O'Connor's years as an assistant attorney general in Arizona, as a state senator, and as an elected trial judge enhanced her understanding of the cases before her in Washington, and their impact on real people living real lives, far more than her time on the state appeals bench. Mainly we need a mix of minds on the high court to brace and stimulate each other. We need more than ideological differences. We need more than ethnic and gender diversity. We also need justices from the state house, the court house, and the halls of commerce. Harriet Miers has much practical backbone to contribute to the rarified enclave of the Supreme Court.
As for her religion, I don't think the faith of any candidate for high office has been so thoroughly raked over as that of Harriet Miers since John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960. Would he be the vassal of the Pope? people worried. Would the American government be run from Rome? The answer, of course, was no. Now some are concerned that Miers' decisions will be dictated by Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, Texas or the group that's just seceded to form a new congregation. Others are equally concerned the church will not call the shots for her. Isn't it enough to know that her thinking will be serious and principled and worthy of respect? It is for me.
Lee Cullum is a contributor to the Dallas Morning News and to KERA.
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