Wild About Harriet

The furor over the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court is striking in that it has come most vehemently from the right. The ferocity of the invective, coming from the usual suspects of pundits and “experts”, has further exposed the complete hypocrisy of Bush’s conservative Republican “base”, an increasingly splintered army of medievalist zealots, political acolytes and apologists, that has been hyped into somewhat of an urban myth by the supplicant media.

In the midsummer pundit fest that followed the John Roberts nomination, whenever a critical voice was feebly raised--by a neutered Charles Schumer, or a self-indulgent Joe Biden,-- the mob on the right would scream, in its usual self-righteous indignation,“executive discretion!”, i.e.,the President is granted by the Constitution the power to appoint to the Court anyone he pleases. Very true. But it is also the constitutional responsibility of the Senate to advise and consent, in other words to approve or disapprove of the nomination. However, to the true believers, the “base”, to question this President, this self-proclaimed “war president,” is unpatriotic, un-American, “angry”, and by ultimate extension, blasphemous.

Roberts was somewhat of a political stealth candidate. With no Borkian paper trail to bedevil him he was, due to his yeoman’s service in the Reagan-Bush administration, given a pass by the neocons. His tribal loyalty seemed beyond reproach, given his pro bono work on behalf of W in the Florida election debacle of 2000, which led to Antonin Scalia’s laughable pilfering of the fourteenth amendment and states rights in Bush v. Gore, ensuring the anointment of the W. to the presidency.

Now Bush has nominated an uber stealth candidate and the “base” has circled the wagons--Peggy Noonan, she of the “thousand points of light” from Bush I, has urged Miers to “take the hit” and withdraw so the president could pick “one of the outstanding jurists thoughtful conservatives have long touted.”

In other words, we have a short list of true believers that are part of “our tribe.” Choose from one of them. To do otherwise will alienate the rest of the tribe.

From syndicated columnist (and Fox News contributor) Charles Krauthammer, “If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.”

George Will chimed in with his turgidly precise prose, (Will’s columns are nothing, if not boringly precise). Yawn.

What has the poor Mrs. Miers done to warrant such derision from those within her own camp?

Not having been a judge, she has no extant record of judicial rulings, specifically Roe v. Wade, the bete boire of the hard right. Yet, there are judges waiting in the right wings, such as federal appeals court judges Edith Jones, Edith Clement, and Janice Rogers Brown, (blessed by Noonan and adored by the right), judges that can be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade, judges that Bush, inexplicably, has chosen to ignore.

So here stands the majority party on the horns of a dilemma: support the president, alienate the base, and take a chance on the unknown Miers, or force a withdrawal of the nomination and further weaken an administration which, in the wake of Katrina, and mired in corruption and scandal (Rove, Frist and DeLay, three rapidly dimming points of light), is on the ropes. Either way Bush takes a direct hit, which he cannot afford.

The irony is amusing. In an effort to thwart “judicial activism” the neocons revert to their own brand of the same. Blinded by their cause, they march arrogantly onward, oblivious of the political consequences. Bush will dig in with his usual cowboy swagger, and the gunfight at the ’06 corral will be upon us.

Not to worry though. The Democrats remain comatose and on life support. If the toothless opposition cannot make gains in the mid-term elections next year, in this political climate, then perhaps it will be time to remove the feeding tube and pull the plug.

The Drogulus

From Dick Morris, pundit turned advocate, in a Fox DaySide interview: "We're going to draft Condoleezza Rice to run for president in 2008”

Dick Morris, he of the most exquisite taste, with a penchant for toe-sucking hookers, announces his “Draft Condi” plan:

“...the only person that can defeat Hillary Clinton, that has a good shot to take away a large portion of the black vote, and to stop her from winning the female vote, is Condoleezza Rice. And, I don't believe she wants to run at this point, I don't think she has a burning ambition, but I think she has a sense of duty. I think she does an incredible job at anything she's asked to do. And I think what's going to happen is that Americans all over the country are going to form Condi clubs, draft-Condi movements, they're going to run their own slate of delegates, they're going to run people for delegate who are legally uncommitted but in fact are bound to Condi, and I think she'll start beating the candidates who are actually running. You know, there's a poem:

"When I was coming down the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I do wish he'd go away."

And I think that's really what's going to happen with Rice. I think that she is going to be the person who people are going to be looking to because she'll be the savior against Hillary.”

“I don't care if she wants to run. We have to get her into the race.”

For the record, another Morris prediction, (before the election of 2000), “Hillary is sinking fast. The bottom line: She won't run.” Just a single nugget among his many errant prognostications. Take some comfort in that.

Also for the record, the verse by Hughes Mearns, (botched by Morris), reads:

As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

Obviously Hillary is the “man who wasn’t there”.

Wasn’t Condi the “man who wasn’t there” in the months preceding 9/11? Didn't she ignore the warnings preceding the attacks? Did she not conjure visions of mushroom clouds that helped to pave the way to a foreign policy disaster that has bankrupted the treasury and cost thousands of lives? Quite a record, yet Morris anoints the saintly Condi as the "savior" against the evil machinations of the relentlessly ambitious Hillary.

Because of his past connection to the Clinton administration, Morris has become a favorite “voice from the Left” on Fox News, (he shows up regularly on O’Reilly to eviscerate Hillary). His animus toward the Clintons would be enough to disqualify him from local jury duty but he continues to foul the airwaves with his noxious “expert” punditry.

The philosopher A.J. Ayer coined the word “drogulus”, “...it’s not the sort of thing you can see or touch, ...it’s a disembodied being.” According to the OED it is “an entity whose presence is unverifiable, because it has no physical effects.”

Perhaps Mr. Morris should focus his mangled interpretations toward the disembodied spirits of those in power, for they are the ones we cannot see or touch, the ones who weren’t there yesterday, or again today. Their presence and their effect, though verifiable and physical, remain unseen. They are the drogulus, and how I wish, how I hope, they would all go away.

Hope

A recent corrrespondence with a longtime friend, concerning the plight of "The Hammer", Rep. Tom DeLay, (may his rotten political soul rest in peace), was a stimulus of sorts.

He wrote:

By now, you have already heard the news. And by now, the Republican slime machine is already in action. Soon, we will be hearing the old "high tech lynching" charge. Of course, never mind that a grand jury--not just one person--indicted DeLay. Are they all in on the "conspiracy?"

I also find it ironic that the Republicans are reminding everyone about "presumed innocence." Too bad that all of that does not apply to those fellows down at Gitmo.

I responded:

How sweet it is. To think that DeLay would be indicted in Texas, of all places. Texas, where elections are as legitimate as Friday night bingo; where election law consists of a wink and a smile; where LBJ cut his politically corrupt teeth, (and don't forget his equally ambitious protege Bobby Baker).

I'm beginning to think that this system of ours is beyond repair. The intoxicating smell of money seems to have overwhelming aphrodisiac effect on anyone who heads to Washington D.C., which leads to an intense desire to screw us all.

DeLay, Frist, Cunningham. Three amigos. Fox News will be going to the mattresses.

His response:

Capitalism is the reason for the "intoxicating smell of money . . . . " But I still believe in our constitutional principles. Unfortunately, too many of the power brokers never live up to their patriotic blather. Indeed,
historically speaking, they often never do. This morning I told my class that pledging allegiance to a flag is meaningless. We should pledge allegiance to the constitution. Those who were still awake seemed to agree. Maybe there still is hope.

I responded:

I wouldn't blame capitalism solely for the woes of the current system. I think that greed, self-interest and tribalism are built into the human "reptilian " brain, (to borrow Carl Sagan's term), and fester and spread like a cancer throughout the most noble of ideals. It seems, sadly, that on this planet, at this time, (time being the scope of human history, past present and future), the wants and needs of the rich and powerful few, (and those with ambitions to wealth and power), will always outweigh those of the many. In this age of mass media, I fear that the powerful few have finally acquired the means with which to control the many through fear, deception and mass cultural sedation.

Ours is probably the most highly entertained and least informed society on earth, and the disparity between fantasy and reality increases exponentially by the day. We are an insulated and spoiled people who live in a delusional theater of the absurd: the darkened home theater of sitcoms, "reality" TV, and corporately manufactured "news", bound, gagged, and blindfolded by a lethal combination of misguided nationalism, organized religion and concentrated wealth; where "style" (or an increasing lack thereof), outweighs substance; where language is manipulated to confuse, and ultimately, obliterate truth.

With the advent of the post WWII national security state we have become an alarmingly dysfunctional family that refuses to recognize the madness that churns around us. Instead we continue to revel in past glories (real and imagined), and succumb to slick slogans and carefully contrived sound bites.

Meanwhile, the national attention span gets shorter and shorter, unable to sustain an interest in anything but a skillfully edited moving image on a flickering screen. The medium has, indeed, become the message, and the message is, in its subliminal totality, more and more a hypnotic suggestion.

Hope? If the mid-term elections in 2006 return a vote of confidence to the staus quo, to the hard right Republican Party-- to "staying the course" in Iraq; to an arrogant "with us or against us" foreign policy; to crushing national debt; to cronyism and corruption; to an increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots; to favoring religion and superstition over science; to gutting a generation of environmental safeguards; to a return to the McKinley era--then I think hope will be in short supply among most of us political southpaws.

George W. Bush, a category 5 historical disaster, hovers at an anemic forty percent in the polls, which, in light of the events of the last week is remarkable. His second term has already been proclaimed DOA by many in the media who spout the conventional wisdom.

I'm not so confident.

With these poll numbers Bush is just a terror alert, (or anything with the "terror" association), away from getting a bump back to fifty. A little relief in gas prices, a "red" alert or two, and the "base", (the "haves and the have mores"), will circle around the hapless commander-in-chief and commence with a full court press upon the clueless Democrats. Fox News will go into twenty-four hour "news alert" status; the shouting heads on cable and radio will reguritate the RNC talking points and proceed to define the debate, as they have for the past thirty years.

Hopeful? In my middle age I've become less and less so. I find it hard to believe that we're still debating drugs, homosexuality, school prayer, the "Pledge of Allegiance", and abortion, among other "hot button" issues. But you can bet they'll surface again, in white-hot relief, next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. The needs of the many thus forfeited, in perpetuity, for the marginalizing of the few.

Hopeful? I'm always hopeful. But I bet against the Yankees last year when they were up 3-0 on Boston. And I'm a Yankee fan.