magazine report

Miers: The Piling On Continues

October 11, 2005

As the Miers brouhaha continues to swirl around the nation’s capital, all things Harriet have exploded onto the pages of the major magazines this week.

Miers, Miers everywhere — but who will give us a drop to drink? Ms. Miers largely remains a mystery woman, but there are some nuggets of insight to be found with due perseverance.

Newsweek shines some light with two pieces. In a long report, Evan Thomas and Jonathan Darman focus on Miers’ unfailingly faithful service to the president, suggesting that a show of “at least a hint of independence” will be necessary at her confirmation hearings:

Harriet Miers is George W. Bush’s kind of woman. She works ceaselessly, around the clock if necessary. She is a tomb of discretion. And she never, ever, says anything that might in the slightest way be construed as critical of George W. Bush. Ed Kinkeade, a federal judge and an old friend, teased her about her accommodations at the president’s ranch in Texas — a trailer. Miers grew uncomfortable, recalls Kinkeade. “Now Ed, don’t say that,” she protested. “It’s a manufactured home, and it’s very nice.”

Separately, Michael Isikoff reveals, via leaked emails, how the “brain trust” of conservative lawyers and academics who advised Bush on Justice Roberts’ confirmation process agonized over Miers’ selection last week, debating vigorously “whether they should go public with their dismay, or simply say nothing.” “We are keeping quiet. And hiding from the media,” wrote one member (none too happy when the private exchange landed in the hands of the press). “As for undermining trust in the president, I am afraid he has accomplished that all on his own — without any help from us.”

National Review editor Rich Lowry is also having trouble trusting Bush at the moment. In a scathing piece posted this morning, he writes, “The nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is foundering, but President Bush is confident that she will be confirmed. Bush thus displays a touching faith in the power of hypocrisy, double standards, and contradictions to see his nominee through. The case for Miers is an unholy mess, an opportunistic collection of whatever rhetorical flotsam happens to be at hand.”

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Meanwhile, in The Weekly Standard, William Kristol continues his crusade to have Miers nomination withdrawn. He is heartened by the conservative debate over Miers, writing that in the vigorous arguments of Miers’ critics, “and in their willingness to speak uncomfortable truths, conservatives have shown that they remain a morally serious and intellectually credible force in American politics.” But he concludes by asking Miers to fall on her sword in order to save Bush from himself, or, as he puts it, “thereby sparing her boss the chance of lasting damage to his legacy that her appointment to the Supreme Court may well represent.”

Short term, according to U.S. News & World Report, “White House advisers are already looking ahead to the State of the Union address next year as a way to lift President Bush out of his political doldrums.” (U.S. News also weighs in with some pointless handicapping of the 2008 campaign for the presidency, floating the idea of a Gore-Obama ticket. Spare us. Please.)

Time‘s Joe Klein, noting the president has “1,200 days to go — which means, of course, that Bush has plenty of time to resurrect himself,” suggests, as a solution, “a Grand New Policy Proposal.” The best Klein could come up with, though, was the novel idea of abolishing the progressive income tax and replacing it with a sales or flat tax. What we enjoyed more was Time‘s online poll connected to its cover story on aging, which allowed us to vote for the public figure “who has aged the most gracefully.” (Colin Powell nudged out Paul Newman for our vote, although at last glance Newman held a commanding lead with 30 percent, followed by Toni Morrison at 23 percent and Martha Stewart and Powell tied for third with 12 percent each).

If you are looking for a similar escape from the wearying nature of politics, a few pieces in this week’s New Yorker provide some diversion. In “Elevator Hack,” Nick Paumgarten investigates an urban myth — whether it is indeed possible to transform an elevator into a private lift simply by simultaneously pressing “door close” and the button for your desired floor (thereby overriding other passengers’ requests). Elevator experts pooh-pooh his idea, but Paumgarten reports surprising results as he overrides one elevator again and again, taking it up and down “until mutiny seemed imminent.”

And as part of its Art & Architecture issue, Geraldine Brooks tells us the lengthy but ultimately satisfying story (not available online) of Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House long ago. Wrenchingly taken off the project before its completion in 1973, he refused to attend the opening ceremony, and never returned to Sydney. But with time came an eventual reconciliation, and Utzon, 87, has been brought back to complete his work on the Opera House in his old age. Brooks tells his tale, and that of her quest to meet him, in subtle, colorful detail, proving — at least in this case — that happy endings are possible after all.

–Edward B. Colby

Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.