Author: BooMan

Harriet Miers: Anvil on the Presidency

Posted by | Oct 3, 2005 |

Having read a ton of reactions from the left and from the right I have come to one solid conclusion. Everyone was geared up for a fight and everyone is feeling ripped off. It’s like paying fifty bucks to see Mike Tyson fight Evander Holyfield and all you get is an early round ear-biting disqualification.

Yet, I don’t think people should despair of a good fight. I don’t think Harriet Miers chances of being confirmed are very good. Bush inadvertently played into the post-Katrina memes of incompetence, lack of qualifications, and cronyism. He also failed to feed the right-wing beast that has been fighting for this moment for thirty-two years. They are furious, depressed, despondent, confused…

If Miers embarrasses herself (or is exposed as corrupt) in the hearings it could easily become a reinforcing lesson that further cements the Katrina fallout.

And if indictments come down in the Plame case, there will be very few people in the mood to defend the Presidency.

My first take? She might be a terrible judge, she might be a less than terrible judge, but her selection was a short-term political mistake.

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A Supremely Bipartisan Moment

Posted by | Oct 3, 2005 |

The right wing is every bit as disillusioned as the left wing. Compare the quotes below with the posts in our own threads here.

From Daily Dish:

I think people under-estimate president Bush’s view of his own office. He believes he has had his one accountability moment in power: it was the last election. As we have seen from his refusal to acknowledge his own out-of-control spending or abrogation of settled American law against abusing military detainees, he really does believe he is above the usual sense of accountability. That’s why conservatives who think that it’s a smart thing to criticize him now, rather than before the election, are fooling themselves. This guy will do what he wants. If he wants to pick a close friend and flunky, whatever her virtues, as a Supreme Court Justice, passing over dozens of other brilliant legal minds and more experienced jurists more acceptable to his base, that’s what he’ll do. And that’s what he’s done.

From Right Wing News:

Disaster, Thy Name Is Harriet Miers

George Bush’s decision to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is bitterly disappointing. Miers is a Bush crony with no real conservative credentials, who leapfrogged legions of more deserving judges just because she was Bush’s pal…. To merely describe Miers as a terrible pick is to underestimate her sheer awfulness as a selection.

More below the fold:

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Hillary, the DLC, and the Netroots

Posted by | Oct 3, 2005 |

Matt Bai has an interesting piece in the New York Times Magazine. He discusses Hillary’s strategy for capturing the White House. But he also delves into our domain, and attempts to explain what we think, and how we feel about Hillary. I’m going to excerpt a large piece and discuss it below the fold.

What Dean’s candidacy brought into the open, however, was another kind of growing and powerful tension in Democratic politics that had little to do with ideology. Activists often describe this divide as being between “insiders” and “outsiders,” but the best description I’ve heard came from Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic operative who runs the advocacy group N.D.N. (formerly New Democrat Network), which sprang from Clintonian centrism of the early 1990’s. As Rosenberg explained it, the party is currently riven between its “governing class” and its “activist class.” The former includes the establishment types who populate Washington – politicians, interest groups, consultants and policy makers. The second comprises “Net roots” Democrats on the local level; that is, grass-roots Democrats, many of whom were inspired by Dean and who connect to politics primarily online, through blogs or Web-based activist groups like MoveOn.org. The argument between the camps isn’t about policy so much as about tactics, and a lot of Democrats in Washington don’t even seem to know it’s happening.

The activist class believes, essentially, that Democrats in Washington have damaged the party by trying to negotiate and compromise with Republicans – in short, by trying to govern. The “Net roots” believe that an effective minority party should disengage from the governing process and eschew new proposals or big ideas. Instead, the party should dedicate itself to winning local elections and killing each new Republican proposal that comes down the track. To the activist class, trying to cut deals with Republicans is tantamount to appeasement. In fact, Rosenberg, an emerging champion of the activist class, told me, pointing to my notebook: “You have to use the word ‘appease.’ You have to use it. Because this is like Neville Chamberlain.”

This is an ominous development for Hillary Clinton, because the activists’ attack on the party hierarchy is a direct and long-simmering reaction to the Clintonism of the 90’s and the “third way” instinct of the D.L.C.

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Sunday Night Book Blogging

Posted by | Oct 2, 2005 |

Here are my top ten favorite books. I never tried to pick ten books before. It’s pretty hard to do. It’s especially tough for me because I have such varied interests. As a result my list has fiction, historical, philosophical, psychological, and political books.



Infinite
Jest

by David Foster Wallace


“The greatest American novel.”



When Jesus
Became God: The Epic Fight Over Christ’s Divinity in the Last Days of
Rome
by Richard E. Rubenstein


“The most exciting Ancient History book ever written. And one of the
most informative and important things you could ever read to better
understand Christian theology.”



The
Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky


“The best Russian novel of all-time. Prince Myshkin is a redeemer that
I can believe in.”



Human, All
Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche


“The best introduction into Nietzsche’s thinking for the
non-philosopher. Accessible and straight forward, it suffers from
little of his later grandiosity.”

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