Virginia Postrel on Miers

Postrel is a libertarian and a very interesting thinker. Her initial posts on Miers were cautiously supportive (at least in my reading of them), but she has come to occupy the same space that I do:

As regular readers know, I've written an extraordinary amount about Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Early on, my primary purpose was reportorial--to use my locational advantage to provide information and context for people outside of Dallas. But the more I learned, the more appalled I became.

This really is an embarrassment of a nomination. It gives Dan the ability to go on an extended anti-Bush jag and for me to do nothing more than sullenly agree with him. Perhaps Bush could have done worse, but with the promise to nominate someone in the mold of Scalia or Thomas as the starting point, this might be as bad as I could have imagined. Like Bush himself, Miers seems to have no intellectual curiosity (maybe she just watched Fox News, Dan), doesn't think or speak in a way that suggests any sort of "big picture" philosophy, and seems to be little more than a functionary who is being rewarded for loyalty because there is a nominal connection between her post-graduate degree and the job to which she is being nominated. This is the downside of a President who is admirable in many ways, but whose inarticulateness generally and his inability to convey any sense that he has pondered big questions more particularly is maddening.

How he can fight the War on Terror yet call the Minutemen who assist INS in patrolling the border "vigilantes" is analogous to his having nominated John Roberts - owner of the perfect SCOTUS resume - and then nominating Miers. This pick is a disaster, and the sooner she withdraws, the better off everyone will be.