Gracchus

The dictatorship of the qualified

All my favorite right-wing fire-eaters are disappointing me badly on this Miers nomination. They seem to be buying into the mythos of expertise, which I always thought was a liberal fetish. Have the quondam barbarians-at-the-gate been Aunt-Pollyized into a docile respect for the self-anointment of the credentialled?

Here's David Frum, normally, divertingly mad as a hatter, sounding like Ted Koppel:

"A generation of conservative legal intellects of the highest ability have moved to the most distinguished heights in the legal profession. On the nation's appellate courts, in legal academia, in private practice, there are dozens and dozens of principled conservative jurists in their 40s and 50s unassailably qualified for the nation's highest court. [....] The personal and intellectual excellence of these candidates...." -- sorry, I can't go on. This is sad stuff.

Then there's my very favorite, Pat Buchanan:

"She is not a brilliant jurist – indeed, has never been a judge. She is not a scholar of the law. Researchers are hard-pressed to dig up an opinion. She has not had a brilliant career in politics, the academy, the corporate world or the public forum."

Brilliant? Where, for Heaven's sake, is somebody willing to take a whack at this preposterous notion? What normal American, not brainwashed by an advanced degree, imagines that the law is anything like quantum physics, or tensor calculus, or even Celtic philology? What business has a brilliant person being a lawyer, much less a judge? It would be a complete waste, and they'd go nuts from the arid, pettifogging tedium of it all.

Poor Pat seems to have really lost it today -- he actually asks, plaintively, "Where was Karl Rove in all of this?" I think we can all answer that one, Pat: He was right in the middle of it, taking care of the people who pay his salary.

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Posted by gracchus at October 5, 2005 01:33 AM | TrackBack