Marshall on Frank Rich about Harriet Miers

I haven't written about the Harriet Miers nomination because I don't know much about her or about the dynamics of the nomination. However, it now begins to expose the environment the White House sees itself in, the actual environment it is in, and how the White house behaves as a result.

I am, in fact, attempting to practice the art of Kremlinology - determining what must have led to the outcomes from the highly secret Kremlin White House based on public hints like who appears with who in public and who are allies and who are enemies.

Long and oblique intro. Sorry. But I want to refer you to Josh Marshall who starts with his discussion of a Frank Rich article at the New York Times, unfortunately behind their wall of secrecy (sort of like the "Cone of Silence" from the TV sitcom "Get Smart.") He speaks of Rich's Sunday column:

Two points grabbed my attention.

He hits on the tight connection in everything we're seeing between incompetence, state mendacity and incipient authoritarianism. They're not paradoxically or counter-intuitively combined. The connection is natural and self-reinforcing.

Also on the point of Harriet Miers. Something has happened here on the right that cannot be explained simply by Miers' unfitness for the job. Not after all we've seen over going on five years. The president has lost his credibility with them too. [...]

As the US has trundled down into the status of fiscal basket case over the last few years, that much-vaunted Republican fiscal discipline has been the dog which has never barked. A few meaningless remarks, the occasional hand-wringing from a conservative columnist. At the end of the day though every part of American conservatism has saluted and enabled the infamy.

But something is different here. Besides James Dobson this nomination has no supporters outside of the senate and the White House. And the conservative opposition isn't just opposing, it's contemptuous -- and critical in ways that mimic the long-expressed criticism from the other side of the aisle.

Marshall then goes on to discuss the dynamics of nominations and compares them to the dynamics of scandals. Interesting, and worth reading.

From my point of view, the whole thing exposed the isolation of the White House. It has been my opinion that Karl Rove was the single member of the triumvirate (Bush/Cheney/Rove) who has had a strong understanding of the political currents in America and was able to react to them. But he is clearly now being side-tracked by the Fitzgerald investigation and the threat of being indicted in the Plame outing.

Both Bush and Cheney feel entitled by their positions. They feel they do not have to ask anyone's permission to do anything. Harriet Miers appears to be entirely Bush's decision, based on his vaunted intuition and her history of loyalty to him over the last decade.

Rove would have anticipated the conservative reactions to her nomination, and would have somehow headed them off - or gotten another person nominated.

I have seen Rove as the glue that held the triumvirate together and connected it to political reality. Now the Bush administration is well into its most difficult period and Rove is at best disconnected, perhaps being phased out if he is indicted.

As Marshall points out, there is not yet any real group supporting the nomination of Miers. Marshall thinks that if there is not a strong active group defending her nomination she may not be confirmed. I think that Rove is still the key. If he can gin up that defending group, she will make it to the Supreme Court. If he doesn't, then the confirmation is really up in the air.

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Good news. Truthout has posted Frank Rich's column, so that it can be read on line without paying the NY Times premium.