Rumor Mill

The newest spin on Harriet Miers is that she was nominated as a third- or fourth-choice nominee after all the other female nominees withdrew their names from consideration. The rumor mill also reports that the others backed out at the end of one week and Miers was nominated at the beginning of the next week.

These rumors, if true, make everybody look bad.

The rumors make Harriet Miers look bad, first and foremost. This gives evidence that Ms. Miers’ qualifications consist only of the fact that when the President was in a bind, she was the first female lawyer he bumped into. Plus the fact that she is a born-again Evangelical. But that is more of a prerequisite to Bush than a qualification.

The rumors make women look bad. If some of the leading female justices in the country are afraid of a little heckling from Ted Kennedy, how does that make the rest of us look?

The rumors make the Supreme Court look bad. Picking a candidate on the fly and by one’s gut lowers the status and respect deserving of our country’s highest bench.
Finally, the rumors make George Bush look bad. He felt it important to nominate a woman (e.g. Priscilla Owens), but not to go to bat for her against criticism, leaving her without the confidence to proceed. In lieu of his first pick(s), he picked an unqualified woman. As though the defining aspect of Sandra Day O’Connor’s career was her vagina, not her accomplishments.

If this rumor were started by anyone at the White House or the RNC as a means of calming the anger tide of the crazy evangelicals, then the Conservative Spin Machine is officially working against itself. If the rumors are true, it is a blow to all the women who bust ass their whole lives so that someone will acknowledge that it is their minds and not their breasts that got them in the door and kept them there. And if the rumors are just rumors, well, then I just wasted 5 minutes of your time on a moot point. Oh well.