Betraying Ideals

On the subject of Miers' qualifications, which I haven't written much about, I think folks are conflating two very separate things: the qualifications a Supreme Court Justice needs to have and the qualifications a Justice ought to have. On the first, Miers is probably just fine -- a longtime lawyer, literate, smart enough to understand the issues that whipped through the Oval Office. There's little doubt that she'll be able to comprehend the basic points of contention and then awkwardly reason her way through the a priori conclusions that most judges pass off as justice. Indeed, it's not even clear what intelligence gets you (and for a good take on that, go here). Scalia rules different from Stevens rules different from Breyer rules different from Souter. All four are powerful minds, skilled and talented at torching lawyers and demolishing problems. But that intelligence doesn't offer them some sort of platonic Truth, they just rule in the way their biases and training nudge, albeit with considerably more intellectual fireworks along the way.

But there is a sense in which nominees to the Court ought to be highly-skilled, highly-qualified, so brilliant they border on telekinetic. Few offices in America are as symbolically charged as Supreme Court Justice. Even the President, who's supposed to be the nation's brightest light, is widely-understood to be shackled to the grimy realities of politics. But the Court, those nine robed behemoths we've lovingly cloistered away from all other branches of government, all other points of influence, all because we want their awesome minds to whir without interruption or distraction. And, out of reach though that may be, it's good to have that symbol floating around the Republic, it's healthy.

When we elect presidents like Clinton and nominate judges like Roberts, we're reaffirming the meritocratic ideal. When we install dimmer bulbs like Bush and merely decent nominees like Miers, we're admitting that this is no meritocracy after all. And maybe that's better, certainly it's more honest. But part of the trick of keeping an America is living in the real, oft-tawdry country while affirming its mythic potentiality. Used to be that the Supreme Court and the Presidency were key in that. But Bush, Miers? We're supplanting meritocracy with nepotism and cronyism. Is that the message we want for our kids?