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Earlier today, Randy Barnett added to the cronyism chorus with this WSJ piece. Barnett quotes Hamilton He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure."The italics are Barnett's, the boldface is mine. Beldar is not amused and has several posts about Miers' merits (and scroll up and down from there). Given my feelings about It seems to me that there are two sorts and motivations for cronyism: one kind of cronyism is to do favors for friends and relatives to help them; the second kind of cronyism is to favor friends or relatives, not to help them, but because you think they would do a better job than others.I would put RFK as AG and Fortas to SCOTUS in the first category. In the case of RFK and Fortas, being trusted by JFK and LBJ, respectively, was a side benefit from the primary reason for their appointments: payback. and Washington appointing Hamilton to Treasury in the second category. I disagree that the second is actually cronyism in a useful sense at all, because the perjorative aspect of the RFK/Fortas flavor taints the meaning. My sense is that W is not doing the kind of double reverse psychology head-fakes that some of his supporters and detractors see everywhere. By and large, I think he means what he says. In this case, I suspect that he thinks Miers is the best person for the job because he's defined what he wants for the position as a) a woman b) someone who shares his overall worldview, and c) someone who isn't an in your face invitation to the nuclear option fight. He also probably thinks that having had enough hassle with his judiciary appointments, why take on an extra confirmation if he would have to replace Owen, Brown, or one of the Ediths? And as much as it frustrates his conservative base, W is still trying to be the uniter. If Miers was on the Dems acceptable list as Ann Althouse reported hearing, that might be the kiss of death at The Corner, but I think W views it as a plus. All of this is legitimate fodder for criticism of the decision making process. Miers' lack of a paper trail even by modern post-Bork standards may even justify more thorough grilling by the Senate - if the blowhards can do it. But I don't think it's cronyism in the RFK/Fortas sense. But here's the more disturbing thing to me...while I don't think W appointed Miers from cronyism, I think Miers should have told W not to consider her before taking on the vetting of candidates. And yes, this bothers me about Cheney too, but less so insofar as picking a Veep doesn't involve special expertise that Bush as a nonlawyer doesn't have. Cronyism isn't the question of the day...it's conflict of interest. Update: Barnett points to Tom Smith and Matthew Frank making the same point. Smith: So this is like your marriage counsellor telling you you should get divorced and marry her, or something. Total conflict of interest.
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