"This speech," he writes, "is chock-full of clumsy, unskilled writing... Mechanically, this speech reveals a mediocrity in composition that is truly disturbing."
"What about the content? Unfortunately, that doesn't improve the picture much at all, either.... [I]t should make everyone wake up to the threat Miers represents. In fact, this speech gives so mamy reasons to oppose Miers that it's a wonder she hasn't already repudiated it as a youthful indiscretion. There's hardly a passage in here that gives any credence to the notion of Harriet Miers as an originalist, or even a conservative." He concludes:
I'm off the fence for good now. I oppose the Miers nomination. I have no objection to allowing Miers her day in front of the Judiciary Committee; if the Bush adminstration wants to subject itself to that kind of political damage, let it. The quality of her prepared speech strongly suggests that the White House will deeply regret that decision, but quite frankly, that will be their problem. The Judiciary Committee should reject her, as should the Senate, once her nomination hits the floor.But if the White House has any sense left, they'll quickly withdraw her from consideration and spare itself further embarrassment.
And more bad news for Ms. Miers: Leonard Leo, on leave from the Federalist Society to act as a conduit between the White House and conservatives, has suddenly quit his role in that regard. Further, Wednesday was that day that Ms. Miers was supposed to turn in her revised questionairre--an embarrassing "do-over" request from the Senate Judiciary Committee--and she failed to do so.
More on Ms. Miers' writing from David Brooks (commenting before the release of her 1993 speech above):
Of all the words written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself. In the early '90s, while she was president of the Texas bar association, Miers wrote a column called "President's Opinion" for The Texas Bar Journal. It is the largest body of public writing we have from her, and sad to say, the quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian....
I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers' prose. Nearly every idea is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided. It's not that Miers didn't attempt to tackle interesting subjects. She wrote about unequal access to the justice system, about the underrepresentation of minorities in the law and about whether pro bono work should be mandatory. But she presents no arguments or ideas, except the repetition of the bromide that bad things can be eliminated if people of good will come together to eliminate bad things.
Throw aside ideology. Surely the threshold skill required of a Supreme Court justice is the ability to write clearly and argue incisively....
