Crying Uncle

Well, Harriet Miers finally fell on her sword today, in one of the less surprising events of recent days. While I'm glad that a clearly unqualified person is not getting on the Court, the whole dynamic at play here -- either he nominates someone unqualified, or someone qualified but whose political and judicial philosophy is one that I oppose -- makes the Miers thing a Pyrrhic victory at best. Still, it was nice that the Left basically got to sit this one out and watch the Right eat its own young, as the Right is wont to do. I look forward with weariness to hearing about how this whole debacle was the Democrats' fault, and how the Right will forget this whole episode, as illustrative as it is of George W. Bush's refusal to take anything about governance seriously*, ever happened when the President offers up a good Movementarian judge for the Court. Oh well. As Matthew Yglesias notes:

In the final analysis, any situation which begins with (Supreme Court vacancy) + (President George W. Bush) + (Republican Senate) is going to have a bad outcome for the country, so it's all a question of minimizing the harm done while preparing to win in '06 and '08. The only way to get a good justice would have been to have won the previous election.

Still, I have to say that given the choice between having a brilliant Conservative on the Court and a boob Conservative on the Court, I'd at least want to have the brilliant one, if only because going up against the best tends to bring out one's best, if that makes sense. But if the right thing ended up happening here (and it clearly did -- there is no convincing argument to be made at all for Harriet Miers being Supreme Court material), then the right thing happened at least in part for the wrong reasons (i.e., she hasn't imbibed from the Keg of Konservatism deeply enough). I'm always nervous when the right thing is done for the wrong reasons, because the wrong reasons often end up serving as the basis for doing something colossally stupid later on. (See "Iraq" for any number of examples of this.)

* OK, I'll grant that from all reports, his pick this week for Fed chairman seems to be a decent one. But as Ian Fleming once wrote, "You can't sow a million seeds without reaping one potato."

UPDATE: On the new Fed Chair, Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting point:

Along with Bernanke's more obvious qualifications, Bush "wanted someone with whom he feels personally comfortable." That's a reasonable criterion for a White House aide of some sort, a pretty dubious one for a cabinet secretary, and a downright bizarre one for someone heading an independent agency. Another good Bernanke quality is that, according to Barnes, he's as slavishly loyal to tax cutting as the president.

...

Now, as it happens, this addled procedure generated a decent outcome. There happens to have been a person eminently qualified for the job who was also sufficiently loyal to the Bush clan, personally likeable, good at talking to idiots without talking down to them, not a Democrat, and not too well-liked by the professional Fed staff. But what if there hadn't been? Can there be any doubt Bush would have picked an unqualified nominee rather than swallow the bitter, bitter pill of choosing a Fed chair guilty of one of those deadly sins? There's a problem here.

Hmmmmm.