Let 'Em Talk

When first I heard about George Bush appointing a woman who's never been a judge to the Supreme Court, It was a "WTF, over?" moment. Then a couple of facts were pointed out in the previous link:

Rehnquist and nineteen other supreme court justices had never served as judges before serving on the High Court.

Bush has a high opinion of her lawyerly verbal fencing skills: "He also joked of Miers, 'When it comes to a cross-examination, she can fillet better than Mrs. Paul.'"

The former is likely to become a major Republican talking point. But the latter is more interesting, in light of the Roberts appointment. Bill Buckley wrote after the Bork rejection that Supreme Court nominees who make an attempt to demonstrate their intellectual skills are rejected, while those who give the impression, like Souter, of having no mind, are accepted. John Roberts managed to turn that on his ear by letting the Senators who questioned him make asses of themselves, then respond with carefully measured briefs.

While it's easy to joke about how impressive someone's verbal skills need to be to impress Bush, the President may have learned the trick to getting his kind of people on the high court: get someone who can play the Senators and give them nowhere to go. Whether this means she should actually be on the Supreme Court, I don't know.