George Will weighs in on Miers

Columnist George Will weighed in on the Harriet Miers nomination today, writing an excellence column in which he says that most attempts to justify Bush's choice "cannot be dignified as arguments."

Will also makes a pointed reference to people who are "masquerading as [conservatism's] defenders," and writes that people's efforts to defend Miers are "unseemly."

Sensible people cringed when one of the former Texas Supreme Court justices summoned to the White House offered this reason for putting her on the nation's highest tribunal: ``I can vouch for her ability to analyze and to strategize.'' Another said: ``When we were on the lottery commission together, a lot of the problems that we had there were legal in nature. And she was just very, very insistent that we always get all the facts together.''

In their unseemly eagerness to assure Miers' conservative detractors that she will reach the ``right'' results, her advocates betray complete incomprehension of this: Thoughtful conservatives' highest aim is not to achieve this or that particular outcome concerning this or that controversy. Rather, their aim for the Supreme Court is to replace semi-legislative reasoning with genuine constitutional reasoning about the Constitution's meaning as derived from close consideration of its text and structure. Such conservatives understand that how you get to a result is as important as the result. Indeed, in an important sense, the path the Supreme Court takes to the result often is the result.

You can read the rest of his column here.