Harriet Who?

Based on my piece in BreakingViews:

Harriet Miers’ pressured withdrawal of her nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court raises not one question of succession, but two.

Most immediately, there is the question of who President Bush will nominate to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor. If he nominates another woman, he can be accused of pandering and imposing a quota at the highest level of government—creating a de facto “woman’s seat” on the Supreme Court (or, more specifically, a Republican woman’s seat). If he appoints another marginally qualified loyalist, like Miers, it will raise serious questions of competence. If he appoints a red meat anti-choice conservative, he will provoke a fight with Democrats, and even a few Republicans, that social conservatives say they want, but which Bush has taken pains to avoid.

If that fight ensues, it will be bloody, and will test whether Bush really wants to work hard to please that part of his base—or if he just wants them handy at election time.

Perhaps more serious is the question of presidential succession. As Vice President Dick Cheney has sworn off his own presidential aspirations, there is no clear successor to the Republican presidential nomination. Bush has no one to hand the mantle of power. That means no one stands ready to advance his agenda, whatever it may be. That makes him more of a lame duck—and an earlier lame duck—than second term presidents are normally.

Bush has lost the fight over Social Security. The next big item on the domestic agenda is tax reform. Lowering taxes is easy politically. But tax reform, if revenue neutral, means winners and losers and tough choices. A president who botched Katrina and nominated Miers and whose senior advisers may be indicted any day, bogged down in Iraq, probably won’t have much political capital left to do any serious governing.