COMMENTARY: Uproar Over Nominee Reveals Our Conflicted Common Life

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Despite a stellar career, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is coming to resemble Peter Sellers’ character “Chauncey Gardiner” in the brilliant 1979 film “Being There.” In the film, self-absorbed people projected onto the unworldly Chauncey whatever they wanted. In their eyes, he became wise by mouthing television platitudes, repeating […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Despite a stellar career, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is coming to resemble Peter Sellers’ character “Chauncey Gardiner” in the brilliant 1979 film “Being There.”

In the film, self-absorbed people projected onto the unworldly Chauncey whatever they wanted. In their eyes, he became wise by mouthing television platitudes, repeating back their own words, or saying nothing at all. They mistook his vacant stare for calm and his blank demeanor for self-confidence.


By all accounts, Miers is no slouch. Yet, beyond succeeding in Dallas and serving her clients, most recently President Bush, and some personal glimpses from talkative friends, little is known about the nominee.

To some, her blank judicial slate is a plus: no paper trail, no mountain of briefs to be mined for awkward nuggets. To others, the missing prologue frustrates their desire to pin her down on hot-button issues. The president’s plea, “Trust me,” carries little clout nowadays.

The sparse resume leaves politicians and culture warriors free to make of Harriet Miers what they will. In the process, they show how conflicted we are about our common life.

To some, Miers is merely a Bush “crony,” as if officialdom were so untrustworthy that any connection to it is a disqualification.

To some, Miers isn’t far enough to the right. Signs of open-mindedness are held up like dirty linen. They want guarantees, as if a bright mind, solid legal experience, openness to subtlety and skills at bargaining spelled doom to their ideological agenda.

Some Democrats back Miers simply because conservatives don’t, as if tweaking the GOP were sufficient credential.

These projections reveal a political world where depth, nuance, candor and accountability are deemed dangerous, and the citizenry is viewed as a fickle TV audience hungry for quasi-religious soothing and the smiling bromides of Chauncey Gardiner.


When trust is absent, we fill the void with our distrust. When facts are assumed to be spun, we make much of what little we know. When officials lie, we look for dire motives. When religion forces its ideological agenda, we alternately fawn over or dismiss stories of Miers’ faith experience.

What we fight about isn’t Harriet Miers’ suitability for office, but ourselves and how awful the other guy is. We fight about “my way or the highway” and the blissful assumption that “my way” is “God’s way.” We fight about how to protect ourselves from politicians and from what our neighbor might do if granted freedom. We fight about the triumph of ideology over intelligence.

I have no idea whether Harriet Miers will make a good Supreme Court justice. But I do know that the furor over her nomination reveals how divided, untrusting and doctrinaire our nation has become.

I suggest we interview her a different way.

First, “Are you smart and wise?” Smart enough to hold your own in the high court’s snide intellectual brawling, and wise enough to imagine another person’s point of view.

Second, “Are you able to listen?” Not just filtering others’ words through your preconceptions, but listening deeply to their argument, reasoning, need, uniqueness and experience. Law, after all, is about citizens, not about theories or ideologies.

Third, “Can you think creatively?” It’s like biblical reasoning. You can’t just recite ancient words and call it a day’s work. If issues were that easily resolved, they wouldn’t be on your docket. “Originalism” can be a starting point, but it isn’t an escape from creative problem-solving.


Fourth, “Can you handle complexity?” Moving beyond litmus tests and simple slogans and embracing the subtlety, complexity, orneriness and zest that real people living real lives in a free nation inevitably bring to the bench.

Finally, “Are you humble?” Our enemy, you see, isn’t wrong opinion, error or inconsistency; our enemy is hubris, overweening pride, which insists on its own way and cares little for the rights, needs and ideas of others.

MO/JL END RNS

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Tom Ehrich, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.

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