Curiouser and Curiouser

Power Line points out E. J. Dionne's hypocrisy in faulting supporters of Harriet Miers for bringing her religious faith into the issue when he had previously advocated making John Roberts' Catholicism an issue during his confirmation hearings.

I find it kind of odd to hear so many conservatives criticizing Miers for the same reasons the Dems attacked Roberts, an insufficient paper trail. If Chuck Schumer doesn't have the right to know Roberts' personal views, why should they claim the right to have Miers written assurance that she believes in strict construction? And it's OK for NRO cronies to be nominated, but not for Bush's? Crony doesn't apply to a well-qualified person just because the President knows him/her well.

The denunciations of Miers are no different from those from the left about Roberts' views. What they're arguing, as John Pohhoretz did explicitly on Hugh Hewitt's show today, is that if she had a truly first class intellect, she'd have been writing law review articles for the past forty years. I can't for the life of me see that logic. It's like saying that Einstein was an idiot, because he didn't speak until he was three years old. He also dropped out of high school and didn't study at Harvard.

Podhoretz also argued that it's not enough to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, you have to know why it needs to be overturned. Gee, I didn't know that there was only one true path to Constitutional interpretation. What she knows is that Roe is not something the Court should be dealing with because it's a policy question, not one of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution.

The thickheadedness of these people astonishes me. I'm starting to wonder what other things I thought we had in common that we don't. I was a high school valedictorian, but I realized early on that good grades were a skill that didn't make me any better than someone with a gift for being a mechanic, or learning sports statistics. I've had difficulty being impressed by intellectuals ever since. To me it's another skill like pitching in the big leagues, or quarterbacking or generalship. Why should people endowed with an intellectual bent think that they're better than everybody else?
(Note: I do not concede for an instant that Harriet Miers is any less intelligent or able to analyze legal arguments than John Roberts. I just don't see that writing about this stuff is necessary to prove you get it.)