Curious as to how we were supposed to regard the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, I called my favorite inside source: Ananias Ziegler, media relations director of the Committee That Really Runs America.
After the usual pleasantries, he said he’d just returned from a vacation, and things had come unwound during his absence. “You wouldn’t believe this mess. The House majority Leader, or he was until this happened, is under indictment in Texas. The Senate majority leader has been subpoenaed in an insider-trading investigation. There’s a special prosecutor with a grand jury questioning Karl Rove, the president’s right-hand man. Plus there are several investigations into Jack Abramoff’s activities, and he’s a lobbyist who’s dealt with just about everybody. Not to mention the president threatening to veto a bill because it might limit his ability to torture people.”
“That wasn’t why I called,” I reminded him. “I wanted to get the right spin on Miers. The last I heard, good Americans were supposed to support her because she went to the right church, even though we weren’t supposed to know or care what church John Roberts attended.”
“Will you quit demanding logical consistency from us?” Ziegler objected. “Besides, that’s all past history now.”
“Isn’t all history in the past?” I asked.
“You know what I mean.” Ziegler took a deep breath and his voice calmed. “Now we want you to pay attention to Miers’s inspiring biography, how she worked her way up and was the first woman partner in her Dallas law firm, and the first woman president of her state bar association.”
“So she has a record of accomplishment,” I agreed. “You’re assuring me that she’s not just another Bush crony?”
“Don’t put words into my mouth,” Ziegler said. “The point is, we know she opposes the Roe v. Wade decision, even though we also know that she doesn’t have an opinion on Roe v. Wade.”
That was so confusing that I skipped asking about it. “So, we should play up her biography as a feminist pioneer in good-ol’-boy Texas, and leave the rest?”
“That’s exactly what the committee has in mind,” Ziegler answered. “Now I suppose you’re going to ask me about that political witch-hunt by District Attorney Ronnie Earle in Austin that has needlessly besmirched the reputation of an outstanding leader like Tom Delay?”
I hadn’t been planning to ask about that, but why not? “Isn’t that the same Tom Delay who said that there’s no fat left to cut in the federal budget to fund recovery from Hurricane Katrina? Yet the budget has $200 million to build a bridge to an island in Alaska that has only 50 residents? Isn’t there some law about speaking while under the influence of a controlled substance?”
He sighed. “Someday you’ll learn the difference between a liberal and a conservative. A liberal taxes you to provide pork-barrel spending projects that get him re-elected. A conservative borrows from your children and grandchildren to finance projects that get him re-elected.”
Glad that the distinction was now clear, I asked how the committee planned to spin the administration’s current problems.
“We’ve already started. We’ve put a lot of our people on Fox News to talk about how this represents nothing more than the ‘criminalization of political differences,’ so that the public won’t take these investigations seriously.”
“But what if that doesn’t work?” I asked.
“We’ll play our hole card. We’ll point out that criticisms of the administration and its allies in Congress can weaken the president politically, and thereby damage his ability to lead the nation in the wars on terrorism, drugs, Iraqi insurgents, etc. Thus it harms America to suggest that they’re anything less than perfect, and so any critic is a traitor.”
He said he was already late for a meeting to prepare media strategy on yet another indictment, so he had to go, but not before he assured me the committee would be watching for traitors.
Ed Quillen of Salida is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
