I had to take a step back when I read Tara Stroll’s latest column on Harriet Miers and affirmative action (“Where did equality go?” page 4, Nov. 14). I had never thought of l’affaire Miers as proof of the inherent folly of affirmative action policies. Although Stroll may have uncovered an idea not much discussed in print — that the nomination itself was a case of affirmative action — I think she missed the larger point. I agree that President Bush probably nominated a woefully unqualified candidate because she was a woman. However, Stroll seemed to write that off to a misguided, knee-jerk attempt at diversity on Bush’s part. I give him more credit.
When Miers withdrew her bid, my mother opined that, if the president’s goal had been precisely to ensure that a woman would not end up on the Court, yet to win himself credit meanwhile for nominating a woman, he couldn’t have done a better job. In short, he picked a sure loser on purpose (or his puppeteers did). I replied that, if I wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned in my own lifetime, I wouldn’t appoint a woman on a bet. The Alito nomination just goes further to confirm this administration’s agenda.
David Meadow SED ’06
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
