Blogotional

Hugh Hewitt and Powerline are both looking at the same Washington Times piece and deciding the votes are there to break the filibuster on the Alito nomination, should it come to pass -- something I feel inevitable given stridency of the Kennedy/Boxer/Leahy crowd. So why am I worried?

Well, to be cliche' because it ain't over until the fat lady sings, and I ain't heard an aira yet. The biggest question is if this is true why did we have to go through Miers to get here? This president doesn't stumble and while he is loyal, he's no cronyist. Nope I think he knew something we didn't. That's what we're paying him for.

I think we will prevail in the end, but people are way too happy in this post-Miers conservative lovefest -- we have a fight on our hands -- no make that a war. Confidence matters, but it is way to early to crow, and while the anti-Miers crowd won the inter-service battle for who gets to command the fight, we haven't even started the war yet, you don't celebrate minor battles at this stage, you prepare for war.

While we are looking at Miers backwash, a couple of important pieces.

The first comes from Stratfor (subscription required) looking at the national security affects of the L'Afaire d'Miers.

In wartime, the power of the U.S. president is critical. It is the job of a skillful politician in wartime to do whatever it takes to keep the presidency strong and decisive. And as history shows, presidents who are able to hold the political center and act decisively-- despite challenges faced in the war or on other political fronts -- will survive. Franklin D. Roosevelt led the United States through a series of unmitigated disasters -- surviving more than a year of defeat and confusion -- because he nurtured confidence among the public and carefully manipulated situations so as to deflect blame from himself. Adm. Husband Kimmel, the commander-in-chief of the Pacific region, was fired after Pearl Harbor; Roosevelt was not.

Conversely, the center did not hold under Lyndon B. Johnson. His legitimacy and credibility as a warfighting president collapsed with startling swiftness when his own party turned on him -- and the opposition, though still supporting the war, never had any confidence in his warfighting strategy. Roosevelt survived the fall of the Philippines; Johnson could not even survive the Tet Offensive.

Continuing later

At this moment, a number of secondary powers are considering the condition of the American presidency. Iran, as we have noted, is one. Russia is another. For Moscow, the United States is an ally and competitor. If the American presidency is about to enter a black hole, Vladimir Putin will behave differently than he otherwise might. China is dealing with a host of American demands. Those will be dealt with differently if Bush no longer commands the government but only the White House. And in Iraq, of course, every party is looking at American will and American guarantees.

Bush has not lost his presidency. He is merely close to it, and other presidents have recovered from such precarious positions. What he needs is a decisive victory within the United States. That is why he has nominated Samuel Alito, a staunchly conservative judge, for the Supreme Court in place of Miers. Bush is putting all of his eggs in one basket, looking again to shore up his core base of support. If he can win this battle, the entire psychology of his presidency will shift in his favor.

This is no time to get cocky - the stakes are immense.

On another note, Hedgehog had a great post yesterday

Still, something about this does not sit well with me. During the intra-conservative Miers debate many seemed to be saying (whether they would admit it or not) that by default, if you want a serious job like Supreme Court justice done right, the best person for the job is one who has a highly-credentialed Ivy League background. This view seemed to be everywhere, most notably at NRO's Corner and sites like Confirmthem.com. (One amusing thread at Confirmthem.com worried about whether Judge Alito is a "feeder judge," an insider term meaning that his clerks go on to be Supreme Court clerks. I had to smile; what did this mean about his qualifications to be on the high Court? Now we were talking about issues that matter only to the elite among the elites!)

Anyway, I'd feel better if we saw more people in high positions who had superb academic records at the Universities of Nebraska, Florida, Notre Dame, Utah, Colorado, Mississippi, Arizona, and the like. Those are not Ivies, but I think the Republic would still be safe, somehow.

I have to second that. I didn't go to law school, but I am no piker academically. I started my college days at Vanderbilt -- there's one of your elites. I left for personal reasons, not academic problems. Went to Butler, small private school in Indianapolis, graduated.

When I finished and entered the working world, I worked with a lot of people that had gone to the elites. I was way ahead of them because of the kind of attention and interaction I got at the smaller school. It was in a Fortune 500 company at the time and they reevaluated their graduate placement system based on my performance.

Besides, my favorite lawyer in the whole world went to University of Mississippi Law School -- DAD!