New SCOTUS Nominee may indicate a larger problem

David Frum isn't too keen on Harriet Miers, but more troubling is his general observation of what is hindering George W. Bush's "vision thing."

Again and again, George Bush has announced bold visionary policies - and again and again he has entrusted the execution of those policies to people who do not believe in them or even understand them. This is most conspicuously true in foreign policy, but it has been true in domestic policy as well. The result: the voice is the voice of Reagan, but too often the hands are the hands of George HW Bush.

Or worse. George HW Bush made his bad appointments in the name of replacing Reaganite "ideology" with moderate Republican "competence." He didn't live up to his own billing, but you can understand his intentions. But the younger Bush has based his personnel decisions upon a network of personal connections in which competence plays no very large part.

I don't know enough about Miers to begin to presume to make a judgement, though many others are (and it doesn't look good). However, what Frum has observed certainly does ring true. The President's high-flying rhetoric and ideals will remain grounded unless he begins to appoint right people to implement and foster them.