FR Friend John Fund (pictured to the left), a native Californian and an esteemed editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal penned the following tidbit about Former California Congressman Christopher Cox, who was recently confirmed as President Bush’s pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

        Justice Cox?
 
 When the nomination of Harriet Miers was at its most beleaguered, one political commentator suggested the president should appoint Chris Cox, the newly installed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the Supreme Court and name Ms. Miers, a skilled corporate litigator, to the SEC. Now that she has withdrawn, Ms. Miers seems determined to resume her duties as White House counsel. A perch on the SEC might not interest her, but the idea of putting Mr. Cox, a former California congressman and deputy White House counsel in the Reagan years, still holds a lot of appeal. 

Mr. Cox would have several advantages. As a former member of the House leadership, he personally knows more than half of the Senators and has impressed many with his temperament and judgment. Only this past summer, Mr. Cox was fully vetted and won unanimous confirmation by the Senate to the SEC post. His experience in the business world as a corporate litigator would add invaluable perspective to a high court largely staffed with former federal appeals court judges. He also has experience with the many terrorism cases that will come before the court: He was the founding chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

As for confirmability, it’s true that California Senator Barbara Boxer threatened to veto his nomination to a federal appeals court four years ago. But for the Supreme Court, no individual Senator can exercise such a veto and there is a good chance that Ms. Boxer’s more moderate colleague, Dianne Feinstein, would back Mr. Cox. While his views are well known, the Harvard Law School graduate is clearly no ideological hothead and his calm and reasoned approach to the law has won admirers across the political spectrum.

 — John Fund

This is the part of the post where, in return for blatantly pulling content off of the WSJ’s site and reproducing it here, I give a pitch for the WSJ’s Political Diary -Commentary and Analysis of U.S. Politics.  For a mere $3.95 a month, you get an email sent to you each day with some fine nuggets and morsels compiled by the WSJ editorial gurus.  You can check out more information here.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.