… but, if you’re Dubya, it wouldn’t hurt to take some advice from Victor Davis Hanson either. In his latest piece, he gives spot-on recommendations about how the president should move to advance in the war on jihadism, and how to aggressively call to account leftist hate-mongers at home, while even venturing to make some sharp observations about the battle for the Supreme Court:

Before Harriet Miers, conservatives pined for a Chief Justice Antonin Scalia, with a Justice Roberts and someone like a Janice Rogers Brown rounding out a battle-hardened and formidable new conservative triad. They relished the idea of a Scalia frying Joe Biden in a televised cross-examination or another articulate black female nominee once again embarrassing a shrill Barbara Boxer - all as relish to brilliantly crafted opinions scaling back the reach of activist judges. That was not quite to be.

But now, with the Miers’ withdrawal, the president might as well go for broke to reclaim his base and redefine his second term as one of principle rather than triangulating politics. So he should call in top Republican senators and the point people of his base - never more needed than now - and get them to agree on the most brilliant, accomplished, and conservative jurist possible. He should then ram the nominee through, in a display to the American people of the principles at stake.

I would add that he may well not succeed in “ramming” such a nominee through, but that it shouldn’t matter.

The ideological balance of the U.S. Senate no doubt played a huge role in Bush’s gamble with Miers. When he saw her name show up on Harry Reid’s list of acceptable candidates he simply could not resist the idea that his enemies had delivered themselves into his hands. He was sure he knew who Harriet was. It cannot now be said otherwise than that her nomination was a mistake - but Dubya was seduced by his idea of a piece of political sleight-of-hand to out-do all others: putting an ideological conservative on the court and making the Democrats like it.

Bush is painfully aware of the real numbers in the Senate today. If Democrats were able to unify against a nominee with a paper trail full of easily distortable opinions (a realistic likelihood), then Bush would be faced with the weak-kneed Chafees and Snowes, and the worst possible Chairman of the Judiciary Committee that he could have at this point in history: Arlen Specter (who helped Ted Kennedy put the “-ed” in “Bork,” and who has made it quite clear that he will oppose anyone he believes will not support Roe v Wade, in spite of Bush’s support of him against his primary challenger in ‘04. That support now seems like the tragic error of Bush’s presidency.)

Bush should have had one free try at putting someone as combative as Janice Rogers Brown on the court. Let the fight be as rough as it needs to be, and be willing to lose it, on votes, in the end. Then, nominate another papered conservative and dare the same players to do it again. Let the American people have a chance to understand exactly what is at issue with these nominations, and there is no question that the Democrats’ poll numbers would start going through the floor.

Unfortunately, getting mired down with Harriet might seem to have taken that one free shot away from the president. Would failing to get a second nominee confirmed - albeit through getting voted down or filibustered this time - be too much of a political failure for his presidency to bear? Possibly … and possibly not. Politics is not a science; there are unknowables.

In order to succeed with the next nomination, it seems to me, President Bush has to be willing to fail, in terms of the votes. That may be a tall order, but then, there’s more than enough at stake to justify it.

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