OPINION:
During an NFL game, announcers often discuss the “coaching tree” of past and present NFL head coaches who now have former assistants serving as head coaches and thriving in their roles. They will talk about the “Bill Walsh tree,” the “Andy Reid tree” or the “Mike Shanahan tree,” for example.
In American legal parlance, however, there is another “tree” — the “Ed Meese tree,” which now includes several members of the Supreme Court.
On Dec. 2, former Attorney General Edwin Meese III turned 93 years old. His life has been long and rich — he is an embodiment of everything a public servant should be. Warm and gracious while firm and steadfast in his beliefs, Ed (as his friends call him) was not only a great attorney general but a transformative one as well.
And unlike those who did not live to see the culmination of their work, Ed has experienced the blessing of witnessing how his efforts have profoundly changed the American legal system for the better.
He not only made a major impact in his time on the job but also well beyond, even to this day, as he identified and mentored new generations of law students, young attorneys and jurists to reject the “living Constitution” philosophy that had taken root in our nation’s law schools and veered our nation off course and return it to the original intent of our Founding Fathers.
As Steven Gow Calabresi and Gary Lawson write in their new book, “The Meese Revolution,” “Every development over the last four decades that has led to the modern successes” can be traced directly to Mr. Meese.
Ed was also Ronald Reagan’s closest and most trusted adviser — the man who was not only intensely loyal to the presidency but was able to take the president’s vision and agenda and reject the failed and demoralizing policies of previous administrations and replace them with effective policies and an optimistic view of not just the present but the future as well.
But for those of us who have had the honor of knowing and working with Ed, perhaps his most sterling quality is not his brilliant legal mind but his humility and desire to see others rather than himself succeed.
Ed’s philosophy has always been “to make stars of others.” And as you survey America’s legal landscape, you can see the countless “stars” that now shine brightly because of Ed’s tutelage — the “fruit” of the “Ed Meese tree.”
Beyond the courts, other stars include Alan Sears, who served as director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in the mid-1980s and became the founding president and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom, as well as Hugh Hewitt and Mark Levin.
He personally invested in each of these individuals as well as countless other conservative jurists who have steered or are steering our country away from the legal abyss created by the progressive movement.
For Ed, it has never been about glory. It is about serving and equipping others to reach their fullest potential so they can achieve a greater goal — restoring our nation’s judicial system to the original intent of our Founding Fathers.
And unlike many in Washington, Ed treats everyone the same — be it a president, a head of state or a person serving him dinner. He embodies the principle of treating all with dignity and respect because he knows we are all created in God’s image with God-given (not man-decreed) rights.
Now, as he celebrates 93 years on this earth, Ed can look back at his legacy — a transformed legal system and an army of well-qualified conservative jurists who will maintain and strengthen that system and know that his life — like that of George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” — truly touched and changed many in ways large and small.
That is the legacy of Edwin Meese III — the 75th U.S. attorney general — not only the most significant attorney general of our lifetimes but also in the history of the United States. His life is a tree that will bear fruit for future generations.
• Tim Goeglein is vice president of external and government relations for Focus on the Family. He served as a special assistant to President George W. Bush and as a deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison.
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