Bush Stuns Conservatives in Choice of Miers

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

WASHINGTON – In nominating a trusted adviser with a meager paper trail, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court, President Bush yesterday may have defused a Senate battle that had been brewing for months over a replacement for Justice O’Connor but at the same time stunned loyal elements of his conservative base that had been clamoring for a more overtly conservative pick.


The president introduced his nominee to be the court’s 110th justice at an early morning news conference in the Oval Office, praising Ms. Miers, the White House counsel, as a compassionate and pioneering lawyer who would strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench. He urged the Senate to conduct a fair review of her qualifications and to vote promptly to confirm her.


“In selecting a nominee, I’ve sought to find an American of grace, judgment, and unwavering devotion to the Constitution and laws of our country,” Mr. Bush said. “Harriet Miers is just such a person.”


In choosing Ms. Miers, Mr. Bush is attempting for the second time in three months to walk a thin line on Supreme Court nominees by choosing someone who Democrats in the Senate would find difficult to tar and who would be acceptable to conservative voters that view the court as a central battleground in a decades-long culture war.


The Senate confirmed the president’s nominee to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist, Judge John Roberts Jr., by a solid 78-22 vote last week following a hearing in which Democrats found scant evidence of an agenda on the part of the nominee. Democrats may have similar difficulty finding evidence of an ideological agenda in the record of Ms. Miers, a former corporate lawyer who served as commissioner of the Texas Lottery Commission. She followed Mr. Bush to the White House five years ago.


Equally difficult for the Democrats to overcome are reports that the party’s leader in the Senate, Senator Reid of Nevada, had even recommended Ms. Miers to Mr. Bush as a nominee. Asked yesterday why he recommended Ms. Miers, Mr. Reid said the reports were overblown but did not deny that he mentioned Ms. Miers as a potential nominee.


“I think you’re maybe exaggerating a little bit about the recommendation,” Mr. Reid said. “Certainly I have spoken with people in the administration about Harriet Miers. I’ve worked with her. I haven’t known her a real long time, but I’ve found her to be very personable, very genuine, somebody who answers her phone calls immediately.”


Other Democrats in the Senate, who just last week were sharpening their sabers in expectation of a nominee they had previously opposed for a lower court, were similarly pleased. A vocal member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Schumer of New York, said he was relieved that the president did not choose someone with a record of strong ideological leanings. Still, he said that Ms. Miers’s thin record and lack of judicial experience should compel the White House to release documents related to her tenure there.


“My first reaction is a simple one,” Mr. Schumer said. “It could have been a lot worse … one thing we have to say and that is that the president has not sent us a nominee that we rejected already. The president has not sent us a nominee who has already hewed to the extreme wing of his party.


“The extreme people in the president’s party clearly wanted him to nominate somebody who had already enunciated their views on issue after issue and the president did not. The president realizes that the views of the extreme right wing of his party are not the views of the American people or even close to it.”


The subtlety of Mr. Bush’s pick was reflected in the disputes that broke out yesterday among conservatives. The major Republican groups that have been promoting judicial conservatives for the past five years praised the choice, while several conservative writers and commentators raised doubts. Conservative icon Rush Limbaugh pressed Vice President Cheney yesterday on why Mr. Bush had not engaged the Democrats with a more controversial pick.


“You’ll be proud of Harriet’s record, Rush,” Mr. Cheney said. “Trust me.”


Senate Republicans, many of whom were predicting last week that the president was not looking for a fight, lined up behind Mr. Bush’s nominee. Senator Cornyn of Texas, who is a member of the judiciary and a longtime friend of Ms. Miers, framed the Republican reaction in a press conference at the Capitol less than two hours after the nomination was announced. Mr. Cornyn urged conservatives to hold their fire.


“I heard her speak after the president made the announcement this morning,” Mr. Cornyn said. “She does, I believe, like the president, believe judges should not legislate from the bench but rather strictly interpret the law. That’s exactly what Judge Roberts said. That’s what the president said. And I think that this nomination is true to that same spirit, and that ought to be enough.”


Outside interest groups will spend the next several weeks poring over speeches and other public statements that the 60-year-old White House counsel has made over the last three decades, looking for clues as to her personal and judicial views. Reports were already circulating yesterday morning that painted Ms. Miers in a somewhat inconsistent light.


A former Democrat who once donated money to Mr. Bush’s first opponent in a presidential election, Vice President Gore, Ms. Miers also donated money to a pro-life organization, Texans United for Life, in 1989, and is said to be a close personal friend of a Texas Supreme Court justice who is known in legal circles as one of the most conservative state judges in America, Nathan Hecht. Ms. Miers is a member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, where Mr. Hecht has been an active congregant.


The majority leader of the Senate, Senator Frist, of Tennessee, called on the judiciary committee and the full Senate to finish their examination of Ms. Miers’s record and to vote on her confirmation by Thanksgiving. Democrats said that timetable might not be realistic. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania, said he would work closely with Democrats on setting a timetable but indicated that the entire process should be completed before the end of the year.


“We will have a dignified, professional hearing,” Mr. Specter said. “We will begin them as promptly as we can.”


A native of Dallas and a graduate of the Southern Methodist University and the Southern Methodist University School of Law, Ms. Miers was the first female president of the Texas Bar Association and a former president of a major Dallas law firm. She is single and has no children. Ms. Miers’s most recent primary responsibility at the White House has been advising President Bush on judicial nominees. Many conservatives cited her work in this capacity as evidence of her conservative bona fides.


Ms. Miers gave no indication of her personal views in a brief speech at the White House yesterday morning, sticking instead to a script meant to underscore a strict view of interpreting the Constitution.


“If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong,” Ms. Miers said, “and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution.”

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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