Miers: true believer, or Bush puppet?

WASHINGTON
HARRIET MIERS confronted the trick question head-on last year. Just how did the president play horseshoes with his dog?

''The president throws the horseshoes to Barney, and Barney runs after them," she said matter-of-factly. ''The metal horseshoes are too heavy for Barney to lift, so he doesn't carry them around.

''Instead he moves them around with his nose. He has pretty quickly learned how to get under the horseshoe enough to flip it over. As you know, the president loves horsing around with Barney."

A pal of mine from movement conservatism -- one of those committed souls horrified and disgusted that Bush nominated an unknown loyalist to the Supreme Court -- sent me that little gem from the White House website to illustrate what he considered a sample of her work. I quickly reminded him that was unfair, since Miers's explanation of presidential canine horseshoes had come after her service as the president's staff secretary, during her service as deputy chief of staff for policy, but before her service, for all of about nine months, as the White House counsel.

The question progressive senators should want to pursue once Miers appears before the Judiciary Committee is not how a man and a dog can play with horseshoes but whether Bush's counsel is capable of the independence that is a basic qualification for a justice. The conservative dismay over the appointment reflects more than simple snobbery and goes to the fact that she has left no footprints indicating a formed judicial mind, much less a formed movement conservative judicial mind.

The progressive skepticism about her reflects more than a suspicion of cronyism; it involves the extraordinary degree of her identity with the president.

Take Armstrong Williams -- please. A friend from the left alerted me to this example of Bush administration antiethics, and it could be a representative indication of Miers's devotion to her boss at the expense of independent, sound judgment.

When the conservative commentator's receipt of money, via the Education Department for activities in support of its flawed and underfunded No Child Left Behind program, was exposed, the Bushies went into full damage control. From Bush himself down to department officials, shock and horror were expressed, as was a vow not to pay for praise anymore.

Much less noticed was the administration's careful legal argument that although the activities of Williams and others on the take were politically dumb, they were not illegal -- a judgment in which the White House counsel's office was not a disinterested observer. Two Democratic senators -- Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Edward Kennedy -- asked Congress's investigative agency, the Government Accountability Office, to probe further.

The GAO not only confirmed the six-figure payments to Williams via subcontract from a public relations firm, it also uncovered some previously undisclosed actions -- notably the commissioning of a newspaper column from a press syndicate that was distributed nationally as if it had been independent opinion. And it also probed the use of public money at the Education Department to monitor and rate the coverage by individual outlets and commentators for fealty to the administration line.

For all its spin about stupid ideas, the administration took the odd position that the activity was perfectly legal. These opinions came not only from the Education Department itself but, more important, from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, whose ties to the White House counsel's office are famously intimate.

Both entities opined that because what was being disseminated was information, there was no requirement that the government disclose that it was the source of the information.

This did not pass the GAO's laugh test, and it termed all the expenditures improper precisely because the public was being fed government positions in the guise of actual journalism. The law that was violated is designed to avoid what this stuff really was -- covert propaganda.

At confirmation, it will be interesting to see how Miers explains her boss's legalisms and whether she agreed, as it will be interesting to discover how closely she echoes Bush arguments on a host of issues she has dealt with.

Many conservatives are upset because they want a true believer on the court. Just as important will be the extent, if any, to which Harriet Miers is an independent person capable of independent thought on the Supreme Court.

Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.