Bush taps counsel for high court
Longtime aide would assume O'Connor's seat
WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday nominated his White House counsel, Harriet Ellen Miers -- a corporate lawyer, his former personal attorney, and a longtime friend -- to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
The nomination drew cautious praise from leading Democrats and Republicans, but raised alarm among some of Bush's supporters on the right.
If confirmed by the Senate, Miers, 60, a Dallas native and evangelical Christian who earned her law degree from Southern Methodist University, would become the third woman to serve on the nation's high court. She also could take on O'Connor's frequent role as the critical swing vote on such divisive social issues as abortion, affirmative action, and the role of religion in civil society.
''I've known Harriet for more than a decade," Bush said during an early-morning news conference in the Oval Office. ''I know her heart. I know her character."
Mier thanked her sister, three brothers, and the mother she lived with until leaving Dallas for Washington in 2001. She expressed her ''great respect and admiration for the genius that inspired our Constitution" and pledged to ''help ensure that the courts meet their obligation to strictly apply the law and the Constitution."
Like the late chief justice, William H. Rehnquist, when he was first nominated for the high court, Miers has never served as a judge. She would become the 10th justice since 1933 drawn from a president's administration.
After the relatively smooth ascension of John G. Roberts Jr., a Reagan administration lawyer, to chief justice of the United States, liberal interest groups and many Democrats were geared up for an expensive battle over Bush's second Supreme Court vacancy.
But Miers, a relatively low-profile adviser without an overtly ideological record, suggests the White House -- mindful of low public approval ratings and a stalled domestic agenda -- wants to avert a protracted battle with Democrats.
The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, had urged the president to consider Miers, and yesterday Reid commended her as a ''trail blazer for women." She was the first woman president of both the Dallas Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas.
''I like Harriet Miers," added Reid, who voted against Roberts last week.
Miers is described by friends and colleagues as a quiet but tenacious former corporate civil litigator, who impressed Bush by putting a premium on discretion, loyalty, and attention to detail. Bush discussed the job with Miers three times in late September before offering the job to her over dinner at the White House on Sunday night.
Miers was running a major Dallas law firm in 1995 when Bush, then governor of Texas, who had known her as his personal attorney, tapped her to clean up the state's lottery commission.
In Washington, she has worked with the president since he was inaugurated in 2001 and has played a central role in his selection of judicial nominees, including Roberts.
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a member of the Judiciary Committee who also cast a ''no" vote on Roberts, said Bush's most recent nomination ''could have been a lot worse."
''The president has not sent us a nominee who has already hewed to the extreme right wing of his party," Schumer said. While other Senate Democrats were less receptive, the harshest response to Miers came from the right, where hopes had been high that the president would pick a strong conservative capable of reshaping the court for decades to come. William Kristol, GOP strategist and editor of the Weekly Standard magazine, called the choice of Miers a ''capitulation," attributable in part to Bush's weak standing in the polls.
Meanwhile, grass-roots activists on the right were disgruntled but largely held their fire, waiting for more information on Miers.
Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, noted that Bush had promised a nominee in the mold of two staunch conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
''Our lack of knowledge about Harriet Miers, and the absence of a record on the bench, give us insufficient information from which to assess whether or not she is indeed in that mold," Perkins said.
Bush's choice of Miers was largely a process of elimination, according to Republican strategists with knowledge of the selection process. President Bush was under pressure from many, including his wife, to replace O'Connor with another woman, while Latino political activists had wanted him to pick a Hispanic.
But almost all the top female candidates, mostly appellate court justices, were conservatives who might have provoked a brawl with Democrats, and who might have frightened off enough moderate Republicans to kill the choice.
In addition, the confirmation prospects for the top Latino candidates, the strategists said, weren't much better.
Yesterday, the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, sent an e-mail to party activists asking them to write letters to newspapers, to phone talk shows, and to contact their senators.
Wendy Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, said she and others planned to remind colleagues on the Republicans' right wing that Miers had helped Bush to select scores of like-minded judges to fill appellate and lower court seats.
''There's a lot of her fingerprints on those judges," Long said. ''When they are reminded of that, they will pause."
On the left, however, interest groups that had voiced regret at not having been more aggressive when Roberts's nomination was announced were, again, noticeably subdued. They raised concerns about Miers's record and vowed to demand documents as evidence, but most did not immediately voice opposition to her.
''Because Ms. Miers does not have any record providing a window into her legal views, the Senate must take its advise-and-consent duties very seriously," said Nan Aron, president of the nonprofit group Alliance for Justice. In introducing Miers, Bush emphasized her credentials as a lawyer who opened doors for other women. ''Harriett became a pioneer in the field of law, breaking down barriers to women that remained a generation after President Reagan appointed Justice O'Connor to the Supreme Court," he said.
Miers, described as a devout Christian, is not married. She was the first woman hired at the major Dallas firm now called Locke, Liddell & Sapp, and rose to become the first woman to preside over a major Texas law firm.
As a litigator, she counseled such clients as
Miers also served a two-year term on the Dallas City Council, and was general counsel to Governor-elect Bush's 1994 transition team. She has served Bush in various capacities for 10 years.
After working on legal issues surrounding the 2000 presidential election, Miers was tapped to become Bush's staff secretary.
That job is an influential one, and Miers controlled the paper flow that reached Bush's desk. Her powers meant she could decide which policy initiatives made it to the Oval Office. Even Karen Hughes, one of Bush's closest advisers, had to go through Miers. 