President defends pick amid criticism

WASHINGTON -- Declaring that his Supreme Court nominee ''will not legislate from the bench," President Bush yesterday fended off criticism from conservative allies unhappy with the nomination of his White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

In an hourlong news conference in the Rose Garden that covered a range of issues, Bush defended Miers, a corporate litigator who has served a term on the Dallas City Council, as ''a woman of enormous accomplishment. She understands the law. She's got a keen mind."

Bush's announcement Monday that he had tapped Miers, his personal lawyer and more recently White House counsel, caused an unusually sharp rupture within the political right.

Some conservative leaders asserted that the president had missed a historic opportunity to fill the swing-vote seat that is being vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor with an avowedly conservative intellectual who could reshape the Supreme Court for decades.

Asked whether he was trying to avoid a brutal fight with Senate Democrats on the nomination, Bush suggested that he was not.

''The decision as to whether or not there will be a fight is up to the Democrats," he said.

''But," Bush added, ''I'm mindful of the fact that somebody as qualified as John Roberts did have half the Democratic caucus vote against him."

A two-day White House effort to tamp down fires on the right showed small signs of progress, with more conservatives coming to Miers's defense, but others withholding their views.

''A lot of my fellow conservatives are concerned, but they don't know her as I do," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, a conservative former Judiciary Committee chairman. ''She's going to basically do what the president thinks she should, and that is be a strict constructionist." Hatch added that he plans to vote for her.

But Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, issued a statement yesterday refusing to endorse Miers unless her confirmation hearings demonstrate that she is a ''qualified nominee in the mold" of two staunch conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

''I am not yet confident that Ms. Miers has a proven track record," Brownback said.

In meetings with White House strategists leading up to Miers's nomination, Brownback and other social conservatives had made the case that activists want to see clear evidence that any Supreme Court choice supports their positions on issues like abortion.

If not, there were hints that they might sit out the 2006 elections, depriving the GOP of volunteers and voters.

Efforts to head off dissension among grass-roots conservatives began in the early hours Monday, before Bush's announcement, when the deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and others launched a round of phone calls to draw support.

Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention's chief public policy advocate, was stepping into his car Sunday night in Nashville after giving a sermon when his cellphone rang. Tim Goeglein, the president's liaison to religious groups, was calling with a heads-up: A nominee would be announced the next morning.

At 6:45 a.m., Rove called Land with Miers's name and an assurance that she would vindicate Bush's campaign pledge to nominate like-minded conservatives to the bench. Land said he trusted the choice.

''This president has kept no promise more faithfully than the one to nominate strict constructionist jurists who will not seek to write law from the bench," Land said in an interview yesterday. ''Harriet Miers has been actively and intimately involved in helping the president."

James Dobson, the conservative Christian psychologist and Focus on the Family president whose radio show reaches millions, initially expressed skepticism.

But by the end of the day Monday, Dobson said he trusted Bush's choice, largely because of her membership in a conservative evangelical church in Dallas.

But not everybody was satisfied. On Monday, the conservative and Weekly Standard editor, William Kristol, called the choice depressing; National Review Online columnist David Frum called it an ''unforced error"; and talk show host Rush Limbaugh said, ''Like everybody, it's hard to resist the pull to be angry."

The conservative Family Research Council, which has not endorsed Miers, yesterday noted some of her past stands in favor of some gay rights, and said in a posting that her nomination ''continues to roil the waters in this capital."

Land, whose ties to Bush date to the 1980s, dismissed these concerns. ''Some don't know the president as well as I do, so they're at a disadvantage. But [Miers] is a Texan right down to her sensible size 6 shoes, and she's not going to bend to the influence of the bubble that is Washington," he said.

Land, who oversaw a mass evangelical get-out-the-vote operation last year, added that he was not concerned about 2006 because, he predicts that John G. Roberts Jr. -- and, if confirmed, Miers -- would take conservative stances on key cases before the court. ''If the court upholds parental consent," Land said, referring to a case challenging a New Hampshire abortion law, ''the concerns of Senator Brownback and others will be alleviated."

At his news conference, Bush declined to answer the question of whether he had ever discussed the issue of abortion with Miers. ''I have no litmus test. . . . What matters to me is her judicial philosophy," he said.

Bush added that in interviews with any potential judicial nominee, ''I never ask their personal opinion on the subject of abortion."

The president also responded to allegations that he had engaged in cronyism by tapping a longtime member of his inner circle. ''Because of our closeness," he said, ''I know the character of the person."

But on some far-right websites, details about Miers's background, much of it apparently mischaracterized, continued to fuel activist anger.

Webloggers seized on a 1998 report to the American Bar Association's rules and calendar committee that included recommendations for developing policy on an International Criminal Court and removing prohibitions to same-sex adoptions.

ABA officials have stressed that Miers's role in passing on the report was purely administrative, but a weblog called Pro Life News nevertheless called Miers ''Bush's Pro-Sodomite nominee."

Another weblog brouhaha erupted over Miers's support for equal civil rights for gays, when she ran for city council in 1989.

In the same campaign, however, Miers also said that she opposed the repeal of the state's law that made sodomy a criminal offense.