Withdrawal of Miers turns up heat on Bush

WASHINGTON -- President Bush came under renewed pressure yesterday to fill the latest Supreme Court vacancy with a rock-solid conservative jurist, after a withering assault by conservatives in the Senate forced him to abandon his attempt to elevate Harriet E. Miers, his White House counsel, to the nation's highest court.

The decision to withdraw Miers's nomination followed a powerful conservative rebellion against her. That backlash could have left her skewered in confirmation hearings, by Republicans who said she had been too liberal and not qualified to serve.

Despite a White House publicity campaign and one-on-one meetings with senators from both parties, Miers never gained traction with the opposition. In addition, an influential antiabortion group launched TV ads urging Bush to withdraw her nomination.

Her prospects were further dimmed by an escalating disagreement between the Senate and the Bush administration over internal documents she wrote that senators hoped would shed light on her legal reasoning on issues that have come before the White House. In a letter delivered to the White House yesterday morning, Miers cited the standoff for her withdrawal.

She wrote that she realized she could not win confirmation without divulging confidential information and legal advice she has given to the president.

''Protecting the prerogatives of the executive branch and continued pursuit of my nomination are in tension," she wrote the president. ''I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield."

Shortly after receiving the letter, Bush issued a statement saying that he had ''reluctantly accepted her decision."

He made no mention of the conservative pressure, and he promised to select a new nominee in a ''timely manner."

''It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House -- disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," Bush said in the statement.

The retreat on Miers is a staggering blow for Bush, forcing him to find a new Supreme Court nominee acceptable to conservatives and Democrats in a highly charged political environment -- and at perhaps the lowest point of his presidency.

The announcement was made yesterday as a grand jury investigating the leaking of the name of a covert CIA agent was ending its work, fueling speculation that administration officials could be indicted today.

Despite statements from Bush and Miers, the reasons for Miers's withdrawal were far deeper than the tug of war with the Senate over White House documents and executive privilege.

Conservatives said they were disturbed by seemingly conflicting statements she has made on abortion, and they openly questioned her knowledge of constitutional law. Liberals and some prominent moderates, meanwhile, sounded alarms that Miers's relationship with Bush made them skeptical she could be an impartial justice.

In conversations yesterday with Bush and the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., the Senate majority leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, gave the administration a grim prognosis for Miers's Supreme Court hopes. After dining at the Capitol with his leadership team, Frist said he had called Card and had given him an ''accurate reflection of where the nomination stood," including a warning that confirmation would be difficult without White House documents.

In a signal of the unlikely alliances that Miers's nomination created, Senator George Allen of Virginia, a leading conservative, offered a congratulatory handshake just off the Senate floor yesterday morning to Senator Charles E. Schumer, a liberal New York Democrat. ''For different reasons," Allen quipped as he shook Schumer's hand. Both men laughed.

Attention immediately turned to speculation on the next nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring. She has promised to delay her departure until a successor is confirmed.

O'Connor's status as the high court's swing vote has raised the stakes for both sides of the political divide, making a battle over her successor almost inevitable.

Mindful of Miers's thin public record, leading Republicans quickly demanded that Bush pick someone with an established conservative judicial philosophy -- viewpoints he or she would dependably bring to the court on such hot-button issues as abortion, affirmative action, and school prayer. Democrats warned that choosing an archconservative will cause a split in the Senate, where Democrats control enough votes to derail nominations through filibusters.

''President Bush should not reward the bad behavior of his right-wing base," said the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid had suggested to Bush that he consider Miers.

''He should reject the demands of a few extremists and choose a justice who will protect the constitutional rights of all Americans," Reid has said.

Bush had hoped to replicate the smooth confirmation process of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. when he turned to Miers, an accomplished civil attorney.

Miers, who is from Dallas, has had frequent interactions with senators as White House counsel over the past year. With Republicans controlling 55 of the 100 Senate seats, there initially seemed to be few reasons to doubt that she would be installed by Thanksgiving.

The White House seemed unprepared for the conservative backlash.

The administration, however, had been warned that Miers would probably not be popular among the president's main base of support. Conservative commentators such as George Will, William Kristol, and Rush Limbaugh raised immediate -- and sometimes harsh -- questions about Miers' legal credentials, as well as about her points of view.

On Wednesday, a conservative group founded by a former Bush speechwriter, David Frum, started airing television ads asking that the nomination be withdrawn.

Yet for all the interest groups' sound and fury, Miers's candidacy was undone by disastrous private meetings with senators on Capitol Hill, according to political officials close to her confirmation process.

To overcome bipartisan resistance to her nomination, Miers's supporters recognized that she needed a stellar performance at what promised to be a brutal set of confirmation hearings, which had been due to open Nov. 7.

As Roberts, a federal judge with sterling credentials, used his personality and breadth of constitutional legal knowledge to wow senators in one-on-one meetings in the summer, Miers by contrast was described as quiet and reserved, and some senators thought her answers to their questions seemed pat and rehearsed.

Early indications from the meetings, shared on the Senate floor and in cloakrooms, suggested that she might not have the judicial star quality that Bush and some senators had hoped, according to several senators and aides.

''When you get in front of that committee, it was going to be tough," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota. ''She gave what I thought were good answers, but you're also looking to measure the intensity, the conviction, the passion. There were some questions about how she would project in the committee."

Beyond her low-key demeanor, Miers suffered from two perceived faux pas, both made in private sessions with leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a meeting with the panel's ranking Democrat, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Miers cited the Supreme Court justices she admired as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Warren E. Burger. Since Burger generally is not considered a legal titan, Miers's answer required clarification from the White House, which left her struggling candidacy looking even shakier.

With the committee chairman, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, there was confusion about what Miers had actually said about her views on a constitutional right to privacy -- the bedrock principle for the Roe v. Wade decision that established a right to abortion. Specter said she told him she believes in such a constitutional right and supports the Supreme Court's Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, one of the legal precedents used to establish it.

But when that description hit the news wires, Miers called Specter to contradict his account.

Specter said publicly that he would accept her version of the events, but he also pointedly maintained that he understood what she meant at the time.

Lingering in the background throughout the process was the conflict over internal White House documents that Miers had written. Democrats demanded papers from Roberts's White House tenure in the George H. W. Bush administration and were rebuffed, yet Roberts won 78 Senate votes and easy confirmation.

This time, with few public records to go on, Republicans -- including Specter and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, a leading conservative voice on the Judiciary Committee -- joined Democrats in calling for more paperwork. The confrontation prompted Miers to bow out to protect the president, said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican and a longtime friend.

''It was the tipping point," Hutchison said. ''The specter of a hearing in which they were going to fight about what was privileged information from the White House was something she did not want to face."

The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said the decision to withdraw was Miers's alone, based on her realization that to win over the Senate and become an associate justice she had to violate the attorney-client relationship between her and Bush, a longtime friend with whom she has worked since before he was governor of Texas. ''Senators had made it clear that she would be required to cross those lines in the confirmation process," McClellan said. ''The focus was always on the Senate. And it was Harriet Miers that came to this decision."

McClellan said Miers called the president at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday to tell him she intended to withdraw. But White House aides working on her nomination did not seem to know; at 11:40 Wednesday night, eight large boxes were delivered to the Judiciary Committee, containing a supplemental questionnaire from Miers and documents from her previous work in the private sector.