Because Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has practically zero public record, any documents reflecting her professional background become all the more significant. If senators are to understand her expertise and qualifications for a lifetime position on the nation’s highest court, they’ll have to scrutinize what limited materials are available.
One wonders, then, what the Senate will make of a collection of Miers’ official correspondence from Texas.
Harriet Miers, President Bush’s nominee for the Supreme Court, quickly developed a deep and almost gushing admiration for her boss from her earliest days in Texas government.
“You are the best governor ever — deserving of great respect!” she wrote in 1997, in a belated birthday note that was typical of the tone she used in her correspondence with then-Gov. Bush.
The letter was one of a handful of personal notes included in more than 2,000 pages of documents released Monday by the Texas State Library — most of them routine legal memos, press releases and transcripts. The letters offer a rare glimpse into the mutual admiration that sprung up between Miers and Bush after they began working together on Bush’s first campaign for Texas governor in 1994.
You almost get the impression that they wrote “BFF” in each other’s yearbooks.
Indeed, Miers oozes with deference and awe in her letters to Bush. In a 1995 note, she thanked Bush for a visit and called a ride in a plane with him “Cool!” When she wrote Bush a thank-you note for meeting with a lottery job applicant in 1997, she wrote, “You are the best!”
Likewise, in a 1996 letter thanking Bush and his wife, Laura, for serving as chairs of a Dallas luncheon honoring Miers, the future Supreme Court nominee spoke of a little girl who’d raved about getting Bush’s autograph.
“I truly believe if the governor told her she should be an Astronaut, she would do her best to become one,” Miers wrote. “I was struck by the tremendous impact you have on the children whose lives you touch.”
In other notes, Miers described Bush personally as “cool,” said he and Laura were “the greatest!” and told him that “Texas is blessed” to have him as governor.
We’re venturing into unseen hero-worshipping territory here.