Miers’ known for unshakable loyalty to Bush

October 3, 2005

Harriet Miers is the first Supreme Court nominee in a generation not to have ever served as a judge at any level. She held elective office once — serving one term on Dallas City Council in the late 1980s. But what she lacks in judicial and lawmaking experience, Miers makes up for in unswerving loyalty to the president.

Miers’s low-key but high-precision style is particularly valued in a White House where discipline in publicly articulating policy and loyalty to the president are highly valued. Formerly Bush’s personal lawyer in Texas, Miers came with him to the White House in 2001 as staff secretary, the person who screens all the documents that cross the president’s desk. She was promoted to deputy chief of staff before Bush named her counsel after his reelection in November. She replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, another longtime Bush confidant, who was elevated to attorney general.

“Harriet Miers is a trusted adviser on whom I have long relied for straightforward advice,” Bush said at the time. “Harriet has the keen judgment and discerning intellect necessary to be an outstanding counsel.”

When he was governor of Texas, Bush offered a less formal assessment at an awards ceremony, calling Miers “a pit bull in size 6 shoes.” The line stuck, in no small part because it described her cool but dogged determination.

Bush and Miers have been close professional allies for over a decade. After the two met in the 1980s, Bush recruited Miers to work as counsel for his 1994 gubernatorial campaign. Once in office, then-Gov. Bush appointer Miers to the Texas Lottery Commission. Miers was then a lawyer for Bush’s presidential campaign before joining him at the White House.

“I remember seeing him in her office many years ago, before he was governor, before he was running for anything,” [Jerry Clements, a partner at Locke Liddell & Sapp, the 400-lawyer Texas firm where Miers was a co-managing partner before coming to Washington] said. “So it’s been a long relationship and a very loyal relationship.”

Miers is so loyal to the president, she once told National Review’s David Frum that Bush was the most brilliant man she had ever met.

While we’ll get to know a lot more about Miers’ record and beliefs in the coming weeks, we can start off this process knowing that the president has done what he always does — place loyalty above all.

I guess Bush isn’t expecting to be indicted.

  • I guess Bush isn’t expecting to be indicted.

    Or he is and he’s counting on at least one supportive vote on the Supreme Court when his case gets there on appeal. (I’m kidding; she’d have to recuse herself)

  • Just as many expected. A stealth nominee. What are her REAL qualifications again? She’s a lawyer? I wonder how the ABA will rate her (not that it matters). I don’t like it. I’m not sure the wingnuts will either. They’ll only have Bush’s personal assurance that she’s one of them, which she no doubt is. She’s going to be tough to oppose.

  • I notice that the hotter things get for Bush, the smaller his talent pool becomes. Appointing Rove to head up the reconstruction of LA was laughable. Appointing a longtime aid and sycophant to the supreme court is… perhaps unsurprising.

    I am heartened that Miers is no Bork. But I think she is another Roberts–vague, nebulous, ill-defined–and we won’t know her real quality until she makes decisions on the court.

    best,

  • I think the first question asked of her should be: I see her on your resume that you weren’t even a judge supervisor at a horse show. What makes you qualified to be on the Supreme Court?

    If the Democrats go into this with the presumption that she’s qualified and simply ask about her beliefs, they’ve already lost the battle. She has no qualifications and this lack should be tied to all the other ignorant cronies given high positions (and what they thought to be sinecures) by Bush. She should become the Mike Brown of jurists.

  • Leftist Boddhisatva,

    What makes you think she’s not another Bork? Bork, at least, was qualified for the job by a long and distinguished (if disturbingly far to the right) academic career.

    As to your suggestion that we won’t know her real quality until she’s on the court, I sincerely hope that she never makes it that far. While I was generally okay with Roberts, my tentative view as to Miers is that Democrats and the public should oppose this nomination at all costs. No one who refers to the illiterate oaf in the White House as “the most brilliant man [she] has ever met” has any place on the Supreme Court, particularly when her impressive legal resume suggests that the comment could have been nothing other than shameless toadying.

  • Being a judge is not and should not be a prerequisite for being on the Supreme Court. Many liberal legal commentators have been arguing for the past several years that the Supreme Court is too homogenous in background, with little “real world” experience. There have been many justices who were not judges; many others were judges only briefly and that was far from their primary qualification.

    Moreover, the ABA will surely give her a good rating: she was nomiated (and in a close two-person race) to be the #2 position — Chair of the House of Delegates — before withdrawing to take her White House position.

    Despite all of that, and despite the political problems of opposing a female nominee, the Dems should vigorously oppose her nomination. She is a total stealth nominee with no record. While her resume is impressive compared to your, mine, and the “normal” world, it is singularly mediocre for a Supreme Court Justice. There are 50-100 women lawyers with similar resumes; argumably most of them better. Court of Appeals judges, federal district judges, state supreme court justices, state attorneys general, US Senators, attorneys who often argue before the Supreme Court, etc. The only distinguishing feature of her resume is her close confidante relationship with Dumbya. That should be a negative, not a positive.

    A Justice Miers to join a Justice Thomas will represent a major step down from a Supreme Court looked up to as the very brightest, most capable jurists. It will start to look more like FEMA in robes.

    Dem Senators: Kill this nomination. Right from the start. No waffling, no weasling, no happy get-along talk you cant back out of later. Call her a dime-a-dozen staff attorney, and request better. Name names of more qualified Republican women lawyers to make the point and make Dumbya really look bad. In the words of a famous Republican woman, Just Say No!

  • (I’m kidding; she’d have to recuse herself)

    I thought Supreme Court Justices made the decision for themselves…she would be the one to decide whether she felt it was appropriate to recuse herself. Just look at Scalia, Cheney, and Duck Hunting.

    If she does get elected to the SC and a case against Bush and company comes up, you better believe no amount of public outcry would get her to recuse herself.

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