Harriet Who?

Talk about stealth candidates. Not only does Harriet Meier not have any judicial experience, she is not even a public figure. My guess is that there is almost nothing she has written that is in the public record. Thus, there is going to be a huge push to get access to what she has written while part of the Bush legal team, and Bush is virtually certain to resist on the grounds of attorney-client privilege. After all, he asserted that privilege and refused to disclose John Roberts' writings during his daddy's administration. The claim is going to be even stronger with regard to advice Meier gave Bush himself. The fight over access si going to be BIG.

Apart from that, I am not immediately comforted by what little there is out there on her history. She has some fairly impressive crdentials as a successful woman (managing partner of a major Texas law firm; Prsident of the Dallas abd Texas Bar Associations) and commerical litigator, but the imporession I get is of a legal technocrat. When they ask her about her judicial philospohy, my guess is that she will be able to say with complete honesty, "I don't know. I've never really had to think about such things. The only thing that ever mattered to me were the interests of my client." As noted by one of her law partners in a profile in the Washington Post in June:

"The thing that comes to mind when I think of Harriet is that she basically puts her clients' interests ahead of everything, including her own personal life, sleeping hours and all those things," said Jerry Clements, a partner at Locke Liddell & Sapp, the 400-lawyer Texas firm where Miers was a co-managing partner before coming to Washington. "She is defined by hard work, dedication and client loyalty."

That's high praise if what you want is a talented and relentless advocate ("a pit-bull in size six shoes" as Bush is reported to have dubbed her), but I'm not sure it says much if anything if you are looking for a Supreme Court Justice.

A December 2004 profile in the Legal Times expressed serious concerns even about her ability to be an effective White House counsel:

She has also earned a reputation as exacting, detail-oriented, and meticulous -- to a fault, her critics say.

"She can't separate the forest from the trees," says one former White House staffer.

But Miers' supporters say her emphasis on detail and procedure are exactly what the Office of the White House Counsel requires.

"She is very thorough and very hard-working and very conscientious and very careful, which is why she was a good choice for staff secretary and why she's a good choice as counsel," notes Brett Kavanaugh, a former White House associate counsel who replaced Miers as staff secretary in the summer of 2003.

* * * *

Her critics say the problem goes beyond what Miers does or doesn't know about policy -- and right back to a near-obsession with detail and process.

"There's a stalemate there," says one person familiar with the chief of staff's office. "The process can't move forward because you have to get every conceivable piece of background before you can move onto the next level. People are talking about a focus on process that is so intense it gets in the way of substance."

One former White House official familiar with both the counsel's office and Miers is more blunt.

"She failed in Card's office for two reasons," the official says. "First, because she can't make a decision, and second, because she can't delegate, she can't let anything go. And having failed for those two reasons, they move her to be the counsel for the president, which requires exactly those two talents."

Responds White House Deputy Counsel David Leitch: "She certainly delegates. She couldn't possibly dream of doing any of these jobs, this job or the job she has now, without delegating."

Does this sound like solid Supreme Court material to you?

Early reactions are summarized on the WaPO Supreme Court Blog and elsewhere (e.g. AP via The Guardian), so I won't repeat most of it. But it is confused. Naturally Frist and Hatch have issued statements supporting Meiers, while Schumer and Leahy are suspicious. And the abortion groups want a yes/no answer to the question of whether she will vote to uphold abortion rights

But, surprisingly, Harry Reid seems to support her, and, there's trouble on the Right:

From RedState.org:

"Mr. President, you've got some explaining to do. And please remember - we've been defending you these five years because of this moment."

From Public Advocate:

"The President’s nomination of Miers is a betrayal of the conservative, pro-family voters whose support put Bush in the White House in both the 2000 and 2004 elections and who were promised Supreme Court appointments in the mold of Thomas and Scalia. Instead we were given “stealth nominees,” who have never ruled on controversial issues, more in the mold of the disastrous choice of David Souter by this President’s father."

And from Manuel Miranda, columnist for the WSJ (as reported by AP):

The reaction of many conservatives today will be that the president has made possibly the most unqualified choice since Abe Fortas who had been the president’s lawyer. The nomination of a nominee with no judicial record is a significant failure for the advisers that the White House gathered around it. However, the president deserves the benefit of a doubt, the nominee deserves the benefit of hearings, and every nominee deserves an up or down vote.”

Should be a very interesting Fall.