Harriet Miers?

Like everyone else around the country, I'm asking, "Who???", right about now. Bush has chosen another stealth candidate, but this one is about a thousand times more stealthy than the last one. Since I know virtually nothing about her, I will reserve judgement until I've got a lot more information to go on. My initial response is that she's a Bush political crony and that never sits well with me regardless of political party. White House Counsel to Supreme Court Justice is a HUGE leap. I'm sure she's very intelligent and accomplished, but I need to know a lot more about her before I jump on the bandwagon.

Update: It appears that Miers is something of a Souter clone. She's 60 years old and has never been married. To some, that will raise a big red flag but certainly not to me. Marvin Olasky on the World Magazine Blog has already posted a series of posts based on conversations with conservative Christian types who know her very well and have very different opinions. Says one man who is very, very close to her:

"She's an orginalist -- that's the way she takes the Bible," and that's her approach to the Constitution as well -- "Originalist -- it means what it says." He notes that her legal practice involved writing contracts rather than tort law, so she was always looking at the plain meaning of the words: "Originalist."

That doesn't tell us much. "Originalist" covers a huge range. I'm an originalist and so, allegedly, is Robert Bork. But says another, who is not identified but Olasky says is equally reliable and well placed:

"Harriet could have become a conservative in Washington, but unless she did, she doesn't have any particular judicial philosophy... I never heard her take a position on anything... We'll have another Sandra Day O'Connor... Harriet worships the president and has called him the smartest man she's known. She's a pretty good lawyer.... This president can be bamboozled by anyone he feels close to. If a person fawns on him enough, is loyal, works 25 hours a day and says you're the smartest man I ever met, all of a sudden you're right for the Supreme Court."

Ouch. It's the last part that bothers me at this point. Bush does have a predilection to surrounding himself with people he trusts and who virtually worship him and then putting them in positions they have no ability to do. The clueless Karen Hughes as our ambassador to the middle east is a perfect example. Even conservatives are complaining about her utter ignorance of middle eastern cultures and the damage she is doing to our diplomacy in the region. But what on earth made Bush think she was qualified for the job in the first place? She's been nothing but his political lackey for the better part of two decades, with no experience in diplomacy whatsoever.

And the notion that she thinks Bush is the smartest man she knows is frightening. Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks Bush is an idiot or a "retarded chimp" or any of that crap. But I certainly don't think that he's a great intellect either. I can't imagine his own mother claiming that he's brilliant. There's a lot of range between "idiot" and "smartest man I know", but I don't think Bush falls anywhere near the top end of the range (and I don't buy for a moment the "he's just not eloquent" line). So for her to think that indicates either the inability to judge such things accurately or a fawning sycophancy that ought not be rewarded.

So that does concern me here, but obviously that's not enough to make me object. I need to know a lot more about her specifically. There's little doubt that she is strongly anti-abortion, which will trigger automatic opposition from the left, especially as she is replacing O'Connor. I'll be curious to see where Specter comes down on the nomination, given that he is pro-choice. I suspect that there will be a lot more digging done on this one. She simply doesn't have the credentials and track record that John Roberts had to defend himself. She's an unknown. I'll leave it to Rumsfeld to decide whether she's a known unknown or an unknown unknown.