The Nine [156]
With the exception of the Roberts nomination, the summer brought only dismal news for the Bush administration. Earlier in 2005, Iraqis had staged their first free elections since the war, and the voters’ purple-ink-stained fingers became symbols of a hopeful emerging democracy. But in the months that followed, chaos reigned, and dozens of American troops continued to die in Iraq each month. Also during this period, Bush’s plan for including private accounts in the Social Security system crashed, scorned even by most Republicans. Finally, the overall federal response to Hurricane Katrina was widely viewed as indifferent at best and incompetent at worst. Bush’s approval ratings plunged—from around 60 percent favorable at the time of his reelection to about the same percentage unfavorable less than a year later. It was in this context that the president made his second appointment to the Supreme Court.
Once again Bush considered naming a woman to the Court. After O’Connor’s resignation, he had been pressured on the subject from some unusual sources. While on a trip to South Africa, Laura Bush said on NBC’s Today show, “I would really like him to name another woman.” Later that day, Bush appeared startled that his usually circumspect wife had made such a direct appeal through the press. “I can’t wait to hear her advice—in person—when she gets back,” he said in the Oval Office. O’Connor herself signaled that she felt more freedom in her public comments now that she was a lame duck. Returning to a judicial conference in Spokane after a day of fly-fishing, she was informed that Roberts would be named to replace her. “That’s fabulous!” she said, calling Roberts a “brilliant legal mind, a straight shooter, articulate. He’s good in every way, except he’s not a woman.”
But what woman? Bush had already considered various possibilities earlier in the summer, and he had not come up with a perfect choice. The president had been explicitly warned by Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, that the women judges most beloved by conservative activists—Janice Rogers Brown, Edith Jones, and Priscilla Owen—would likely meet a filibuster. Bush didn’t shy from confrontations, but he saw no reason to prompt an unnecessary clash either. Wouldn’t it be better to propose a justice who shared his own views—which were essentially indistinguishable from those of his party’s most conservative members—but who would also have an easy time getting confirmed? Was there anyone who fit that description?
As Bush was talking about the issue with his aides, he remembered something else that Reid had said earlier in the summer. Reid, too, wanted to avoid an unnecessary battle over the Supreme Court. In addition to proffering his Democratic blacklist, the senator raised an interesting possibility. He said he had met with Harriet Miers shortly before Roberts was nominated and he had been very impressed. Reid said Bush should consider his own White House counsel as a nominee to the Supreme Court.
Bush was intrigued. No one was more loyal to him and his agenda than Harriet. And the Democratic leader was suggesting that she could be confirmed without a fight.
22
“I KNOW HER HEART”
The nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court quickly devolved into political black comedy. The caricature of Miers that emerged during her brief journey across the national consciousness—that of a luckless spinster manifestly unqualified to serve on the Court—contains a measure of truth, but her defeat actually stood for something of larger significance. Miers holds a unique place in the history of the Supreme Court as the only nominee to withdraw her