Harriet, We Hardly Know Ya…

Bush is not the first President to appoint his close friends and advisers to positions of power, but it's hard to think of any President in recent memory who has done so with such single-mindedness, across the board. And today Bush continues that trend by nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court — a woman who, for the last 10 years, has hopscotched her way up the ladder courtesy of her Presidential patron.

Her last job as White House Counsel was the key to her selection, it seems. She was the person in charge of evaluating potential Supreme Court nominees, and it turned out the best candidate around (sans John Roberts) was herself. Funny how that works out — I seem to recall that was how Dick Cheney got his job, too.

Judging from Bush's speech this morning, Miers seems to have three main qualifications for the job of Justice:

1. She's a woman
2. She's a Christian
3. She's a compassionate person

This is all well and good, and I expect that we will hear Bush praise her "good heart" in the not-to-distant future. But noticeably absent from that list is, "She's a good judge," because, in fact, she's never been a judge.

Yes, I know, we've had Supreme Court justices who've lacked judicial experience that were not disasters, and we've had Supreme Court justices that did serve on the federal bench that were. But I'm not optimistic that Miers will turn out to be one of the former.

At this point, we know next to nothing about how Miers would behave as a judge, apart from her pledge this morning that she will "strictly apply the law" (which is merely a code phrase meant to signal her conservative credentials). Presumably, Bush himself knows more about her than he will be willing to say publicly, although I expect he will need to have some quiet chats to reassure some of the more primitive members of the Senate who expected a more Bork-like ideologue.

As for the rest of us, we stand to learn little more about her, which must have been what clinched her nomination. Her work at the White House? Privileged. Private-sector practice? Privileged. Unless the media digs up some skeleton from back in her Texas lottery days, the only place we could learn anything meaningful about her judicial philosophy will be in the Senate hearing room, and after Roberts, refusal to answer a Senator's questions is hardly a disqualifying tactic.

Flying blind this way when it comes to nominating a Supreme Court justice is simply unacceptable, and the Democrats in the Senate need to draw the line. I'm sure she'll have many "constructive" conversations with various Senators in the coming weeks as she makes her tour of the Hill, but those kinds of private discussions are no substitute for a public paper trail.

A former president once said, "trust, but verify." No different approach should be taken with something as important as a Supreme Court nomination. By putting forward a stealth candidate, Bush wants to take out the "verification" part, and say instead, "trust me". Please. As a future former president once said, "Fool me once, shame on… shame on you… but fool me, can't get fooled again." Here's hoping, anyways.