Harriet Miers - Government Service

Government Service

Before assuming the position of White House Counsel, Miers had served as White House Staff Secretary, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. Before joining the Bush administration, Miers was a lawyer in private practice for 27 years, handling business cases and acting as then-Governor Bush's personal lawyer. She served as the first female president of both the Dallas Bar Association and later the State Bar of Texas and also served one term on the Dallas City Council.

In 1995, George W. Bush, then Texas governor, appointed Miers to chair the Texas Lottery Commission. Some have credited Miers with reforming the commission after a previous corruption scandal.

Her tenure has also been criticized. In 1997, the commission under Miers hired Lawrence Littwin as executive director but fired him five months later. At the time, the contract to operate the lottery was held by the politically connected GTech Corporation, which had obtained the contract with the help of a former Lieutenant Governor of Texas (Democrat Ben Barnes). Littwin, as director, began an investigation into whether GTech had made illegal campaign contributions and whether GTech owed the commission millions of dollars for breaches of its contract. He stated that Miers ordered him to stop the investigation. He brought a lawsuit alleging that he was fired in retaliation for the investigation and to ensure that GTech would keep its contract. According to Texans for Public Justice, GTech paid Littwin $300,000 to settle the suit.

Miers resigned from the lottery commission in early 2000, a year before her term ended. She said her resignation had nothing to do with lagging sales in the system's biggest game, Lotto Texas, but rather that she wanted to allow her successor time to prepare for rebidding the lottery's primary operator contract.

There was some speculation during Bush's 2000 campaign that Bush would appoint Miers to the position of Attorney General. This was seen as possible with her trusted role as Bush's personal attorney and her many appointments during his tenure as governor. This also recalled William French Smith, who was Ronald Reagan's personal attorney before being named Attorney General. Miers was not chosen and John Ashcroft became Attorney General instead.

In January 2001, Miers did follow Bush to Washington, D.C., serving as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary during the first two years of his presidency. In that role, she opposed the administration's 2001 decision to stop cooperating with the ABA rating of judicial nominees. In 2003, she was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. In November 2004, Bush named her to succeed Alberto Gonzales, his nominee for Attorney General, to the post of White House Counsel, the chief legal adviser for the Office of the President.

Miers is said to be one of Bush's closest personal friends and appears given to effusive praise for the President. According to former Bush speechwriter David Frum, Miers has called Bush the most brilliant man she had ever met and says he was the "best Governor ever." She also stated that "serving President Bush and Mrs. Bush is an impossible-to-describe privilege" and noted that Bush's personal qualities "make a brighter future for our nation and people all around the world possible."

Miers' last public speech before her nomination was given to the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce on June 2, 2005.