Harriet Miers Supreme Court Nomination - Reactions To Her Nomination

Reactions To Her Nomination

Miers' nomination drew criticism from both political parties. Principal complaints included:

• That her credentials under objective standards were not sufficient to qualify her for the position.
• That her nomination was the result of political cronyism. Since her legal experience did not compare to that of other possible candidates, like federal appellate judges Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, and Janice Rogers Brown, it was deemed likely that President Bush nominated Miers for her personal loyalty to him rather than for her qualifications. She was compared to Michael Brown, a Bush appointee alleged to have gotten his position based on loyalty rather than experience. Brown had resigned as chief of FEMA exactly three weeks prior to Miers' nomination, amidst nearly universal condemnation of how he and his agency handled Hurricane Katrina.
• That there was no written record to demonstrate that she was either a strict constructionist or originalist in her approach to constitutional interpretation.

Notable conservative commentators expressing these or other concerns included newspaper columnists Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Ramesh Ponnuru, and George Will; former Bush speechwriter David Frum; and constitutional scholar Randy Barnett. Finally, Robert Bork, one of the premier advocates of originalism and a Supreme Court nominee under President Reagan who was eventually rejected by the Senate, proclaimed that the nomination was "a disaster on every level," and a "slap in the face" to conservatives.

In addition to the initial positive comments from Democratic Senator Harry Reid, other prominent Republican conservatives were supportive of Miers, including former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson (who later suggested he would have recanted his endorsement if she had not withdrawn), Senator John Cornyn of Texas, columnist Mark Steyn, and former Indiana Senator Dan Coats, who became the Bush administration's appointed guide for Miers through the confirmation process.

Robert Schenck had access to Harriet Miers during her brief Supreme Court nomination and took exception that she was attending St. John's Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C. rather than a local chapter of the more fundamentalist Church of Christ as she had done back in Texas.

The news of the nomination and Bush's support of it was part of the inspiration for satirist Stephen Colbert to create the term "Truthiness", meaning to know things intuitively without regard for evidence. Colbert said in the guise of his character on The Colbert Report:

Consider Harriet Miers. If you 'think' about it, of course her nomination's absurd. But the president didn't say he 'thought' about his selection. He said this:

(video clip of President Bush:) 'I know her heart.'

Notice how he said nothing about her brain? He didn't have to. He feels the truth about Harriet Miers.