RealClearPolitics

October 5, 2005
One Thing's For Sure, Miers Will Be Nobody's Robot
By Froma Harrop

Harriet E. Miers is the sort of woman I might like to go out with for lunch and a movie. That in no way qualifies her for a seat on the Supreme Court, I know. But your author appreciates movie companions who offer independent opinions. Miers -- may I call you Harriet? -- looks to be a lady with her own mind, and that is a good trait in a Supreme Court justice, too. As for her other qualifications, we'll see.

Do not dismiss my personal-gut response as unserious. Other observers are wearing down the keyboards with confident analyses of Miers' politics. They haven't any less foggy an idea than I do. No one knows what Miers thinks about the abortion, religion or free-speech issues the court will confront. She was neither a judge nor, obviously, the talkative type.

Despite the dearth of hard information, movement conservatives have declared her nomination a defeat for them. That Miers is President Bush's White House lawyer offers little comfort. Bush, everyone knows, is damaged goods. He's been weakened by the Katrina mess, the inconclusive Iraq war, spreading government scandals and budget deficits that no true conservative would tolerate. He can't afford to fight on another front. He needs a relatively peaceful Supreme Court nominating process.

The conservatives' problem with Miers isn't how she thinks, because they have no idea. It's that she's not like them. Miers is not an energizer-conservative, beating the drums under the windows of the liberal enemy.

Liberals do seem to be sleeping well over the Miers choice. No less a left-leaner than Sen. Charles Schumer has responded to her nomination with, "It could have been a lot worse." That's New York-ese for "what a nice surprise."

All this pains the right-wing warriors, as their delusions of permanent power continue to crack. Their batteries badly needed recharging with an in-your-face conservative along the lines of an Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas.

"It really disappointed us," a right-wing friend told me. "We were looking forward to a filibuster by liberals against a qualified black woman candidate."

He was speaking of Janice Rogers Brown, one of the women on the conservatives' short list. His assumption that conservatives could successfully repackage opposition to Brown as racism is rather dated. The trick of finding a minority to represent the right wing's most outrageous views is pretty shopworn. Liberals didn't give Clarence Thomas a free pass because he was black, and that was 14 years ago. Only the public revulsion at Anita Hill's opportunistic sexual-harassment charges against Thomas caused them to cave.

I'm no big fan of affirmative action, but I do like the idea of a female justice replacing another pioneer, Sandra Day O'Connor. At age 60, Miers remembers the days when law firms asked women applicants whether they were on birth control. As she rose to power in the Texas legal establishment, Miers became the first woman this and the first woman that. She knows how things were for women with ambition.

She also knows how things were for women without legal access to abortion. Third parties tell us that Miers personally opposes abortion. That could be true or not. But there are lots of people who are against abortion but want it kept legal. O'Connor seems to be one.

Nor should we read anything into Miers' resistance to the American Bar Association's policy supporting abortion rights. As president of the Texas Bar in the early '90s, she thought the ABA should be neutral on the subject, or at least base its position on a vote by the association's members. That was a principled stance, which had the support of some pro-choice members.

So while conservatives describe themselves as "depressed" over the Miers nomination, I declare myself initially impressed. I would love to share these feelings with Harriet over a tuna salad.

We could talk about her time on the Dallas City Council, her pro-bono legal work and the reasons she once gave money to Al Gore. And I'd tell her how nice it is to see a Supreme Court nominee who has never been a jurist.

As for her deepest politics, I imagine she would keep me guessing. But one thing about her would seem a fairly solid proposition: Given the security of a lifetime job on the Supreme Court, Miers would be nobody's robot.