Harriet Miers is doubtless an able lawyer, but her career gives us no indication that she has the requisite knowledge and skill to be an effective justice. We know she has been ambitious and successful and can assume she is very bright. But she has largely chosen administrative and managerial roles in her legal career. She was the managing partner of a large Dallas law firm -- the first woman to achieve that distinction, as the White House keeps reminding us. We should assume that she is good at bureaucratic in-fighting or she would never have climbed so high in her firm or in the local and state bar associations, where she became president -- again the first woman to do so.
Those qualifications made her an excellent choice for White House staff secretary (a job that entails managing the flow of official letters, proclamations and other written material in the Executive Office) and later deputy chief of staff. As the president's former personal lawyer, the choice of Miers to replace White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales when he became attorney general also made sense. But none of her previous positions necessarily qualifies her for the role she's now being asked to assume. The burden is on the president and Miers to demonstrate that she's up to the job.
She should have the opportunity to do so when the Judiciary Committee takes up her nomination. The problem will be that in this highly polarized political environment, she won't get much of a chance to allay our fears. The Democrats' main goal will be to embarrass the president and protect what they see as the last hope for the triumph of the liberal agenda: the Supreme Court. Too many Republicans will be thinking about their own political fortunes and whether backing the president's nominee or opposing her will be more likely to ensure their re-elections.
The president keeps assuring us that Miers will dazzle everyone at these hearings. I'd rather there were fewer atmospherics and more substance from both sides of the aisle.