HOW HE SEES IT Right wing should give Harriet Miers a chance

By WILLIAM McKENZIE
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Talk about your panic.
Social conservatives like Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard and former Bush speechwriter David Frum are all but climbing out on the window ledge, ready to leap like those Wall Street guys in 1929. Listening to their rants against President Bush's choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, you'd think she was the next Earl Warren liberal or, worse, conservative turncoat David Souter.
And all because they don't know her.
My hunch is that Miers could satisfy them, if they gave her a chance. Bush appointed conservatives to the Texas courts who were much like Miers, a Dallas Republican. They came from private practice, were involved in their communities and brought a devotion to the law. Those qualities generally led to a solid bench that restrained government from interfering too much in our everyday lives.
Now, if that bothers social conservatives, maybe they're in worse shape than I imagined. When I asked former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips what he'd say to conservatives wondering about Miers' views, he replied sharply, "They assume a judge will not act like a judge."
Intrigued, I pressed. And what does that mean?
"That a judge will not make rulings on laws, but on their own views," the veteran Republican jurist said. "How they interpret the law is what matters."
Not a play toy
That certainly was the line John Roberts followed. If anything, you came away from his confirmation hearings appreciating how much the law mattered to him. He didn't like liberals or conservatives using it as a play toy.
And that's the picture emerging of Miers. Her one-time fellow managing partner at Locke, Liddell and Sapp, Bruce LaBoon, predicts she will be a "law judge. She'll take the facts of a case and apply the law to them." And that's from an attorney who describes himself as a conservative Republican.
Skeptics like Kristol and Frum also should appreciate Miers' legendary penchant for digging deep into issues. She won't be asleep at the switch, not by any means.
Dallas businessman Tom Dunning, a Democrat, has known Miers since grade school and remembers how well she prepared during her term on the Dallas City Council. "She'd ask good questions," he said. "But she also asked good follow-up questions. Not everyone knows how to do that. They helped determine how she'd vote. She was always searching for the right answers."
A potential criticism -- one that could fly from either side -- is that Miers is little more than the latest example of Bush cronyism. You know, another "Brownie," a person who moved ahead simply because of connections to the boss. (See Brown, Michael, former FEMA chief.)
That might be understandable. Miers has worked in the Bush White House for five years and headed a state commission while he was Texas governor. But don't forget that she had more than 20 years of big-firm practice before entering Bush World.
During that time, she crashed through barriers. By now, you've probably read that she headed the Dallas Bar Association and State Bar of Texas -- the first woman to do either -- and managed a huge Texas firm. But we read those achievements through the prism of today.
Male world
Let's not forget how hard it was to break into the stodgy, male world of Big Law Firms when she graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School in 1970. Only a stint clerking for a federal judge got her there.
With devotion, talent and toughness, she kept cracking the secret code that had kept working women in subordinate slots.
In fact, what came through most in interviews with people who've worked with her and against her in Texas is her unflappability and integrity.
"When people say she's not qualified, it tells me they've never been opposite her in a legal matter," says Dallas attorney Michael Boone, whose firm has been on opposite sides of legal matters from her many times.
As a moderate, I have a feeling I'm not going to like a lot of Miers' decisions, that she'll prove a little too conservative for my tastes. But I like what those who know her well say. She's independent. She's smart. She'll get the facts. And she'll make up her mind.
If that's a bad thing these days, where did we go wrong?
X William McKenzie is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.