SUPREME COURT Bush responds to critics who question nominee

Some conservatives said it was a mistake for Bush to nominate Miers.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
WASHINGTON -- President Bush, confronting mounting conservative resistance to his nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, brushed aside on Friday suggestions that she was so unqualified for the post that she should withdraw.
"No, she is going to be on the bench," he told a reporter who raised the withdrawal question during a brief question-and-answer session in the Oval Office.
"She'll be confirmed," Bush declared. "And when she's on the bench, people will see a fantastic woman who is honest, open, humble and capable of being a great Supreme Court judge."
The president defended Miers at length during a Rose Garden news conference Tuesday, sending a blunt message to anxious conservatives that they should trust his judgment and rally around his choice.
His aides and other Republican allies followed up with an aggressive lobbying campaign in meetings and conference calls with conservatives. But so far they have failed to quell the rising storm.
Speaking out
On Friday, William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, urged Miers to consider withdrawing.
"It was a mistake," he said on NBC's "Today" show. "She doesn't have the intellectual distinction or the track record to really justify putting her on the Supreme Court."
Kristol had signaled his dissatisfaction with Miers early on, writing when she was tapped on Monday that he was disappointed, depressed and demoralized by her appointment.
But he upped the ante Friday, along with conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.
"To nominate someone whose adult life reveals no record of even participation in debates about constitutional interpretation is an insult to the institution and to that vision of the institution," Krauthammer wrote in The Washington Post.
Also on Friday, Robert Bork, the former federal appellate judge rejected by the Senate for the high court 18 years ago, called Bush's selection of Miers a "disaster on every level."
"It's kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who've been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years," he said on MSNBC.
About Miers
Miers, 60, was a well-established lawyer in Dallas when Bush asked her to join him in 2001 as a senior aide in the White House. Over the past dozen years, she had represented him personally and his campaigns for governor and his first campaign for president. But her White House work during the past five years -- as staff secretary, deputy chief of staff for policy and now legal counsel -- is being protected by executive privilege.
On Friday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perini said Miers had returned to Dallas to review the cases and other records of her three decades as a private attorney.
Among other things, Perino said the Senate Judiciary Committee wanted to study the details of the 10 major cases that Miers has handled.
Additionally, Perino said Miers wanted to locate for review the articles and speeches that she has written over the years.
Before leaving Washington, Miers conferred with Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., the latest in more than a dozen early courtesy calls on the 100 senators who will ultimately decide her fate.
More such consultations are planned ahead of her confirmation hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which could start in early November to meet the president's call for a full Senate vote by Thanksgiving.
Helping out
Former Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., has joined the team the White House is assembling to help Miers through what promises to be a tough vetting process.
"My job is to introduce Harriet Miers to my former colleagues in the Senate and also advise her about the procedures of the Senate," Coats said on CNN, as he began his new rounds on her behalf. "Understanding how it works and who are the personalities, leaders and so forth can be a help to her."
Today, Bush will tout his choice for the high court in his weekly radio address. And on Sunday, her nomination is scheduled to dominate the morning news shows, with supporters and opponents making their cases.
In the meantime, Miers is declining interviews, allowing others to speak for her before her confirmation hearings.
"She has only met with a few senators," Coats noted. "I would caution anybody, and my fellow colleagues, not to prejudge."