HOW SHE SEES IT Miers has addiction to the exclamation point!

By MARSHA MERCER
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- If Harriet Miers never walks the marble halls of the Supreme Court as a justice, I'll know why.
It won't be because she lacked judicial experience.
Or because she went to Southern Methodist University instead of Harvard or Yale. It won't even be because she kept mum on Roe v. Wade.
No, if her nomination fails, it'll be because of her paper trail. She'll be the first to stumble on her own punctuation. This lawyer uses the exclamation point with unbridled joy.
How conservative can someone be who punctuates with abandon?
"You and Laura are the greatest!" Miers gushed to then-Gov. Bush from her Dallas law office in 1997, and she underlined greatest. She scribbled the note below a typed letter in which she'd said, "Thank you for all you and Laura do for the people of our State!"
The exclamation point is the red dress of correspondence. Look at me! it shouts.
Ingratiating notes
To be sure, poor Harriet Miers intended her ingratiating notes only for the eyes of her friend and law client. We'd never know her propensity for extravagant punctuation but for the Texas State Library and Archives Commission's release of more than 2,000 pages of her documents from the 1990s.
Such an invasion of a nominee's privacy could be why a couple of Supreme Court contenders withdrew their names from consideration. A good test of whether someone has the wisdom to serve on the highest court may be his unwillingness to endure the ordeal of confirmation.
Bush refuses to give up Miers' White House papers. The New York Times posted on its Web site a batch of Miers' cheery missives to Bush from the Texas collection. We see her contrite at having missed his birthday with a belated Hallmark card that reads "This is the wish/ That should have been sent/ Before your birthday/ Came and went."
She added, "You are the best Governor ever -- deserving of great respect!"
When Bush gave her a ride in a private plane, she penned, "Cool!"
More Doris Day than Sandra Day O'Connor, Miers is always a cheerleader. "Keep up all the great work. The State is in great hands."
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said using an exclamation point was like laughing at your own joke.
"The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage" observes dryly, "When overused, the exclamation point loses impact, as advertising demonstrates continually."
It's sobering to read someone else's exuberance. I admit to a personal fondness for exclamation points. But I'm giving them up. I mean it! Cold turkey! At least until Miers' future is decided.
Fortunately, Miers refrains from multiple exclamation points so popular in spam. That saves her from a charge of irrational exuberance.
She's almost as devoted to the exclamation point as she is to George W. Bush.
One day it's "Great speech! Many good compliments in the audience!"
Another: "You are the best!"
No wonder Bush named her to the Texas Lottery Board. Or that he says he knows her heart and that she'll never change her views. With her sincere blue suits and cropped hair, Miers presents a dull conservative image, but her handwritten notes reveal a warm, emotional woman.
Serious thinker?
And that could be a problem. The president assures conservatives that Miers is a serious thinker, a person of faith who shuns the limelight. Maybe so.
But her penmanship shows off. Her handwriting is given to large loops and curls, dashes and swirls. Her "p" is a creature of pure whimsy. It makes a sweeping arc that practically takes flight.
Has Scalia or Thomas ever been so injudicious with the traffic signs of language?
Miers, her detractors say, was once in charge of punctuation in the White House. This supposedly pegs her as a grubby detail person, not a thinker of deep thoughts.
Could she, horrors, be liberal in more than her punctuation?
Nobody wants to talk about the real problem -- her co-dependency. Turns out she's not the only fan of the exclamation point.
In August 2000, George Bush wrote, "Dear Harriet: Happy birthday to a fine Texan and a great friend! Laura and I extend our very best wishes for your happiness and good health. Have a great life!"
Below the typewritten note, the governor scribbled, "And many more!"
X Mercer is Washington bureau chief of Media General News Service. Distributed by Scripps Howard.