After the Home Run, a White House Balk
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Two months after engineering a nearly flawless confirmation process for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Bush administration’s bid to add Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has been so riddled with errors, stumbles and embarrassing revelations that some lawmakers and other observers find it hard to believe it emanates from the same White House. At one key juncture after another, Miers has faltered where Roberts glided. Her courtesy calls on the Judiciary Committee’s top two senators prompted conflicting tales of curious comments that she may or may not have made. Her answers to the committee’s questionnaire included a misinterpretation of constitutional law and were deemed so inadequate that the panel asked her to redo it. She revealed one day that her D.C. law license had been temporarily suspended — and said the next day that the same thing had happened in Texas — because of unpaid dues. Most glaring of all, say activists in both parties, the White House failed to foresee the outcry from conservative activists who are leading the opposition while liberals mostly stand on the sidelines in amazement. “I’m sort of astonished by it,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who has followed the nominations closely. “It’s like a completely different team at the White House is handling it.” Several conservative activists who avidly backed Roberts are keeping silent or offering tepid public endorsements of Miers, using private channels to express their dismay to the White House. Yesterday, in one of the twice-weekly conference calls involving conservative leaders and organized by liaisons to the White House, several participants said Miers should stop paying visits to senators because they do more harm than good. Details of the call, first reported by NationalReview.com, were confirmed by a participant who said no one spoke in favor of continuing the visits. More : washingtonpost.com |