Dueling Miers

On Thursday, Hugh Hewitt posted a conversation he had with Karl Rove, a conversation in which Rove was "adamant and even vehement" in support of the Miers nomination.

She has been a member of the White House's judicial selection committee for three years, not the one I had thought, as the Deputy Chief of Staff sits on the committee, along with the White House Counsel and a handful of other senior aides, including Karl Rove. Every judicial nomination the president has made for the past three years has come through this committee. Prior to the discussion in the committee, every nominee's work is assembled and analyzed, and interviews are conducted by the committee members. The briefing books are prepared by the junior staff which is made up of all the sort of lawyers you'd expect, with all the right law schools and clerkships. The committee pores over the binders and then meets and debates the candidates, and a recommendation is made to the president.

Hugh's point is that given this lengthy involvement with the selection committee, those working closely with Miers on this task would surely know, and trust, her judicial philosophy.

However, on Friday in NRO's Bench Memos, Ed Whelan had this to say about Miers' participation on that selection committee.

My post on Hugh Hewitt’s account elicited this e-mail from someone I know and trust:

"Hewitt says that Miers was a member of the White House Judicial Selection Committee for the last three years, i.e., from October 2002 to the present. I attended virtually every meeting of the White House Judicial Selection Committee from the start of that period (October 2002) into the summer of 2003. Neither Harriet Miers nor any of her staff attended a single meeting during that period."

These can't both be true, can they? What is a skeptic like me supposed to make of all this?

At the Hedgehog blog, the blog of Lowell Brown, an attorney who is on Hugh's radio show from time to time, Lowell asked for a calm rebuttal of Hugh's post about Karl Rove.

I didn't leave a rebuttal there, per se, but I'd like to expand on some comments I left there.

If the White House is interested in convincing skeptics like me, why is this the first time we're hearing Rove's defense, ten days after Miers was first nominated?

Rove's political skills are well known. After allowing stories to float around that the Miers nomination is Andy Card's baby, is Rove's defense an attempt to put a unified face forward again? Is it Rove's attempt to say he was also involved with the nomination?

Also, why would Rove, the master of message, allow the White House to bumble around, from thinking evangelicals would simply accept her church membership and be happy, to allowing the First Lady anywhere near the charges of sexism, to having so few people that have worked with her out there defending her (Hecht, and who else?)

Rove has been integrally involved with the major political decisions of this administration. There has been some eyebrows raised wondering where Rove was in this nomination. This pick seems to be a political blunder of the first order. Folks wonder if Rove's hand slipped off the tiller. Perhaps this was Rove's way of saying he was very much involved, that he wasn't shunted aside in making this nomination.

The biggest question among the skeptics is Miers' judicial philosophy, and how firmly she holds it. Why did it take ten days for the WH to have this firm an answer to that question? Is Rove's defense just another element of this overall unprepared defense of Miers.

Also in Bench Memos, Gerard Bradley has this to say about the administration's flatfooted defense:

Ed Whelan expresses (as is his wont) in a measured, careful, and objective manner some grounds to be concerned about the "quality and reliability" of information offered in defense on Harriet Miers's nomination.

I am not Ed. And so here is how I express my great regret at, and continuing suspicion of, practically the whole Miers' defense case: It has been an erratic mix of insults ("you guys are sexist"), irrelevancies ("she is such a good lady"), and invitations to shut up, sit back, and be governed ("trust us"). Spin and evasion so far. Are downright lies up next?

Maybe those in charge are not yet prepared to stanch the bleeding by withdrawing Miers's nomination. But they surely could — and should — now quit making matters even worse by treating conservatives puzzled (to put it as Ed might) over this nominee as if, well, we were Democrats.

Amen to that.

Hugh has been a noble, loyal soldier in defending this nomination. One wonders, though, if generals like Rove have sent him out to defend the Alamo.