Juicy Post article follows the Bushists' bumbling during the Miers fiasco

[BurtWorm]

:popcorn:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/27/AR2005102702398_pf.html


Nomination Was Plagued By Missteps From the Start

By Peter Baker and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 28, 2005; 9:42 AM



For Harriet Miers, the "murder boards" were aptly named. Day after day in a room in the White House complex, colleagues from the Bush administration grilled her on constitutional law, her legal background and her past speeches in practice sessions meant to mimic Senate hearings.

Her uncertain, underwhelming responses left her confirmation managers so disturbed they decided not to open up the sessions to the friendly outside lawyers they usually invite to participate in prepping key nominees.

It was clear that Miers was going to need to "hit a grand slam homer" before the Senate Judiciary Committee to win confirmation to the Supreme Court, as one adviser to the White House put it. "Her performance at the murder boards meant that people weren't confident she'd get the grand slam."

By nearly all accounts, the 24 days of the Miers nomination was hobbled by a succession of miscalculations. President Bush bypassed his own selection process to pick Miers, his onetime personal lawyer and White House counsel since February. His aides ignored warnings by some of the administration's closest conservative allies that she would prove difficult to confirm, and took for granted that its base would ultimately stick with the president.

And in perhaps the biggest misjudgment, Bush assumed that Miers would somehow shine in a Washington klieg light she had never before faced.

[WI_DEM]

1. I almost feel sad for her

She is a female version of W, and that is why Bush picked her. She was doomed from the start.

[BurtWorm]

2. She lacked Bush's "fortune"

If Bush came up from the roots as she did, we wouldn't be talking about him now. He'd be selling cars or doing time elsewhere.

[gratuitous]

3. Almost

I don't care how much she idolizes Chimpy (and the very thought makes my skin crawl), anyone who's old enough should know how to say "no," especially when they're in over their heads. Miss Miers was trying to swim the Atlantic when she could barely manage in the kiddy pool. The result was wholly predictable.