A Texan's perspective on Harriet Miers

-- Cartoon by Mike Lester, Rome News-Tribune, Rome, GA via Cagle.

Some Texas perspective on Harriet Miers, by Harvey Kronberg, editor of the Quorum Report, a non-partisan online newsletter and service covering Texas politics and the legislature.

Kronberg's take:

HK: SOME QUICK THOUGHTS ABOUT HARRIET MIERS
A reversion to an old and honored style of judicial appointment

As the hyperventilating has begun about Harriet Miers nomination to the United States Supreme Court, one of the funniest criticisms to immediately surface is that she contributed to Al Gore's campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988.

Of course, Texas was a one party Democratic state back in 1988. Al Gore was seen as the southern conservative choice fighting against northern liberals.

In fact, Gore was considered so southern and so conservative, the current Republican governor, Rick Perry was one of Gore's Texas campaign chairmen. Of course, two years later, Perry switched parties and helped lead the red meat conservative Republican takeover of the state.

We are as curious about Miers' judicial philosophy as everyone else. She always struck us as the lawyer's lawyer -- very professional, intellectually rigorous and meticulously clean in her practice.

She was one of the cadre that George Bush brought to Austin as governor who's loyalty, toughness and professionalism were unquestionable. He appointed her as chair to the Texas Lottery Commission to cover his back. Where there is gambling, there is always the prospect of corruption. So much so that then Comptroller John Sharp lobbied to keep the Lottery Commission as a separate agency and out from under the supervision of his Comptroller's office. Miers appointment meant that then Governor Bush need have no worries of something blowing up at the Lotter Commission and sticking to him

Bush's instincts as Governor lead him to generally appoint rock solid Supreme Court appointments, highly qualified center-right conservatives who generally were well regarded by the bar. Texas Lawyer routinely ranked their decisions as more center-right than doctrinaire.

In Texas, Bush was so popular he was generally able to dictate to the base. But while Karl Rove's strategy of polarizing the country twice elected Bush to the presidency, it also has seemed to render him captive to the hard right Republican base, leaving many of those who knew him in Austin surprised and bewildered. Staunch social conservatives may rail that this nomination is symbolic of a wounded presidency.

Well, maybe.

History will tell, but his two Supreme Court appointments have the feel of the Austin paradigm more than they do the DC version of George W.