The View From Here . . .

The struggle to reshape the United States Supreme Court goes on, with President Bush, having successfully nominated John G. Roberts as Chief Justice, now naming Harriet Miers to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

The Roberts nomination surely was one of the high points of the Bush presidency. Mr. Roberts boasted a very strong resume - Harvard Law School, service in the White House, arguing numerous cases before the Supreme Court, a tenure as a federal appeals judge. In addition, Mr. Roberts was an impressive figure when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, showing a great deal of erudition while basically declining to state his views on cases that might come before the Court. Not surprisingly, numerous Democratic Senators ended up voting for his nomination and he was confirmed on a 78-22 vote. One has every belief that Chief Justice Roberts will be looked upon as a giant of the Court and an enduring legacy of Mr. Bush's tenure.

In contrast, it is hard to escape the notion that the Miers nomination was something of a retreat to seemingly safe ground by President Bush. Ms. Miers, while boasting a resume far less distinguished than John Roberts, has very little "paper trail" on controversial issues like abortion and gay rights and will be very hard to pin down at Senate hearings. Of course she is a woman, and a pioneering one at that in Texas legal circles, and that gives her some credibility as an appropriate successor to Sandra Day O'Connor.

There are considerable downsides of the nomination, however. Ms. Miers, although a leading light in the Texas bar, has never been a judge and has only held minor political offices in her home state. Unlike Justice Roberts, she does not have significant appellate experience before the Supreme Court. While she has acted both as Mr. Bush's personal attorney and as White House counsel, and this is useful experience, it also leads to plausible claims of cronyism. As Boston University law professor Randy Barnett asks, would the president have ever picked her if she had not been his lawyer, his close confidante, and his adviser?

My personal view is that Mr. Bush might have nominated a larger figure to the Court, even if it meant going to the mat with Senate Democrats at a time when the administration was under attack about Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina and, ironically enough, the issue of cronyism. There were numerous appellate judges available with far superior credentials to Ms. Miers, even if the opposition was likely to try to paint these jurists as "extremists". With 55 GOP senators, the odds were excellent that at the end of the day Mr. Bush was going to win this fight, bruising struggle or not.

But Harriet Miers is the pick we have and the Senate will have to review carefully her credentials and qualifications, as well as her overall judicial philosophy. At the end of the day, I suspect the Senate will determine that she is at least minimally qualified for the job. Whether the President might have done much better is an entirely different question.