Harriet's Hail Mary
OK, so the religious line didn't work so well. The White House is back with a new strategy for its embattled high-court choice.
By Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe
Newsweek
Oct. 24, 2005 issue - For 25 years, Tom Rath has been the Bush family's New Hampshire go-to guy: an affable lawyer, member of the Republican National Committee—and prize catch for any would-be contender in the GOP's next presidential race. It was no surprise, then, that when George W. Bush's political team wanted to send ambitious Republican senators a firm message about Harriet Miers (crude summary: "Lay off her if you ever want our help"), they chose Rath to deliver it. On his own, or through an allied group called Progress for America, Rath last week made the family's view clear to George Allen of Virginia and Sam Brownback of Kansas, likely candidates on scouting missions to the first-in-the-nation primary state. Not coincidentally, a Bush financial backer in Houston, who had attended a recent Brownback event there, called the Capitol to echo the same—how to put it?—concerned message. "Miers deserves a fair hearing," Rath told NEWSWEEK. "That's all we're saying."
Actually, here's what they're saying: We are in serious battle over this one. Miers's fate will rest on her performance in Senate hearings that won't begin until next month, and she has begun to prepare for them with her trademark meticulous diligence. But two weeks after he named the White House counsel as his choice for the U.S. Supreme Court, Bush was still rummaging through the footnotes of the family playbook in an effort to ensure that her nomination doesn't sink before it is formally considered. A penchant for realpolitik hardball is in the Bush blood. But the New Hampshire play looked a little forced—and struck some as evidence of a political machine that had lost its bearings, and even its skill, in a whorl of war, hurricanes, scandal, internal strife and second-term ennui. Threatening conservatives is not how Bush rose to power—just the opposite.
But by picking Miers, a judicial cipher and Texas crony, Bush infuriated a movement that had grown estranged from him for other reasons, particularly his big-spending approach to such matters as education, highway pork-barreling and now Gulf Coast relief. A clumsy effort to market Miers as an evangelical Christian backfired, striking some on the religious right as condescending and some on the secular left as dangerous. And, by allowing First Lady Laura Bush to call Miers's critics sexist, the president risked damaging a precious asset—the popularity of his gracious, above-the-fray spouse—while appearing desperate at the same time. In a White House known for its internal discipline, there was whispered backbiting, with allies of Karl Rove (who had his own distractions to deal with) blaming both the choice and the handling of it on chief of staff Andy Card. "We kind of blew the early rollout," said a senior Republican official, conceding the obvious—but only on background, citing the sensitivity of the situation.
White House spin doctors dismissed Miers's critics on the right as a collection of inside-the-Beltway blowhards, but that was both not quite true and politically incendiary to say. Among those expressing deep doubts, or outright opposition, were a veritable Who's Who of the rhetorical and radio-based right, including Rush Limbaugh, George F. Will, David Brooks, Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer, Pat Buchanan and the editors of the National Review. Miers is everything these people did not want: a functionary without evident conservative fire, whose appeal to the president seems to have been based on her attention to detail, lack of a jurisprudential paper trail and cloying loyalty to the man who had been her personal and governmental client for a decade.
Hoping to prevent just such a meltdown, Bush's aides have been relying from the beginning on Dr. James Dobson, the evangelical counselor whose "Focus on the Family" broadcasts—and mailing lists—are a powerful grass-roots force. But the effort has created as many problems as it solved. When Miers was unveiled, Dobson issued a rather wary declaration of support, saying that he had been reassured about her by information he had received privately from a top White House aide. That person, he later confirmed, was Rove—which in turn led Democrats and even some Republicans (notably Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee) to insist that Dobson make public the soothing words he had heard. He did so last week. Miers, Dobson said Rove had told him, was "an evangelical Christian ... from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life."
When Bush used the same news cycle to defend the attention to Miers's faith, the storm only intensified. And Dobson himself remains cautious. "I have been somewhat tentative," he said in a statement to NEWSWEEK, "because so much is at stake."
The Bush White House would agree, but view the nature of the stakes differently: they can't afford to see their already beleaguered boss, his job-approval numbers dragging on the pavement, humiliated by his own party. So they are releasing Harriet 2.0, focusing on an inch-by-inch ground game. The president has conservative allies of his own, chief among them a Jedi of Beltway combat, Newt Gingrich. New talking points were issued to them late last week, focusing on Miers's rather thin list of qualifications—bar-association presidencies, corporate legal work and a term as a member of the Dallas City Council. The talking points were notable for their absence of even a passing reference to her religion. The switch was a rare, but necessary, admission of a strategic screw-up. "We got distracted by discussions about her faith and church attendance that really have no bearing on her qualifications for the court," said a Bush aide close to the confirmation process, insisting on anonymity so he could speak freely. "That's what we've got to get back to."
The idea—the hope—is to generate some positive buzz with testimonials. Strategists have lined up endorsements and op-eds to be doled out day by day, one of them an Oval Office pageant of praise featuring former members of the Texas Supreme Court. Miers will work her way through a series of office visits with senators, with a fairly heavy emphasis on Republicans who have kept their distance so far.
Aides make the glass-half-full observation that no Republican senator has committed to opposing her. But a single GOP defection on the Judiciary Committee—say, Brownback—would probably doom the nomination. As for the Democrats, their strategy is to sit back and watch the GOP squirm. Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council says: "Get your popcorn, turn on C-Span, and enjoy."
It's a truism that televised confirmation hearings have become the theatrical make-or-break of any Supreme Court nomination. But that's especially true in the case of Miers's hearings, tentatively scheduled to begin either the second or third week in November. She has started the committee paperwork, staying late in the office last Friday night to work on it with her staff. Next comes a series of "internal" tutorials with government lawyers, followed by others with distinguished lawyers from the wider world. Throughout, aides say, Miers will follow the path (and the transcripts) of John Roberts, whose own murder-boarding she helped to staff.
But these sessions may be less important as Con Law cramming than as preparation for the public stage. Kenneth Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff who shepherded the nominations of David Souter and Clarence Thomas, says Miers has to learn to play in public. "She's going to have to tell a personal story, and it has to be appealing, and it has to be riveting." Committee members such as Brownback will be listening carefully, as will the Bush family's friends up in New Hampshire.
With Jonathan Darman and Eleanor Clift
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
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