Harriet Miers: Will She Withdraw?

The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers continues to crash and burn. Here are selected developments from the past few days:

--the nomination has been engulfed by controversy over the White House's refusal, on executive privilege grounds, to turn over Harriet Miers-related documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee;

--the results of opinion polls about the nomination are not encouraging;

--the influential editorial page of the Wall Street Journal recently dubbed the Miers nomination a "political blunder of the first order" (which was actually charitable of them, considering that other bastions of conservative thought, such as the National Review and the Weekly Standard, have explicitly called for her withdrawal);

--George F. Will just issued another excellent (and blistering) column, shooting down some of the arguments that have been offered in defense of the Harriet Miers nomination;

--John Fund, in his own harsh column, reports that "the nominee has stumbled frequently in the tutorials in which government lawyers are grilling her in preparation for her November 7 hearings" (gavel bang: Todd Zywicki);

--a new website, WithdrawMiers.org, has been "established to urge the withdrawal of Harriet Miers from consideration as a nominee for Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court" (robe swish: Howard Bashman);

--a new non-profit organization of conservatives, Americans for Better Justice, has been formed, with the objective of "100,000 names on a petition to the president and a massive letter-writing campaign to secure the withdrawal of the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers" (gavel bang: Professor Zywicki);

--David Frum's own online petition for the withdrawal of the nomination continues to gain signatures; and

--the troubling qualifications questions persist.

Will Harriet Miers withdraw, in light of these and other depressing developments? Probably not. A well-placed UTR source on Capitol Hill estimates the chances of Miers withdrawing her name at "under 15 percent."

Sadly enough, this makes sense. When Justice O'Connor's seat first became vacant, before Chief Justice Rehnquist passed away, Harriet Miers actually (and wisely) declined to be considered for the spot. But having agreed to toss her hat in the ring the second time around, it might be hard for her to withdraw now -- at least without admitting that she was doing so due to criticism and under pressure.

And it gets worse. In a recent appearance on "This Week," New York Times columnist David Brooks observed that even if Harriet Miers were to go to President Bush and ask to be withdrawn, the president might not let her -- just as he reportedly refused to allow John Bolton to withdraw from consideration as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Even those who generally support President Bush, like A3G, know that he can sometimes be stubborn and petulant. If Harriet Miers expressed a desire for her nomination to be withdrawn, President Bush would be reluctant to accede to her request for his own political reasons: he would fear that withdrawal would make him and his administration look "weak." He would probably pressure her into changing her mind.

Of course, if Harriet Miers were to insist on withdrawal of her nomination, the president couldn't do much about that. But can we really expect Harriet Miers -- who views the president as "the most brilliant man she has ever known" -- to stand up to a man whom she idolizes, like a teenage girl looking up to a boy band leader?

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!"

Comments

[FXKLM]

The Frum petition was moved to Americans for Better Justice. You talk about the Frum petition and the ABJ petition as if they were separate. They're not.