In 2005, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement.
President Bush (with the oh-so-“helpful” suggestion from Democrat Harry
Reid) then named White House Counsel Harriet Miers as his choice to replace
her.
A firestorm erupted. Critics on the right and left complained that she had never served as a judge, had no judicial experience or paper trail from which to gauge her judicial philosophy and temperament, and that she was named strictly because she was a woman.
Her nomination did not survive the withering criticism, and she withdrew, to be ultimately replaced by Samuel Alito.
Fast forward to today. President Obama has just nominated Elena Kagan, the current Solicitor General, to replace John Paul Stevens on the Court. In many ways, Kagan mirrors Miers: a female legal eagle with no judicial experience, paper trail, or known guiding legal philosophy.
Miers’s nomination went down because fellow conservatives criticized those things. Don’t expect Kagan’s fellow liberals to attack her on the same basis. Conservatives were intellectually honest about what they saw as gaping holes in Miers’s qualifications. I guarantee that liberals will not openly question the same voids in Kagan’s experience. Conservatives raised legitimate issues about Miers; liberals will circle the wagons on Kagan.
Miers bit the dust, and she probably deserved to. Kagan will not bite the dust, although she probably deserves to as well.