Patterico's Pontifications

10/9/2005

Rove Told Senators It Would Be Someone With Judicial Experience

Filed under: Judiciary — Patterico @ 3:39 am



Are you wondering why Senators seemed so flabbergasted when the Miers nomination was announced? I’ve got your answer, from the September 29 edition of Countdown with Keith Olbermann — before the nomination was made public. Here’s Pete Williams:

The president has several choices. He could decide to appoint a woman. And if he does, there are several candidates that have been mentioned, many of them federal judges, one of them who is not. That’s Harriet Miers, who is the White House counsel now, a long-time Bush confidante.

. . . .

OLBERMANN: The president just got scalded, day after day, for at least two weeks, because his former head of FEMA had no prior emergency management experience. Would he really appoint somebody, and go to bat for somebody, and use what political capital he has left in a controversial situation, who has never been a judge to the Supreme Court? Or am I guilty, Pete, of thinking too linear again?

WILLIAMS: Well, you know, there’s no question that she — if you’re talking about Harriet Miers (INAUDIBLE)…

OLBERMANN: I am, yes.

WILLIAMS: … there’s no question that — And remember, there’d been some suggestion early on that perhaps the president would choose a U.S. senator who didn`t have any judicial experience. But that would be, I think you would agree, a different matter in the Senate.

But Harriet Miers obviously has a lot of legal experience. She’s long been a lawyer, first, a woman president of the state bar association in Texas. So she’s — she knows legal issues, she’s an experienced litigator. This is not be the chief justice position, where court administration experience or experience as a judge would be handier.

I think you’re right. I think the bar would be higher for someone who doesn’t have judicial experience.

And the other thing is, Karl Rove, we’re told, was on Capitol Hill earlier this week telling members of the Senate that the next nominee would be someone who had judicial experience at the court of appeals level. If the president is still thinking in those terms, that would seem to let Harriet Miers out.

Whoops! Looks like Karl Rove might have been out of the loop himself until the last second . . .

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