He wanted Miers on there.
That's true, but that's only part of the story.
President Bush has a history of successes from ousting Governor Ann Richards to beating VP Al Gore to defeating Senator Kerry to passing tax cuts and deploying our national missile defenses to winning the *first* federal ban on abortion.
...and he's so successful because he acts 3 dimensionally instead of 2 dimensionally.
You see, in the case of Harriet Miers, President Bush *did* want her on the Court, but he also knew that he could put another conservative onto the bench who he wanted if things didn't work out for Miers.
Which is to say, GWB was happy either way, whether Miers made it to the bench or not.
The article for this thread, in contrast, illustrates two-dimensional thinking. The author has recognized that GWB set up the Left with Miers in order to win Alito's confirmation...but the author doesn't recognize the more savvy point of GWB's strategy: that Miers would have worked, too.
So it's not that Miers was a headfake, it's that Miers was *both* a serious nominee *and* a headfake.
President Bush was going to win either way.
You can see the same effect on war funding, on voting to go to war against Iraq, on national missile defense, on partial birth abortion (think: Congress had to *pass* that ban before it even got near the Supreme Court).
In all of those cases above, and in many, many more instances, President Bush would win if the issue passed Congress or was voted down by Congress.
Democrats are only now beginning to grasp the most rudimentary aspects of this grand strategy on their effort to cut off President Bush's emergency spending bill for our troops in Iraq...that GWB wins if they pass it and that GWB wins if they don't.
He wins either way because he's properly framed the debate and fight.