Bowling and hero worship are additional assets, not qualifications for this particular job. Hero worship is your put down term for both President Bush and Harriet Miers. I would call their feelings toward each other 'mutual respect'. I myself marvel that President Bush just keeps on doing his job, in spite of attacks from left and right. The anti Miers coalition are not the only people who supported and voted for President Bush. Me being one person who actually physically worked for his election and reelection. The animus from the beginning of these attacks on Miers has obviously been against President Bush and a variety of issues that long preceded her nomination. A hearing and a vote is all that is required for this nominee to be confirmed or not. The senators making the decision were not elected by Pres Bush but are the direct responsibility of the voters who put them there. The President considered the political realities of either a vacant SC seat, or a candidate who could likely make it thru the minefield of true constitutional concern and plain political obstructionism. SD O'Connor is not going to continue to be the pawn while everybody plays their game. She already needs to be with her husband, where I would have been long ago.
Nominating this woman is hardly "doing his job" as he promised to do. The supposed animus against Ms. Miers is not personally motivated against her. It is the supporters of Ms. Miers who seem to be unable to offer anything in her defense to actually demonstrate a qualification to perform even minimally in the position to which she has been nominated. The best defenses offered by the White House have amounted to second-hand or third-hand assurances of how they think she may vote, at best. In their relaunch of the candidate (not a good sign when you have to relaunch a nomination because of the original response) the Administration official quoted couldn't come up with anything specific except that she's a good bowler. While that may have seemed like an awesome qualification at the time, people who take nominations to important positions (as opposed to members of the Bush cult of personality) beg to differ. It may comfort you to try to dismiss valid criticisms of this and several other nominees (remember the days when this Administration's nominees were actually qualified?) as arising from some sort of personal animus, but you'd be wrong. And the defenses offered so far do not address the substantive defects of this nominee and the nomination process as currently operating at the White House.