Nobody else does that.
Vetting and what Miers did and does was to take potential candidates, give them questionaires and the like to fill out, and process them to the various places that check them for accuracy. I suspect her opinion counts as well, but she does not choose. Cluck, cluck!
Too late, Cold Heart, we moved on without you.
She [Miers] was in charge of the White House selection of a chief justice nominee, vetting candidates' records and often playing the tough questioner."We'd be talking about somebody's background," said Leonard Leo, now on leave as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, the conservative group whose headlined speakers have included Supreme Court justices and Bush administration official.
"There would be a moment of silence when she was clearly thinking about what was being said and then she would challenge it, asking, 'But what specifically in those opinions strongly suggests that this is someone who ascribes to judicial restraint?'" Leo said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051015/ap_on_go_su_co/miers_what_s_known
The evidence says she was not "involved" in the vetting activity either while she was staff secretary or while she was deputy chief of staff. She may have handled paperwork or arranged meetings and so forth, and may have been asked her opinions. But the people who were in those vetting meetings have reported that Miers was not present at any of them.
She was, however, involved in the vetting process while she held the position of WH Counsel.
Roll CallThe WH never did directly assert that Miers, as Deputy Chief of Staff, was "involved" in vetting candidates for nomination to the Circuit Courts of Appeal. Rather, the public statements regarding her vetting involvement were focused on the time period since her appointment to the position of WH Counsel in March of this year.
October 17, 2005 Monday
Miers' Role in Vetting Limited
By Paul Kane ROLL CALL STAFFCustomarily, district court nominees - the lowest level of federal judges -are the province of home-state Senators, who often work through their own vetting process with legal scholars in their states. The White House almost always defers to the home-state Senators on those nominees, performing a thorough background check to ensure no legal or ethical problems and then forwarding the name to the Judiciary Committee.
Circuit court nominees generally have been a more nettlesome issue, and were at the heart of this spring's showdown over judicial filibusters. However, none of the nominees involved in that fight came through during the Miers era in the counsel's office. Instead, those were all nominees who had been screened, vetted and selected under the Gonzales stewardship. ...
"Remember, she was part of the search committee that helped pick Roberts. In other words, she went through the deliberations and talking to these different candidates about what they believe," Bush said Oct. 4 in the Rose Garden. "She knows exactly the kind of judge I'm looking for."
Some counsels to Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have rejected this notion, arguing that Miers has not been deeply involved in the issue. They voiced these concerns anonymously to The New York Times last week, saying she had no role in the contentious nomination battles that led up to the narrowly averted filibuster showdown in May.
In an effort to refute this line of attack, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove told conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt on Friday that Miers had been involved in the selection process of nominees since she was elevated from staff secretary to deputy chief of staff in 2003. Rove, according to a posting on Hewitt's Web site Friday, said that Miers was part of the ad hoc committee of seven or more staffers who helped pick judicial nominees.
Miers' Role in Vetting Limited | Paul Kane ROLL CALL STAFF | October 17, 2005