I thought Bush kept his Cards close to his vest.
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GWB: HBS MBA
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1070924/posts
The American Thinker February 3, 2004 | Thomas Lifson
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One final note on George W. Bush’s management style and his Harvard Business School background does not derive from the classroom, per se. One feature of life there is that a subculture of poker players exists. Poker is a natural fit with the inclinations, talents, and skills of many future entrepreneurs. A close reading of the odds, combined with the ability to out-psych the opposition, leads to capital accumulation in many fields, aside from the poker table.
By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, at least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.
I don't think that Card's leaving (if true) has anything to do with Miers, either. He just hasn't been very effective in general, however, and perhaps everybody is beginning to acknowledge this. We shall see.
When the right was eating its own over the Miers nomination the left saw opportunity. And so the left stepped up to the plate and started swinging. And there was deafening silence from the administration.
The base would have been fired up with Alito anytime, anyway.
From a White House perspective the Miers nomination made Bush look weak;
(1)she was a weak candidate in terms of background,
(2)not supported by his base
(3)no big objections from too many Dims
so
(a) her nomination initially looked like he was responding to Dim demands that he not name someone "controversial",
(b)then it simply looked like a weak nominee,
(c)and then pulling her out was sold by the Dims as "caving in to the radical right".
Altogether, it was a flawed and bound to fail nomination and it helped depress the public's belief that he was doing a good job.
If anyone has been wondering where Bush's "liberal" positions might originate, they need look no further than Andrew Card - associate of Sununu, backers of Souter.