I doubt the White House secretary/counsel gets invited to the same parties as a member of SCOTUS...
That being said, I don't know how much socializing will effect this woman - being a spinster from TX and all, clearly the enormous pressure to marry and have a family didn't sway her - haven't met too many unmarrieds from the great state of TX! (I did have an unmarried Aunt Oma who lived in Dallas until her 90's - the ultimate threat of my parents when we were teenagers/twenty somethings bringing home the wrong guy, was that if we didn't watch out we would become like Aunt Oma...)
That being said I have no faith in this pick - if GWB had any political capital left, he's squandered it. Some of tried to rationalize this pick as "brilliant" - but I think CitizenUSA's story makes a good point: you don't make a lifetime independent appointment based on current LOYALTY. If she had worked for the same causes as him, or us, or the right at all, perhaps this wouldn't be such a stretch for us now.
"Current" loyalty? More like a decade of loyalty.
It all comes down to whether or not you think President Bush is a good judge of character. How have his other judicial picks turned out? How have his executive picks been? Given his track history, I will trust his judgement in this case.