Yes, the nomination has injured Bush, first because it revealed that he was unwilling to fight the Senate for a strong candidate and second because it failed.
But if he had not allowed the nomination to be withdrawn, he would have been injured a lot more, indeed would have rendered himself politically dead. And if by disastrous fortune Miers had been confirmed, by a plurality of RINOs and Democrats, he would have been even worse off, because she would have been making a spectacle of herself on the Court for the remaining three years of his term in office, keeping all of yesterday's resentments alive and growing.
I think it needs to be pointed out that he inflicted this injury on himself, by nominating someone who was barely vetted at all. It is obvious that no one in the White House had the faintest notion of what she had written and said in her years with the ABA. Now hopefully he can pull up his socks, as he has often done before, and go into battle for a really stellar candidate.
Very well stated! Now time for all of us to pull together and get behind a constructionist candidate for the SCOTUS.