Bush Loyalist Is Court Pick

Among a host of qualities that White House counsel Harriet Ellan Miers shares with new Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts is the apparent lack of any personal legal agenda. Known for an exacting, no-nonsense style, Miers — like Roberts — tends to avoid the limelight.

Once described by White House chief of staff Andrew Card as "one of the favorite people in the White House," Miers has been there for President Bush at every turn for more than a decade.

She was Mr. Bush's personal lawyer in Texas, took on the thankless job of cleaning up the Texas Lottery when he was governor, and followed him to Washington to serve as staff secretary, the person who controls every piece of paper that crosses the president's desk.

In 2004, Mr. Bush appointed her White House counsel, calling her "a talented lawyer whose great integrity, legal scholarship and grace have long marked her as one of America's finest lawyers." He articulated his high regard for her more memorably during a 1996 awards ceremony when he called her "a pit bull in size 6 shoes."

Though Miers has never served as a judge, Mr. Bush made the point Monday that she wouldn't be the first to reach the high court from a career outside the judiciary, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller.

"Justice Rehnquist himself came to the Supreme Court without prior experience on the bench, as did more than 35 other men including Byron White," he said.

However Democrats are sure to pounce on the fact that her views on key issues are largely unknown.

"Democrats and even some Republicans complained that there wasn't enough of a 'paper trail' when John G. Roberts, Jr., came to the Senate and was confirmed ... that no one really knew what kind of a person he was when it came to the law," said CBSNews.com Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen. "Well, there is even less of a paper trail for Harriet Miers."

Miers had been leading the White House effort to help choose a Supreme Court nominee, reports CBS News Correspondent Susan Roberts, but apparently the president decided he need to look no further than his own staff.

Miers, 60, has a string of firsts on her resume that track her quiet but steady march to the top echelons of power: first woman hired by her law firm in 1972, first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association in 1985, first woman president of the Texas State Bar in 1992, first woman president of her law firm in 1996.

Card, in a 2003 interview with the publication Texas Lawyer, said Mr. Bush's affinity for Miers is clear in the frequent invitations she receives to visit the presidential retreat at Camp David, "a privilege that is not enjoyed by a lot of staff."

"She's a quiet, highly respected force and someone who is seen as not having any agenda other than the president's," he said.
Intensely loyal, Miers is happy to stay off the radar screen as long as her boss is happy, on the thinking that White House counsels only make news when there's been a mistake.

"Hopefully, there aren't any," she told the Dallas Morning News earlier this year. "So, we stay out of the headlines."

At the same time, however, she showed her readiness to take on difficult questions.

"Lawyers by nature are involved in controversy," she said. "We expect difficult issues and are prepared to deal with them."

Mr. Bush underscored her toughness, observing when he was governor, "When it comes to a cross-examination, she can fillet better than Mrs. Paul."

As staff secretary, Miers was with the president in Florida when the terrorist attacks unfolded on Sept. 11, 2001, and she later remembered the regard she felt for him as she scrambled to help prepare his remarks to the nation that night. "It took some time, and the president saw me hurrying to give them to him," she recalled. "He said, 'Good hustle.' He made me feel good that I was contributing. Typical."

Miers is a self-described "Texan through and through." She grew up in Dallas and received both her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University. She clerked for a federal judge there and then joined Locke Purnell Rain Harrell in 1972, rising to become first woman president of the firm in 1996. When her firm merged with another, she became co-managing partner of the 400-lawyer Locke Liddell & Sapp.

"Harriet is not a person that gets frustrated easily," R. Bruce LaBoon, a former law partner, told Texas Lawyer. "She doesn't lose her temper. She is very cool and calm in a storm."

Miers, who is single, is known for putting in long hours without complaint. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, a fellow Texan who earlier served alongside Miers in the White House, told Texas Lawyer in 2003 that Miers was "here before dawn and after dusk and on most weekends. No one works harder."

"She never seeks the limelight," Spellings told Business Week. "She's just extremely devoted to the president."

Miers reveals little of her own emotions or ideological persuasions, but has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush administration on a broad of initiatives including tax cuts, Social Security reforms, restrictions on federal spending on embryonic stem cell research, national security, education reforms and fighting terrorism.

In hosting an "Ask the White House" interactive forum on the Internet before the 2004 elections, Miers lavished praise on a litany of Bush administration initiatives, then added, "I could go on and on."