Kagan: THIS Harriet Miers Will Get Confirmed

In 2005, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement. 
President Bush (with the oh-so-“helpful” suggestion from Democrat Harry 
Reid) then named White House Counsel Harriet Miers as his choice to replace 
her.

A firestorm erupted. Critics on the right and left complained that she had 
never served as a judge, had no judicial experience or paper trail from 
which to gauge her judicial philosophy and temperament, and that she was 
named strictly because she was a woman.

Her nomination did not survive the withering criticism, and she withdrew, to 
be ultimately replaced by Samuel Alito.

Fast forward to today. President Obama has just nominated Elena Kagan, the 
current Solicitor General, to replace John Paul Stevens on the Court. In 
many ways, Kagan mirrors Miers: a female legal eagle with no judicial 
experience, paper trail, or known guiding legal philosophy.

Miers’s nomination went down because fellow conservatives criticized those 
things. Don’t expect Kagan’s fellow liberals to attack her on the same 
basis. Conservatives were intellectually honest about what they saw as 
gaping holes in Miers’s qualifications. I guarantee that liberals will not 
openly question the same voids in Kagan’s experience. Conservatives raised 
legitimate issues about Miers; liberals will circle the wagons on Kagan.

Miers bit the dust, and she probably deserved to. Kagan will not bite the 
dust, although she probably deserves to as well.