Andy Card: Bush Wanted Woman on High Court
Publius at Res Publica et Cetera has long suspected it, and now former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card finally admits that he was the key player in the Harriet Miers debacle:
President Bush selected Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court after a search for other possible female candidates outside the White House began to lag, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. "Andy" Card, Jr. said in his first extensive interview since leaving the White House.
"The president was criticized for not nominating a woman when he nominated John Roberts," Card said, as he petted Sophie, his Wheaton Terrier, in the living room of his home in northern Virginia.
"And then when William Rehnquist left, you know, ‘What do you mean you're not going to nominate a woman? You've had two opportunities, and you haven't nominated a woman.' And so he was looking to nominate a woman — not blindly, not any woman, not just to nominate a woman."
As the search committee kept suggesting female candidates who did not seem right, Bush pushed for more selections.
"Go back and find more, go back and find more women," Card quoted the president as saying. "We worked very, very hard, and a lot of the names that kept floating up were all white males. ‘No, keep going, going, going.'
"And it was someone who was not involved in the search process who was extremely complimentary of Harriet Miers who suggested that she should be considered. This was an external person. That caused us to say, are we being foolish to not look at her? Those conversations were conveyed to the president, and over the course of about a week he gave a lot of thought to it."
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UPDATE
From the interview: "... it was someone who was not involved in the search process who was extremely complimentary of Harriet Miers who suggested that she should be considered. This was an external person. That caused us to say, are we being foolish to not look at her?"
Ummmmm. That person wouldn't happen to be Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, would it?
posted by Pro Ecclesia 8:59 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The seemingly huge fact going unnoted in all this is that failing to pick a woman was supposed to be "big deal" because he "had" to -- or else it would "blow up" . . . remember that sort of talk?
Um, did I miss it? The great backlash against Bush because he didn't put a woman on the court? Even those segments of the media, who are paid to say inane things all day long, lost interest in that one pretty fast, didn't they?
Even that great solon, Sen. Kennedy, in his recent op ed in the Washington Post, failed to stir up much froth about the sex of Bush's nominees . . .
Oh, by the way -- if this is true, it also explodes the argument, made by Bush cheerleaders, that he really, really, really wants to pick solid conservatives. Because if that were true, and he wanted a woman, there were many far better choices than Harriet Meirs.
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