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Miers retires
October 27, 2005 | 12:41 PM ET
Harriet Miers has withdrawn her name from consideration for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court seat. This was a noble and necessary thing to do, given that the nomination was a dreadful mistake from the beginning. In fact, if the White House had been reading blogs it might not have been blindsided.
Then again, after doing such a masterful job with the Roberts nomination, the White House shouldn't have needed to read the blogs to get it right. Why they went with Miers is a mystery to me. As I've said elsewhere, when you nominate someone who's, well, a crony, you should be locked-and-loaded to repond to charges of cronyism. Instead, the White House was caught flat-footed.
This is just the latest in a series of missteps by the White House (such as not supporting the Coburn Amendment and -- incredibly -- reinstating Davis-Bacon Act rules on Katrina relief projects) that make me wonder who's minding the store these days. People used to look at the hapless John Kerry campaign and wonder if Karl Rove had moles in the operation. If the Bush Administration keeps up this string of missteps, we'll hear mole-talk of a different variety.
Administrations always have problems in their second terms, of course, as personnel turn over and people get tired. And the Bush Administration, having lived through a lot more history than most Administrations, has to be tired. But they've got three years left, and neither they, nor the country, can afford more dropped balls.
