An e-mail passed along from a friend whose been thinking through this Miers thing more than he cares to:

Republican proponents of Miers nomination have repeatedly pointed to the President’s record of appellate court appointments as proof that Harriet Miers will be the type of justice that accepts the constitutionally prescribed role of the federal judiciary. In its essence this argument suggests that it would be irrational for the President to go out of his way to appoint strict constructionists to the lower courts only to betray that work by putting a stealth liberal activist on the Supreme Court. However consider the following: We know that the President has nominated many excellent candidates for the appellate courts; however, it is less certain that the President has been actively involved in vetting those candidates. The only nominees that we can be certain that the President had an active role in choosing were John Roberts and Harriet Miers. While the intellectual caliber and credentials of these two nominees maybe starkly different, there is one key similarity between these nominations that may reveal a great deal about the President’s “judicial philosophy” which should be deeply troubling to conservatives.
In both Roberts and Miers, Bush nominated individuals who despite long legal careers had made few public pronouncements about controversial legal issues or the role of the judiciary in adjudicating them. The absence of a significant legal “paper trail” for Roberts and Miers appears to have aided their prospective nominations. In fact, one does not have to look very hard to find stories of unnamed Administration officials boasting about both candidates lack of paper trails. This is very telling.
Many conservatives believe that the greatest threat to our constitutional republic over the past century has been abuse of power of the federal judiciary. Stepping outside of their narrowly defined constitutional roles, unelected judges have become super legislators deciding key social and cultural disputes by judicial fiat. Defenders of the constitution believe that this is wrong, and have not been afraid to say so. This is not a grey area. Judges didn’t moderately overstep their bounds in Griswold and Roe.
If the President is truly conservative in his judicial philosophy, why has he apparently gone out of his way to select two Supreme Court nominees who have not publicly expressed the same view? Bush’s actions appear to reveal a lack of conviction in the merits of the conservative view on the proper role of the judiciary in the government. If Bush is not confident enough in nominating candidates that are comfortable articulating this view, why should we be comfortable with Bush’s personal assessment of his candidates?