Carol at ConfirmThem writes: “Some people, quite understandably, have objected to the President, in effect, telling everyone to ‘trust him’ that Harriet Miers won’t legislate from the bench.

“But in fairness, I hope that everyone who is denouncing her has personally read the work and are intimately acquainted with the life histories of Luttig, Alito, McConnell and all the rest of the judges that we were hoping for. Because if they haven’t, they are instead just relying on the conservative opinion leaders whom we all respect, who have assured us that they’re the ‘best’ choices.

“And if that’s the case, then it’s just a matter of conservatives deciding whom (President Bush or the conservatives opposed to his choice) they will trust on this nomination. . . .”

I think Carol makes several reasonable points in this post. But her valid point tells more against a sloppy formulation of the view that we-can’t-just-trust-Bush view than against that view.

It is certainly true that in evaluating any nominee, we are relying (directly or indirectly) on other people’s assessments. (As we often do. I have never been to Australia, but I am confident in my belief that it exists because I trust that there is no conspiracy of map-makers, people who mention the country or say they’re from there, etc.)

But there’s a difference between having numerous people who know the ins and outs of constitutional law and the right convictions on it vouch for someone and having a president do it. Partly the difference is between dispersed knowledge and centralized knowledge. Plenty of conservative academics and lawyers would have vouched for Michael McConnell and did vouch for John Roberts.

Who’s vouching for Miers’s legal conservatism? Bush, who doesn’t strike me as someone whose determinations on this specific point should inspire great confidence. That’s not because he’s untrustworthy, but because I don’t expect (or even much want) him to know much about constitutional law. People in Bush’s employ. People who are very close to being in his employ–e.g., people who were brought into the administration’s deliberations about the nomination on the de facto condition that they would sign off on and defend whoever was chosen. And, then, finally, there are people who don’t have much firsthand experience of Miers but are, in my view, placing too much weight on the previous groups’ assessments.

I think, in a way, that this is the key divide. I think George Will goes too far when he says that the Miers appointment risks “reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.” I can see why this sort of thing would drive defenders of the Miers pick, such as Hewitt, up the wall.

Yes, I made a joke about cronyism yesterday, but I really do strongly suspect that an important element in President Bush’s thinking was that his familiarity with her made it possible for him to assess her reliability in a way he could not assess other people. I just think that while it is useful on many occasions for a president to size someone up personally, it is not a great method on which to rely heavily in picking Supreme Court justices. And it creates a bias in favor of the inner circle; it’s a kind of higher cronyism, based not on jobbery but on the sincere, but in my view mistaken, conviction that this kind of personal assessment by the president is the safest way of choosing justices.

And that’s probably enough for tonight.