There was evidence from before last weekend that Harriet Miers was going to resemble Sandra Day O’Connor on “affirmative action” issues. In an October 11 interview on the PBS talk show “Tavis Smiley,” a Miers colleague on the Dallas City Council, black Democrat Diane Ragsdale, expressed her disagreement with attacks on Miers’ intellect with these words:

“Harriet is highly intelligent. She is a negotiator. She is a consensus-builder. She can build bridges, and I guess to some extent maybe there are some people who simply don’t like those type of characteristics in individuals. But she is one who, as I indicated, believes in fairness, and she will sit down and negotiate with you and try to move you toward a resolution, move you toward settlement, and those are really her main strengths.”

If that doesn’t sound like Sandra the Sequel, then comes this exchange:

Tavis: I know what other folk in Dallas think of you inside the black community, so I assume that you would be and are, in fact, concerned about any decisions that she might make that would affect your people, that would affect African American people. Give me your sense then of how comfortable, scale of one to 10, 10 being extremely comfortable. As an African American, given the issues that you know this court is going to see, how comfortable would you be with Harriet Miers sitting on the Supreme Court? This is your own opinion.

Ragsdale: Seven.

Tavis: Seven out of 10?

Ragsdale: I would give seven out of 10. Particularly in the area of affirmative action, minority contracting, seven out of 10 to be quite frank about it. But I could be wrong, but that is my opinion, and that’s — based upon my experiences.