The best woman for the job?

We were not dazzled Monday by President Bush's nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice. That's not to say we cannot be convinced Miers is the best woman for the job, but between now and her final confirmation vote, she'll need to pack an awfully strong punch.\nWhile she has never served as a judge, Miers' résumé is certainly not thin. She has served as a corporate lawyer, the head of the State Bar of Texas, a member of the Dallas City Council and the head of the Texas Lottery Commission. But is there anyone who believes any other president besides Bush would have seriously considered Miers for the highest court in the nation?\nSo far, Miers' most striking qualifications for the job include a closeness and intense loyalty to the president, which is no more a valid reason today for a nomination than it was when President Harry Truman appointed his old drinking buddy Fred Moore Vinson to the court in the 1940s. \nSay what you will about newly christened Chief Justice John Roberts -- and we have written positive things about him in the past. When the president announced Roberts' initial nomination in July, political watchers went abuzz. Roberts has been regarded by politicians, pundits and IU law professors who know him to be an extremely intelligent jurist with a calm judicial temperament who understands the scope of law and the gigantic impact the court can have. In other words, a highly qualified nominee.\nThat same buzz was ominously missing Monday upon the president's announcement of Miers. If the president sought to avoid a harsh ideological fight, he found a safely mediocre pick in Miers. It is certainly a little unsettling when the most widespread reaction to a Supreme Court nominee by those on the right and on the left is "eh."\nThose who frowned at Roberts' mere two-year stint as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge will surely find little comfort in Miers' lack of any tenure on a bench. On the whole, her apparent judicial inexperience is not an overwhelming concern for us. We recognize some of the court's most successful justices -- Earl Warren and William Rehnquist, for example -- had no experience as a judge before they were appointed. But very little exists by way of writings or opinions that will shed light on Miers' constitutional philosophy, and America deserves to get a sense of the jurist who will fill the big shoes of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. \nIn a press conference Tuesday, Bush defended Miers as the best person he could find for the job. We hope so. But we're skeptical. \nWe hope Miers is strongly questioned during her confirmation hearings, and until those have ended, we're reserving our final judgment on her. From here on out though, the burden of proof, so to speak, is on Miers to meet our expectations for what a Supreme Court justice should be.