‘A pit bull in size 6 shoes’

WASHINGTON – Harriet Miers slipped into the back of the East Room to watch John Roberts sworn in as chief justice. No one knew then that the modest, unflappable and tough-minded Miers, who had helped lead the search for a new chief, might be next to don a Supreme Court robe.

Three days later, in the president’s living quarters, Bush asked Miers if she, too, would be willing to serve on the court.

“I am honored and humbled and certainly would accept if you decide to nominate me,” Miers told Bush, according to a White House aide.

Over a Sunday dinner of shrimp, polenta and chocolate mousse, Bush offered the nomination to his counsel and loyal member of his inner circle.

If confirmed, Miers, 60, would become the third woman on the nation’s highest court, replacing retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, appointed by President Reagan, and joining Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by President Clinton.

Miers already has a string of firsts on a resume that tracks a quiet but steady march to the top echelons of power: first woman hired by her law firm, in 1972; first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association, in 1985; first woman president of the Texas bar, in 1992; and first woman president of her law firm, in 1996.

“You can tell the regard with which she’s held because she continues to get the ‘firsts’ and rise to the top,” said Betsy Whitaker, a past president of the State Bar of Texas. She describes Miers as a private person who is never flamboyant. “She’s not somebody who is a gossip.”

At the White House, Miers is known as a diligent adviser, one of the first to arrive and one of the last to leave.

Reginald Brown, a Washington lawyer who used to work in the counsel’s office, recalls seeing her aging red Mercedes, with bumper stickers from campaigns past, parked as early as 5 a.m. some days and still there at 9 p.m. – and sometimes on weekends.

Wendy Long, counsel with the Judicial Confirmation Network, which was set up to back Bush’s judicial nominees, recalls being in a long meeting with Miers and watching staff members come in and pass her little folded pieces of paper, which she read, pokerfaced.

Finally, after receiving four or five little notes, Miers said, “Excuse me, there’s something I need to deal with.”

“Bombs could be falling on the White House and that’s what she would say,” Long said.

Miers is a self-described “Texan through and through.” She grew up in Dallas and received her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University.

She clerked for a federal judge there and then joined Locke Purnell Rain Harrell, rising to become its first female president. After the firm merged with another, she was co-managing partner of the 400-lawyer Locke Liddell & Sapp.

“She kept a low profile here as she did up there” in Washington, said Bruce Buchanan, political science professor at the University of Texas in Austin. “People who look into her background find her to be self-effacing – no family, no private life to speak of.”

Miers never married. Her father died years ago, and her mother lives in a Texas nursing home. In the Oval Office for the announcement, she thanked her mother for her faith, strength, courage, love and “beauty of spirit.” As she spoke, her royal blue suit shined with a broach her mother gave her.

She lives in a condominium in Virginia and spends weekends, when time allows, in Texas. She still owns a house in Dallas. She has three brothers and seven nieces and nephews.

Her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Lang-Miers, a justice on the 5th Appellate District Court of Appeals in Texas, said Miers likes to play tennis, run and take in a movie. “She makes a wonderful sweet potato pie,” she said. “Many marshmallows. They call it a vegetable, but it’s probably more of a desert.”

Over the years, Miers has dated Nathan Hecht, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court who has known her since the 1970s. “She always remembers everybody’s birthday,” Hecht told the Legal Times for an article last December. “She’ll be finding a present for somebody in the middle of the night. ‘Can’t it wait until next week?’ ‘No,’ she’d say. ‘It has got be done now.’”

Some of her former colleagues say Miers can be too attuned to detail, too intent on crossing every “t” and dotting every “i.” Others who have seen her in action say she’s a good manager who can delegate and ask probing questions.

Bush first met with Miers about the position on Sept. 21, the same day that Ginsburg told an audience in New York that she didn’t like the idea of being the only woman on the Supreme Court. First lady Laura Bush wanted to see a woman nominated, too. Bush and Miers met three more times after that.

“She was not seeking this out,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, adding that the president was seriously considering a number of candidates from all walks of life. “And it became clear to him, having known her and having been very familiar with her record of accomplishment and her long career, distinguished career, that she would be the best person for this position.”

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove says she can be “tough as nails.” Bush once called her “a pit bull in size 6 shoes.” Yet Miers is gracious and warm. A young staffer said Miers once took the time to send an e-mail to tell her, “I think we are lucky to have you.”

She was Bush’s personal lawyer in Texas, took on the thankless job of cleaning up the Texas Lottery when he was governor, and followed him to Washington to serve as staff secretary, the person who controls every piece of paper that crosses the president’s desk.

In 2005, Bush appointed her White House counsel, succeeding Alberto Gonzales when he was named attorney general. In the busy counsel’s office, Miers has been the main vetter for judicial nominations.

Naming Miers follows a move by Bush in 2000 when he tapped the man leading his search for a running mate – Dick Cheney.

Once more, as Texas Sen. John Cornyn quipped, the president “picked the picker.”