politics

Drawing Back the Curtain on One Miers Mystery

October 17, 2005

For weeks, Washington watchers have been obsessing about an October 5 declaration by James Dobson, a radio pundit and founder of the conservative advocacy group Focus on the Family, expressing his support for Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court. “When you know some of the things that I know — that I probably shouldn’t know — you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice,” said Dobson during his syndicated radio show.

Afterwards, everybody wanted to know the same thing — what did Dobson suddenly know about the seemingly unknowable Miers, and how did he know it?

“If there are back-room assurances,” Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said on ABC’s “This Week,” “and if there are back-room deals, and if there is something which bears upon a precondition as to how a nominee is going to vote, I think that’s a matter that ought to be known by the Judiciary Committee and the American people.”

Specifically, politicians and pundits of all stripes wanted to know if someone at the White House — directly or indirectly — had assured Dobson that, given the opportunity, Miers would vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Eventually, Dobson acknowledged that he had spoken about Miers with White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove. But Dobson denied discussing with Rove how Miers might vote. The press, for its part, was stymied. After all, how do you report on such murky, back-room assurances?

But, as it turns out, the White House’s campaign to promote Miers to religious conservatives, including Dobson, wasn’t taking place in hushed tones in clandestine meetings in secret backrooms — it was taking place on speakerphone.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, columnist John Fund unravels the mystery.

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According to Fund, on the day of Miers’ nomination, Dobson and about a dozen members of the conservative American Family Association participated in a conference call — arranged, in part, by Rove — to discuss Miers’ credentials. During the call, judge Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Ed Kinkeade, a federal district court judge, spoke in support of Miers.

“What followed was a free-wheeling discussion about many topics, including same-sex marriage,” reports Fund. “Justice Hecht said he’d never discussed that issue with Ms. Miers. Then an unidentified voice asked the two men, ‘Based on your personal knowledge of her, if she had the opportunity, do you believe she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?’ ‘Absolutely,’ said Judge Kinkeade. ‘I agree with that,’ said Justice Hecht. ‘I concur.’

“Shortly after,” Fund reported, “Dr. Dobson apologized and said he had to leave: ‘That’s all I need to know and I will get off and make some calls.'”

His radio endorsement of Miers took place two days later.

So did the conference call amount to, as Specter put it, a precondition by the Bush Administration as to how a nominee is going to vote? “The benign interpretation of their comments is that the two judges were speaking on behalf of themselves, not Ms. Miers or the White House, and were merely offering a prediction, not an assurance, about how she would come down on Roe,” concluded Fund. “But people I interviewed who were on the call took the comments as an assurance, and at least one based his support for Ms. Miers on them.”

In his story today, Fund wrote that his reporting was based on notes given to him by someone who sat in on the call. According to Fund, the details of call have also drawn interest from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — who might subpoena those who participated.

“It is possible that a tape or notes of the call are already in the hands of committee staffers,” noted Fund. “‘Some people were on speaker phones allowing other people to listen in, and others could have been on extensions,’ one participant told me.”

So much for back-room secrecy.

–Felix Gillette

Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.