For Miers, Proximity Meant Power

As a corporate lawyer in Dallas, Miers had been Bush's personal lawyer and worked as counsel to his campaigns for governor and president. Still, when she was invited to move to Washington, "it was certainly a challenging decision," said her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Lang-Miers, a Dallas judge. "She had so much respect for the president, but leaving Dallas, her home and her career was kind of a difficult decision."

Fleischer recalled that Miers had hoped she would become White House counsel from the outset. Instead, she was offered the job of staff secretary to the president. It is, Daniels said, "a thankless job. . . . Always a flak-catching job."

As staff secretary, Miers was the last person to handle every piece of paper that went to Bush, and, with scores of employees, it was her task to make sure each document was accurate and ready for the president's eyes. The papers ranged from correspondence to bills Bush was signing into law to memos synthesizing policy recommendations from White House and agency staff. Early every evening, she delivered to the president's residence in the East Wing a binder consisting of his schedule for the following day and tabbed sections that contained background material on the people and issues he would face. Fleischer called it "a perfectionist's job."

"You would have a particular phrase [in a memo] or a particular addition, and she would call you and explore at great length what that meant," said John Bridgeland, former director of the White House domestic policy council and the USA Freedom Corps.

"You had to meet her standards, which are very, very high standards, to get documents in to the president," said one former administration official who agreed to speak of a former colleague only on the condition of anonymity. "I would be fibbing if I didn't say at times that was frustrating."

In 2001, Bush's first year in office, Miers rejected the text of the White House Christmas card and ordered a new version because, the White House said, she did not think it was written well enough.

Miers played the quiet arbitrator. David W. Hobbs, the former White House director of legislative affairs, said he got calls from Miers "at 10 or 11 at night that [presidential counselor] Karl [Rove] or another White House staffer wanted the president to do something, but she wanted to check and make sure I was aware of it and didn't think it was going to cause damage on the legislative front."

Her work habits were legendary. Almost every Sunday, Miers went to the office after church, said Spellings, who says she cannot recall ever being at the White House when Miers was not there -- unless she was traveling with Bush. "She'd always read memos through again," said Kristen Silverberg, a former domestic policy adviser who is now an assistant secretary of state. "She'd be at the building till late at night reading everything to make sure everything was perfect."

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), a friend from Texas, said Miers's life outside work is "not much. She works all the time." Occasionally, they have attended a ballet or opera, Hutchison said, adding, "I tried to get together with her several times, but she ended up having to cancel."

Many colleagues admired Miers's zealous work ethic, and her skill at balancing competing interests within the administration. "She was an impeccably honest broker and accurate conveyor of information to the president with no spin or distortion," said budget director Joshua B. Bolten, who was Bush's first deputy chief of staff for policy.

Others held a less charitable view. Some colleagues "really felt she was the place where the action stopped and the hand-wringing began," said a former administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

By July 2003, when Miers succeeded Bolten as deputy chief of staff, the dominant policy issue before the White House was a drive to push through Congress a new prescription drug benefit for elderly patients on Medicare. Thomas A. Scully, who was running the Medicare program, remembers Miers at all the meetings at which Bush was briefed. She impressed Scully as smart, but he said, "She had a very limited ego and was the ultimate Bush staff person. . . . I remember her at one point saying, I'm not a health care expert, so I'm not going to question."

"She can either dial it way down or way up as the situation calls for," said Spellings, who added that when her friend asserts herself, she does so "with the utmost intelligence."

Still, the deputy chief's job plunged her into a range of issues, some of which would become themes of Bush's reelection campaign. They included immigration policy, the space program, health information technology, Social Security, and a sequel to the No Child Left Behind law that would affect high schools. Last fall, as the country faced a shortage of flu vaccine, Miers immersed herself in the administration's eventual decision to import supplies from Germany. "I remember Harriet wanting to understand every nook and cranny of how vaccines are manufactured, how the approval process works," Spellings said.

Last February, she moved into the counsel's office. She has, said the current staff secretary, Brett M. Kavanaugh, handled constitutional-level matters, including issues involving executive privilege, the review of the USA Patriot Act and the National Security Council.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he intends to question Miers more closely but that he believes "her experiences with the president on the issues which have come to her as White House counsel are germane" to the court. Specter said that, in his interactions -- including on the nominations of John G. Roberts Jr. to be chief justice and herself -- Miers has struck him as responsive, intelligent and a strategic thinker. "A real professional," he said.

Already, Specter has had a firsthand glimpse of her work style. On Tuesday, he said, he asked her when she could complete a preliminary background questionnaire. "Some people take forever. Not Harriet Miers," he said. She told him she would return it within three days.