Nomination Was Plagued By Missteps From the Start

"The expectations were so high," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative activist group, "this nomination left people scratching their heads -- and in some cases stamping their feet and pounding their fists -- because they were disappointed."

Reaching an Impasse

For a time, the White House dismissed the punditocracy and activists, focusing on the only people who had a vote -- the senators. But a series of missteps left some of them alienated as well, including Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who was miffed that Miers publicly disagreed with his account of their conversation on privacy rights. Ultimately, Specter rejected Miers's answers to a committee questionnaire as sloppy and incomplete, ordering her to redo them.

"Her one-on-one meetings didn't go as well as hoped," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who told the White House that she "needed to step it up a notch."

As Miranda and other activists used Web sites and television advertisements to pressure Bush to withdraw Miers, Graham and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) joined Democrats in demanding that the White House turn over papers from her work there. Because it was bipartisan, the request was harder for the White House to dismiss, and aides convening on Monday fretted over what they saw as an irreconcilable impasse.

"That was the day things really went down," said the GOP strategist working for Miers.

Fueling the discontent were fresh reports on Miers's history on issues such as affirmative action that had escaped White House vetters. Most damaging to her among Republicans was a Washington Post article on Wednesday recounting a speech Miers gave in 1993, in which she suggested that "self-determination" should guide decisions about abortion and warning against "legislating religion or morality."

That was enough for Concerned Women for America, one of the nation's largest evangelical groups. As White House envoy Dan Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, met with the group's chief counsel, Jan LaRue, seeking support on Wednesday, LaRue was suddenly called out of the room. The group's chairwoman, Beverly LaHaye, had confirmed a decision to oppose Miers. "I went back in to the senator," LaRue said, "and informed him that we were calling for her withdrawal."

That was not the only ominous sign Wednesday. Frist met with Bush and other top lawmakers at the White House in the morning to talk about budget issues, but privately, sources close to him said, he informed the president that Miers was in deep trouble. Using the vice president's office just off the Senate floor, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) met with Ed Gillespie and Leonard A. Leo, strategists working on behalf of Miers.

But Cornyn, a close Bush ally, emerged discouraged. At 6 p.m., he ran into Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who tried to buck him up. Cornyn thanked Grassley but then mused in an interview about the negative reaction to Miers. "I mean, I don't know what people were expecting. She's kind of shy and reserved," he said, and then he paused. "But this isn't a place that smiles with favor on shy, retiring personalities. Everyone here is used to big egos."

More conservatives were preparing to abandon Miers. Even Dobson, the most prominent activist on her side, said yesterday that "based on what we now know about Miss Miers, it appears that we would not have been able to support her candidacy."

The clash over her White House documents loomed large. To some Bush aides, it appeared to be the deal-breaker: The president, in defense of executive privilege, would never hand them over, and the senators, with nothing else to go on, were insistent they had to have them.

Miers called Bush in the White House residence at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. She said she would withdraw her nomination. Bush agreed. "It was a growing accumulation of things that resulted in her finally coming to the decision that there was probably one thing that she could not overcome, and that was the production of documents," Coats said.

The two kept the decision secret from nearly everyone else. Frist called Card at 9:30 p.m. to emphasize his concerns. White House aides finished Miers's second response to the Senate questionnaire and delivered it at 11:40 p.m., more than three hours after she decided to abandon her nomination. The 59-page document makes it clear that the struggle to learn about her advice to Bush would have continued had she stayed in the fray. Asked for details about her work, she submitted 135 boilerplate, publicly available fact sheets on White House policies and 67 policy statements the administration has sent Congress on legislation.

Her advocates continued working on her behalf as well. Sekulow was on C-SPAN at 6:45 a.m. yesterday touting her. But at 8:30 a.m., Miers walked into the Oval Office to hand Bush her official letter withdrawing. The White House announced it at 9 a.m.

And Miers went back to her office as White House counsel to begin the search for a new nominee.

Staff writers Charles Babington, Jo Becker and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.