"And Harriet E. Miers's withdrawal of her nomination to the Supreme Court is the bitter fruit of Mr. Bush's own frailty in the wake of all those storms - and Hurricane Katrina - and of his miscalculation about how her appointment would be received."
Ron Brownstein in the Los Angeles Times :
"George W. Bush's first term was a tutorial on how a determined and aggressive president can multiply his strength and drive sweeping change from a narrow electoral base. His second term increasingly looks like the opposite: a bitter lesson in how swiftly a president's influence can erode and how quickly presidential weakness can breed division in his party.
"The withdrawal today of Harriet E. Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court amid revolt from conservatives underscored the stark message sent by the failure of Bush's Social Security restructuring plan and a series of recent uprisings by congressional Republicans -- he no longer can consistently impose his will on his party, much less the Congress or the country, with his job approval ratings consistently stuck at 45% or below."
Dick Polman in the Philadelphia Inquirer : "Miers is gone because her nomination infuriated the prominent conservatives whom Bush needs to help him weather his current political woes. She is gone because everyone from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to George Will and Robert Bork wanted her gone. She is gone because a coterie of conservatives, led by a former Bush speechwriter, had paid for a TV ad on Fox News, demanding that she go. She is gone because few Republican senators felt she was worth fighting for."
Deborah Orin in the New York Post : "Already at a low point in polls, Bush couldn't afford a fight that infuriated his conservative base, alienated swing independents and provided fodder for Democratic charges of cronyism and incompetence."
Paul West in the Baltimore Sun , on Bush touring hurricane-ravaged Florida: "Bush's administration has become, in some ways, its own crisis zone, with the president's power to influence events in Washington increasingly in doubt."
Don Lambro and Ralph Hallow in the Washington Times : "The move ends a bitter family fight with his conservative supporters that Mr. Bush could ill-afford while he and his party were under fierce attack on a growing number of political fronts."
American Prospect's Robert Kuttner demands truth in packaging:
"A question about the AP item on Harriet Miers' 'withdrawal': Why does the press play this choreography as if it were reality? Plainly, senior White House strategists assembled, decided that it was time to cut their losses, and yanked Miers. The pretense that this was her decision is preposterous. Poor Harriet decided she was causing her boss too much embarrassment? She didn't have the stomach for it? Does anybody in the real world think this was Miers' decision? But the Associated Press takes the handout at face value."
That draws a dissent from the New Republic's Jason Zengerle :
"It doesn't seem that preposterous to me that Miers did this on her own. I'm not saying that she didn't do this under pressure: she clearly saw the writing on the wall that her nomination was, if not necessarily doomed, then certainly in such trouble that it was hurting the White House. But that's my point. Miers has proven herself so slavishly loyal to Bush that it seems perfectly conceivable she would withdraw if she thought it would help her boss. Let's put it another way: If Miers saw a bullet heading toward Bush, she'd jump in front of it. I don't think she'd have to be pushed."
