Miers ties to Bush include personal lawyer

Loyal to Bush agenda
Card, in a 2003 interview with the publication Texas Lawyer, said Bush’s affinity for Miers is clear in the frequent invitations she receives to visit the presidential retreat at Camp David, “a privilege that is not enjoyed by a lot of staff.”

“She’s a quiet, highly respected force and someone who is seen as not having any agenda other than the president’s,” he said.

Intensely loyal, Miers is happy to stay off the radar screen as long as her boss is happy, on the thinking that White House counsels only make news when there’s been a mistake.

“Hopefully, there aren’t any,” she told the Dallas Morning News earlier this year. “So, we stay out of the headlines.”

At the same time, however, she showed her readiness to take on difficult questions.

“Lawyers by nature are involved in controversy,” she said. “We expect difficult issues and are prepared to deal with them.”

Bush underscored her toughness, observing when he was governor, “When it comes to a cross-examination, she can fillet better than Mrs. Paul.”

Sept. 11 scramble
As White House staff secretary, Miers was with the president in Florida when the terrorist attacks unfolded on Sept. 11, 2001, and she later remembered the regard she felt for him as she scrambled to help prepare his remarks to the nation that night. “It took some time, and the president saw me hurrying to give them to him,” she recalled. “He said, ’Good hustle.’ He made me feel good that I was contributing. Typical.”

Ron Edmonds / AP White House counsel Harriet Miers speaks after President Bush nominated her Monday.

Miers is a self-described “Texan through and through.” She grew up in Dallas and received both her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University. She clerked for a federal judge there and then joined Locke Purnell Rain Harrell in 1972, rising to become first woman president of the firm in 1996. When her firm merged with another, she became co-managing partner of the 400-lawyer Locke Liddell & Sapp.

“Harriet is not a person that gets frustrated easily,” R. Bruce LaBoon, a former law partner, told Texas Lawyer. “She doesn’t lose her temper. She is very cool and calm in a storm.”

When Bush was governor of Texas, she represented him in a case involving a fishing house. In 1995, he appointed her to a six-year term on the Texas Lottery Commission. She also served as a member-at-large on the Dallas City Council and in 1992 became the first woman president of the Texas State Bar.

Miers came with the president to the White House as his staff secretary, the person in charge of all the paperwork that crosses the Oval Office desk. Miers was promoted to deputy chief of staff in June 2003.

Miers, who is single, is known for putting in long hours without complaint. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, a fellow Texan who earlier served alongside Miers in the White House, told Texas Lawyer in 2003 that Miers was “here before dawn and after dusk and on most weekends. No one works harder.”

“She never seeks the limelight,” Spellings told Business Week. “She’s just extremely devoted to the president.”

Miers reveals little of her own emotions or ideological persuasions, but has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush administration on a broad of initiatives including tax cuts, Social Security reforms, restrictions on federal spending on embryonic stem cell research, national security, education reforms and fighting terrorism.

In hosting an “Ask the White House” interactive forum on the Web before the 2004 elections, Miers lavished praise on a litany of Bush administration initiatives, then added, “I could go on and on.”

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