In my Daily Standard column this week, "The Sounds Of Silence", I point out that the White House has done little to help its own cause for the Harriet Miers nomination. The strategy of "trust me" has obviously failed, and it looks like the staffers haven't yet come up with a Plan B:

DURING HIS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS, Bush promised to nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Now the bill has come due, and the response the president's supporters have received has been: "trust me." Some have noted similarities between this nomination and the last "trust me" Republican nomination to the Supreme Court, David Souter. Bush the Elder told conservatives that Souter would be a "home run."

In the past few months, Bush has had two opportunities to fulfill his own election pledge. The president instead selected a brilliant, but largely untested, Rehnquist acolyte and his personal attorney. Conservatives want to know how Miers fulfills his election pledge. Instead of getting any clear evidence of a conservative scholar or action in support of conservative judicial initiatives, the Bush administration has kept its lips silent after demanding trust.

If the White House wants to get more support for Harriet Miers, then we need more information on what makes her a potential jurist in the mold of Scalia and Thomas -- and by that, we need actual evidence of such juridical philosophy, not a "trust me" from the President. He advanced Miers ahead of a number of better-known quantities; we want to know why. If the Bush administration has no position to articulate, it would certainly explain the silence.

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