WRITING IN the Wall Street Journal, editorial board member Melanie Kirkpatrick counsels her “friends on the right” to “brew themselves a cup of chamomile tea and go back and review the roster of Bush judges.” Such an exercise may help them “sleep better” with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. “Any president is due some deference under the Constitution in his choice of judges,” Kirkpatrick says, “and given his record on picking judges, this president deserves more than he has received.”

In other words, trust Bush–or at least wait until the Senate hearings before passing judgment on Harriet Miers. For over two weeks now we’ve heard White House aides and pro-Miers conservatives parrot some variation of this argument. A charitable interpretation might be paraphrased as follows: Just be patient–when Miers goes before committee, she’ll dazzle everyone with her punctilious mastery of constitutional law. A not-so-charitable interpretation might go like this: As long as she votes our way on the Court, what more do you want? So let’s quit all this elitist nonsense about “qualifications” and “cronyism” and give her a chance.