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A longtime member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, Texas, has been nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Harriet Miers, 60, was nominated by President Bush to replace outgoing Justice Sandra Day O’Connor during an Oval Office ceremony this morning (Monday, October 3).
“Harriet is just an outstanding Christian woman,” said Barry McCarty, preaching minister with Valley View Christian Church. “She is very well respected in the city of Dallas and well loved by the people in our church.”
(Miers was profiled in the November 4, 2001, issue of CHRISTIAN STANDARD—see below.)
Miers has served at the White House since President Bush took office in 2001, first as staff secretary—in charge of reading every piece of paper that crossed the president’s desk—and then as White House counsel, a position to which she was appointed in 2004.
President Bush spoke highly of Miers this morning: “For the past five years Harriet Miers has served in critical roles in our nation’s government.”
“If confirmed,” said Miers, “I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution.”
At Valley View, Miers served on the Missions Committee and in the children’s ministry.
McCarty said Miers’s continuing concern for world missions was evident this spring. McCarty serves on the board of Central India Christian Mission, which was meeting in Washington, D.C., in March. Miers knew of the meeting, and hosted McCarty and missionary Ajai Lall for lunch at the White House.
Miers worships at Valley View on those infrequent weekends when she is in Dallas, McCarty said. She is at ease interacting with all members of the congregation.
“Unless you knew who she was, you would have no idea you were looking at one of the most powerful women in the country,” McCarty said.
McCarty said many in Dallas knew Miers’ appointment to a position on the Supreme Court was a possibility, and that his anticipation grew when he learned the president would announce his choice this morning.
If confirmed by the Senate, Miers, 60, would join Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second sitting female justice on the bench.
The following article about Harriet Miers originally appeared in the November 4, 2001, issue of CHRISTIAN STANDARD under the headline, “Inside the Real West Wing.” It was written by Jack Straus Jr., an attorney in Dallas, Texas, and an elder at Valley View Christian Church.
“Inside the Real West Wing” by Jack Straus Jr.
There aren’t any Emmys for service in the real White House. The hours are long, the work is demanding, and the responsibilities are enormous. But there are those who heed the call to duty and service. One of them who went to Washington in January with President George W. Bush is Harriet Miers, a member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, Texas.
Miers has been a loyal and faithful member of VVCC for years. She has had a visible place of service both in and out of church. Her long list of activities include membership on Dallas City Council and becoming the first woman president of both the Dallas Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas. Now she has taken on a new role as staff secretary to President Bush.
Although Miers is unquestionably one of the president’s top aides, she is not one of the more visible ones. But that isn’t her role. It’s not her job to be a spokesperson on policy issues or a spokesperson for the White House, thus, you don’t see her on the evening news or read much about her in the press. Her primary responsibility is to manage the document flow to and from the oval office. Basically, she reads everything that goes to the president.
Because of the highly sensitive nature of her position, the duties are not delegable. She still has to read it all. That makes for very long workdays. The day I interviewed her, she had arrived in the office at 6:30 a.m., having left only a few hours before at 9:30 p.m. That sort of schedule, including travel with the president on overnight trips, can take its toll. She’s been told that the average tenure of a person in this job is just 18 months.
Miers has worked for the president in different capacities since 1993. At that time, while a partner at what is now the law firm of Locke Liddell and Sapp in Dallas, she represented his campaign and George W. Bush personally. As for what it’s like to work for him as staff secretary currently, she uses words like “challenging,” and “great.” The president “inspires you to do your best,” she says. And one of the reasons is that “he works very hard himself.”
Service and Sacrifice
Why did she leave a wonderful career in Dallas as co-managing partner of Locke Liddell and Sapp? “I was asked to do it,” she responds. The president asked her to serve, and she felt like she should. Her attitude is emblematic of those in this administration. There is a high degree of responsibility and sense of duty and service. To Miers, it’s been humbling to see how many people who could have gone into positions of power or held on to their positions of power gave it all up to serve someone who does have power. “People with big responsibilities gave it up to serve here,” she said, and it is instructive and inspiring to see it and to work with them.
She also hopes that people understand the tremendous sacrifice that the president and his family made to serve. Serving as president requires a great deal of hard work, and President Bush has an “intense desire to lift the spirit of the nation.” For example, the issue of the day when we spoke was drug abuse–the president was appointing his new drug czar. Miers emphasized that the president is genuinely concerned that we not stop attacking the problem of drug abuse until we can solve it.
Not all Americans acknowledge the commitment of those in the White House. Those who protest sitting presidents and their policies are inevitable, and they make their presence obvious all around the White House. Hearing those protesters and reading about them can be difficult at times because “you don’t feel like what they are saying is justified.” But Miers adds that free speech is important to our culture and this administration does respect the protesters and what they have to say.
Faith in Action
Miers is a woman of faith with strong Christian beliefs. To her, it has been “wonderful to be working for a president who is a believer and who acts on his faith.” The president talks about his faith often, and it is important to him. It also is important to Miers. She brings her faith to bear on everything she does. It’s not only a part of how she views issues, it also affects her willingness to serve and her desire to do well. She readily acknowledges that she can’t do anything without the grace of God.
In her role as staff secretary, Miers studies every conceivable issue. She is passionate about many different ones but of especial note is education. “So many of our problems relate to lack of effective education,” she says. And internationally, she is passionate about our nation’s “role in the world as a leader.” We should be striving “to bring different peoples to freedom and to their own democracies.”
In her first few months on the job, there were many significant moments and significant tasks. But Miers prefers to look at something’s significance not from her own perspective, but from that of someone else. “A letter to a person dying of cancer is the most significant thing to her. A letter to a kid who is having his eleventh birthday is the most significant thing to him.” At some point when this ride is over, Miers will take a similar perspective. She will feel like the most important thing she did during her tenure at the White House was “answering the call” to serve the United States of America, the “greatest country that ever existed.” Very honestly and very passionately, she reiterates that having an opportunity to work for our country is indeed wonderful. “If an attorney had the United States of America for a client, that would be the best client to have.”
Service, responsibility, duty, sacrifice, and faith are words integral to understanding Harriet Miers and her colleagues. She describes the Bush team as “an administration where faith is important. Prayers count. We all value prayers.” She says that everyone can make a difference–“by your vote, by writing, by doing something that is demonstrable, whether it’s in school,” or out in the community. “Empowerment is real, and individual people are able to change the course of history.”
This photo of Harriet Miers
accompanied the article that was
published in CHRISTIAN STANDARD
in 2001.
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