First Take on Harriet Miers

For those who missed it somehow, the President has nominated someone named Harriet Miers to take Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The item on Harriet Miers' resumé that caught my eye was her work for the Texas Lottery Commission, between 1995 and 2000. Here's the New York Times profile:

In 1995, Mr. Bush, then in his first months as governor of Texas, appointed Ms. Miers to a six-year term as chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission. Ms. Miers unexpectedly resigned after five years that were marked by controversy and the dismissal of two executive directors of the commission. The first executive director, Nora Linares, was fired in 1997 when it became public that her boyfriend had worked for the company that held the contract to operate the lottery. Ms. Linares's successor was dismissed after only five months when he began reviewing campaign contributions of state legislators without the commission's knowledge. Despite the problems, as well as the lottery's declining sales, The Dallas Morning News praised Ms. Miers when she resigned in 2000 for ''preserving the operations' integrity.'

It looks like she came out of her work with the lottery untouched by the scandals. The Houston Chronicle has more details on the Texas Lottery Commission scandals, and ends with this interesting nugget:

Miers resigned as lottery commission chairman in 2000. She said her resignation had nothing to do with lagging sales in its biggest game, Lotto Texas.

Miers resigned from the Texas Lottery Commission, in short, because she managed it poorly. She joined Bush's staff in 2001, and held such luminous positions as "White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy" (2003-2004) before winding up as White House Counsel last November.

She's a notch less embarrassing than Michael Brown, in the sense that she does have some experience in politics. But it's still pretty underwhelming.