Orin Kerr makes a good point about the "bottom line" in the Miers debate:

Dobson and Santorum have been focused on the bottom line of whether they support the confirmation of Miers (and in Santorum's case, whether he will vote up or down). In contrast, Will, Frum, and Kristol have harshly criticized the President for having nominated Miers in the first place; to my knowledge, none of them have taken the position that that Miers should be defeated in the Senate. George Will comes the closest when he says that "it might be very important" that Miers is not confirmed, but I don't think that's quite enough.

In sum, the two groups aren't disagreeing, but rather answering different questions. The commentators are ruminating on process, while the politicans and political leaders are focusing on the bottom line vote.

What this means is my bottom line concerns -- whether based on politics or worries about legal scholarship -- are about as relevant to the confirmation as my thoughts about John Roberts' plaid pants.

Conservative scholar Thomas Sowell sees two bottom lines -- one now and one later.

The immediate bottom line is the role of the Senate, which Sowell doesn't think would have been able to confirm a nominee more pleasing to conservatives:

What is weak is the Republican majority in the Senate.

When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of pre-emptive surrender.

Before we can judge how the President played his hand, we have to consider what kind of hand he had to play. It was a weak hand -- and the weakness was in the Republican Senators.

(Via G. Gordon Liddy.)

The bottom line with any Supreme Court justice is how they vote on the issues before the High Court. It would be nice to have someone with ringing rhetoric and dazzling intellectual firepower. But the bottom line is how they vote. If the President is right about Harriet Miers, she may be the best choice he could make under the circumstances.