The guessing game about whether the president would name a woman or minority man as his next nominee for the Supreme Court was over before it started.  Editorial boards and liberal advocates alike had expressed the view that the court needs more diversity.  Many were also quick to add that finding a non-white-male nominee who could satisfy Bush's base and also dodge a filibuster would be tricky at best.  At least at first blush, the president seems to have accomplished both with the nomination of Harriet Miers. It'll take the (hopefully) intense scrutiny of a confirmation hearing to know whether Miers is qualified to hold a lifetime position on the highest court, but at least for now, the fact that she's a woman is a good start.

Miers is a virtual unknown--but a close Bush confidant, so his base can be pretty sure she won't double-cross them. And since she has never been a judge, there is no record on which the Democrats can build a filibuster.

At least in the short run, women's groups will hold their fire too.  Having advocated for a woman who could fill O'Connor's moderate shoes, they're not likely to join former Bush White House speechwriter David Frum and Moveon.org in condemning Miers as unqualified strictly on the basis of her lack of judicial experience.  That smacks too much of the stuff that's thrown at women all the time.  The argument goes something like this: "She's an affirmative action candidate and no thought was given to her actual qualifications other than gender." Court watchers will recognize the parallels to the rhetoric that divided African Americans on the Clarence Thomas nomination.

On the other hand, women's groups and other liberal advocates won't support ideologues of the fair sex, which could be the case with a nominee who is so close to Bush she reportedly goes on brush-clearing expeditions with him and the rest of the boys.  In the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, "Any woman will not do."  It must be a woman who would advance women's rights as well as human rights.  The question now is "What will Miers do?"

Sandra Day O'Connor was not the swing vote on the court solely because she was a "moderate."  She was the often swing vote because she brought a certain set of experiences to the court, and those experiences caused her to apply a certain lens to the deliberations--a gender lens.  She said as much on a number of occasions.  In other words, she was sometimes the swing vote not because of her politics or judicial philosophy, but because she has experienced life as what she is--a woman.  (Similarly, applying a racial lens to subjects like affirmative action was what made Alberto Gonzales anathema to the conservatives.)

With Miers, who never answers in gender terms when asked about her role as the first woman to head the State Bar of Texas and the first woman to head at a major Dallas law firm, it could go either way.  Even though she came of professional age during the 1970s, when O'Connor, Ginsburg and other female attorneys freely acknowledge the gender barriers they faced, Miers has never publicly done so.  Some women like to believe they got where they are solely through hard work and determination, never giving a bow to the feminists who opened the law school doors and the slots in professional firms through passing laws like Title IX and Title VII.

Whether Miers can pass various forms of muster is yet to be learned, but the president has done the right thing in choosing a woman. Despite the declaration by The Washington Post that the court need not be "a representative institution," the group that will shape outcomes for the next generation of Americans ought to be just that.  The country is 53 percent female.  The court is only 22 percent female with two women, and female representation would have dropped to 11 percent if Bush had named a male, minority or not.  Hardly representative.

If the court looked approximately like America, it would have five women and four men, one of the individuals would be Hispanic, and one would be black.  To correct the imbalance in representation, this president and future ones should establish a "female first" philosophy as a given.  Not only this seat, but the next three, should be filled with females.  Whether or not they will also be Hispanic and/or also represent other forms of diversity--disability, religious or geographic--should come second to the gender decision.  Like race, these other types of diversity do not set up the zero sum game that characterizes the gender choice, since people of either gender and all races can embody them.

A female first philosophy would establish a path to parity. Whether or not this particular nominee gets by, George W. Bush has made a small step for womankind.  Morally right? Yes. Politically savvy? Right again.  Politically correct? So what--it's about time this president does something correctly.