President Bush today announced he will choose his former personal lawyer, Harriet Mier, as his next Supreme Court nominee to replace the redoubtable and balancing Sandra Day O’Conner.

My friend Sharon Astrin nailed the pick. Her logic was, apparently, impeccable (Sharon is often impeccable in other ways). Sharon figured that Ms. Mier is an insider loyalist with few public statements about judicial matters, and like Dick Cheney who was selected as vice president after leading the search committee for a nominee, Ms. Mier was the lead White House appointee to seek out Supreme Court nominees. My own guess was Alberto Gonzalez, the attorney general. I’m rather glad Sharon was right instead of me.

One of the reasons I’m glad is that it appears that this selection will probably “save” Roe v. Wade from being overturned. Sorry, pro-lifers, but not this time.

Ms. Mier is a former corporate lawyer known for being able to keep her darn mouth shut in her Dallas practice before going to the White House with President Bush. Discretion is a big deal in all events, but in this case it means that this nominee won’t have many uncomfortable questions to answer about things she’s said publicly before going before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate. It will be very difficult for anyone to block this nominee as far as I can tell at this point.

In fact, it doesn’t appear that Ms. Mier is an ideologue about much of anything, at least according to the public records. Smart, savvy and hard working, yes. Hard right wing, no.

Sharon said something else about this nominee that I thought was brilliant: “this is Bush’s Ruth Bader Ginsberg”. Give Ms. Astrin credit where credit is due, she made the pick and polished it off with elan.