How did Miers get the nod ahead of this guy?

The NYTimes has published a detailed biography of Judge Alito, the new nominee for Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court. Most unexpectedly, the Ties does a good job, and provides a very positive assessment of the Judge. Based on how they portray him, there is a lot to like. I'm stunned, seeing this report, that the White House felt that Harriet Miers was the superior candidate when this fellow was on the list. I guess it really was cronyism that drove that nomination, since a close relationship with the President is all this nominee lacks. The two qualities that are repeated in this and other reports, are brilliant intellect and nice-guy style.

Larry Lustberg, a former federal prosecutor who has known Judge Alito for 22 years, called him "totally capable, brilliant and nice."

The fellow even has a reputation for humility, a breathtakingly rare quality both in government and the judiciary. On that basis alone I am enthusiastic for his confirmation.

Judge Alito is described by clerks, lawyers and former schoolmates as a man who takes extraordinary care to be gentle with others and is quick to help a struggling lawyer arguing before his court. "He's got a powerful intellectual humility, is the way I'd put it," said Clark Lombardi, who clerked for Judge Alito in 1999 and 2000 on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the judge's current seat.

I want to savor that phrase, "a powerful intellectual humility." That such a person can be found today is a comfort, that such a person would be valued and nominated to the highest court in the land is wonder. I don't need much more to become fully sold on this nominee. We were both at Princeton in the '70's, Alito some years before me, so I'm inclined to like him right off the bat, but there were more than a few brilliant but arrogant bastards graduating from "Old Nassau" then (and probably now), so I'm glad to hear that he was one of the nice ones. (Update: Tigerhawk has done some more digging into Alito's Princeton years. Calling Princetonians to service is something of a Bush family habit, it seems. Pretty savvy for a couple of Yalies...) (Update #2: Via Tigerhawk's post, the profile of Alito from the Daily Princetonian. Loads of good quotes from old friends.) To cap it all off, he seems to be the "right sort of conservative" in terms of his judicial philosophy.

"The notion that he's an extreme conservative is wrong," said Mark Dwyer, Judge Alito's fellow student at Princeton and roommate at Yale. "Sam is conservative because he's a straightforward believer in judicial restraint - that is, a judge's personal views should not dictate the outcome of the case." Even in the Reagan Justice Department, where a palpable sense of conservative triumph was in the air, "I never got the sense that he thought about legal issues in an ideological way," said Mr. Manning, now a professor at Harvard Law School.

There ought to be more than enough here to keep the "Gang of 14" together, which would prevent a filibuster, and ought to assure a smooth confirmation. The President and his staff are to be complimented on how quickly and capably they recovered from their misstep. That they could recover so well makes the Miers misstep the more difficult to explain.

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