The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the news of this Thursday, including full coverage of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court withdrawal, with reaction from Senators Brownback and Durbin and analysis by Mark Shields, David Brooks and Jan Crawford Greenburg, then: A 30th anniversary return report on the steel mill town of Weirton, West Virginia; and a few thoughts about a baseball team from the baseball town of Chicago, Illinois.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Harriet Miers withdrew today as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Her decision put an abrupt end to a rough confirmation fight. Miers had come under severe criticism from many conservatives. But her letter to the president cited Senate demands for her records as White House counsel. She said that would infringe on executive authority.

In his own statement, President Bush said Miers showed her "deep respect" for the constitutional separation of powers. Later, the president toured hurricane damage in South Florida. But he did not respond to shouted questions about Miers. We'll have much more on this story right after this News Summary.

More shipments of food and water arrived in south Florida today. That's after federal officials ordered round-the-clock aid flights. But long lines persisted anyway. Residents waited for hours to buy basic supplies like gasoline and clean water.

Also today, Tropical Storm Beta formed off Nicaragua. It was expected to grow into a hurricane, and make landfall there tomorrow.

Investigators in the Iraq Oil- for-Food program accused hundreds of companies of corruption today. The investigation was led by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. His final report said about 2,200 companies made illegal payments to Saddam Hussein's regime. The payments totaled $1.8 billion for humanitarian aid and oil contracts. Volcker said the crisis point came in 2000, when Iraq made the illegal payments mandatory.

PAUL VOLCKER: Companies that have particularly been buying oil stepped back and said they knew something was going on here, and there were no oil exports for a while, and then other companies stepped in, other middle men stepped in, front companies were made up, and it proceeded. But it seems to me at that point was where there was a real failure. That's where the program got corrupted rather generally, and there should have been a reaction and there wasn't.

JIM LEHRER: A number of major foreign firms were on the list, including Daimler-Chrysler, Daewoo and Siemens, among others. Two Texas oil companies were also named, BayOil and Coastal Corporation. Today, the former chairman of coastal, Oscar Wyatt, pleaded not guilty today to federal conspiracy charges in the scandal.

In Iraq today, the U.S. military announced three more American soldiers died Wednesday in roadside bombings. Four others were wounded. And, 15 Iraqis died today in clashes between Sunnis and Shiites just south of Baghdad. Most of the dead were Shiites.

Governments around the world condemned Iran's president today for saying Israel should be "wiped off the map." And Israeli Prime Minister Sharon called for the United Nations to expel Iran. He said: A state which calls for the destruction of another people cannot be a member.' The U.S. did not go that far. But a State Department spokesman said Iran should stop trying to build nuclear weapons.

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case met with his legal team today, but made no announcements. Patrick Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney based in Chicago, spent the day in Washington. A spokesman said nothing would happen before tomorrow. That's when the federal grand jury in the case meets for a final time.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted today to crack down on lawsuit abuse. Under the bill, lawyers would lose their licenses, if they repeatedly file frivolous suits. On the House floor, supporters and opponents argued over who would be helped and hurt.

REP. LAMAR SMITH: Frivolous lawsuits have become a form of legalized extortion. Without the serious threat of certain punishment for filing frivolous claims, innocent people and small businesses will continue to confront the stark economic reality that simply paying off frivolous claims through monetary settlements is always cheaper than litigating the case until no fault is found.

REP. JERROLD NADLER: The courts have not requested this. They have not said that there's any problem, there's any problem existing. This is an attempt, again, to shut the courthouse doors to people who need access to the courts and on the most fundamental grounds of justice, this bill ought to be soundly rejected.

JIM LEHRER: The Senate is not expected to take up the bill this year. On another issue today, the House overwhelmingly agreed to close more U.S. military bases. That means the base closing commission's proposals will become law next month. The targeted sites will have six years to shut down.

There was more hurricane fallout for the economy today. The Labor Department announced another 24,000 jobs lost to Katrina and Rita, based on claims for jobless benefits. The total now tops 500,000 jobs lost since the two hurricanes hit.

The storms also triggered sharply higher oil prices and oil company profits. Exxon-Mobil announced today it made nearly $10 billion in the third quarter. That's a record for an American company.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 115 points to close below 10,230. The NASDAQ fell 36 points to close at 2,063.

The Chicago White Sox celebrated today, after winning the World Series for the first time since 1917. Last night, the Sox beat the Houston Astros, one to nothing, to complete a four-game sweep. Chicago had not been in a World Series since 1959. We'll have more on this story at the end of the program.

And between now and then: The Miers withdrawal, with reaction from Senators Brownback and Durbin, analysis by Mark Shields, David Brooks and Jan Crawford Greenburg; plus, a 30th anniversary story about a steel mill.

FOCUS NOMINATION WITHDRAWN

JIM LEHRER: The bowing out of Harriet Miers. Margaret Warner begins.

MARGARET WARNER: Harriet Miers informed the president of his decision to withdraw at 8:30 last night. This morning, she handed him a letter explaining why: I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country,' she wrote.

Miers added that she was particularly concerned by the bipartisan demands from the Senate to see internal documents related to her role as White House Counsel.

Protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my confirmation,' she wrote, are in tension. I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield.'

For weeks, President Bush has maintained that Miers would not withdraw, despite mounting criticism from many conservatives. In a statement today, the president said he reluctantly accepted her decision and blamed it on the stalemate over her White House papers.

It is clear that Senators would not be satisfied,' the statement said, until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel.'

But even the president's allies in the Senate said Miers' withdrawal was triggered more by growing concerns among conservatives outside and inside the Senate.

Texas Republican John Cornyn, Miers' staunchest defender on the Judiciary Committee, explained:

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: You know, clearly, there were some people who were -- who wanted something different in a nominee, and the most often thing I heard mentioned is that there were some who wanted the president to pick a fight by nominating a very controversial conservative nominee that would consolidate conservatives behind that nominee.

MARGARET WARNER: Democratic Leader Harry Reid denounced the role conservatives played in torpedoing the nomination.

SEN. HARRY REID: I believe without any question, when the history books are written about all this, that it will show that the radical right wing of the Republican Party drove this woman's nomination right out of town.

MARGARET WARNER: The conservative drum beat against Miers began the very day she was nominated, and it never subsided. There were daily opinion columns criticizing her lack of conservative legal credentials, and plenty of blogs, too. And many legal conservatives, like former Reagan Justice Department lawyer Bruce Fein, said they were determined to shipwreck the nomination.

BRUCE FEIN: If there are vacancies on the Supreme Court, they have got to be filled by people of brains and intellect who will carry the conservative torch forward, not just run on a treadmill, and Harriet Miers is not that person, whatever else she is. She has never even thought about conservative philosophy. She's never thought about philosophy at all.

MARGARET WARNER: Social and religious conservatives also had doubts about Miers' reliability on issues they care about, like abortion and school prayer.

The White House tried to allay their fears by touting her evangelical Christian faith.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion.

MARGARET WARNER: That tactic backfired, said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America.

JAN LaRUE: Well, we found that the initial appeal, and the repetition of mention to her faith was really offensive. It was patronizing because our organization, the pro-family groups, the Senate, we have always taken the position that a person's faith should not be the issue.

Now, I'm an evangelical Christian myself. I'm always pleased to learn that anyone shares my faith, but that plus the fact that she's been a successful corporate attorney is not sufficient to qualify her -- or anyone else -- for the U.S. Supreme Court.

MARGARET WARNER: This week, a newly minted conservative group, called Americans for Better Justice, launched a $250,000 media campaign against Miers.

AD SPOKESPERSON: Go to BetterJustice.com. Urge President Bush to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers.

MARGARET WARNER: David Frum, a former Bush White House speechwriter who founded the group, said the final straw came in a news yesterday about a speech Miers had given in Dallas.

DAVID FRUM: The revelation that Harriet Miers as an attorney had given a speech in which she had endorsed a very liberal theory ever judicial activism, had spoken very slightingly of the pro-life movement, and I think that made it impossible. And that day, the Concerned Women for America, a very important conservative women's group, came out against her nomination.

I think probably that same evening a number of senators and other important conservatives in the country made it clear to the White House they could not continue to support the president on this.

And the nominee withdrew, and the president accepted it, and that's just good new.

MARGARET WARNER: Frum hopes the president will name someone satisfactory to his conservative supporters who have waited so long to reshape the Supreme Court.

MARGARET WARNER: The Senate Judiciary Committee was getting ready to tackle confirmation hearings for Miers beginning Nov. 7.

Joining us now are two members of that committee: Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois. Welcome, gentlemen.

Sam Brownback, Sen. Brownback, was this the right call on the part Harriet Miers and the president?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: I think it was. It's a difficult call. It's a difficult call for the president. It's a difficult call for Ms. Miers. They put forward Ms. Miers in the process, she went through aggressively to date, doing a lot of meetings on the Hill, making a lot of visits, working and preparing.

But at the end of the day, we got at this document clash of what we were seeking of information to be able to understand where she was on constitutional issues because there was no other record really for us to go on. And the administration was saying, well, those are executive and privileged, and a number of us were saying, well, we can't make a decision without those on this nominee where there's no other paper trail on constitutional issues, and we just got into a logjam.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Durbin, do you think this was over the documents or something more as even Sen. Cornyn suggested today?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I think it was about more than documents. I think it was about Dobson, I think it was about the right wing of the Republican Party. I think it was about the fact they weren't certain that this nominee would vote according to their political agenda. This is a critical seat. Sandra Day O'Connor, who is stepping down from the Supreme Court, has been involved in 193 five to four decisions, and three-fourths of those, she was the deciding vote.

They realize, as we do, too, this is the swing vote on the Supreme Court, and from the far right wing of the Republican Party, they said from the outset she's unacceptable. We don't find in her background the kind of allegiance to our political agenda that would make us comfortable. Documents might have been part of proving that allegiance, but it would have alienated an awful lot of people in the center of American politics.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Brownback, do you agree that the conservative opposition at least drove this decision, from legal conservatives and social comforts like yourself, and what do you think that was based on fundamentally?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Well, I think it's based primarily on the last election. President Bush ran very clearly on the issue that he wanted a court to be a coward and not a legislature. And he said that he wanted to appoint justices along the lines of Justice Scalia and Thomas. John Kerry didn't run about the courts. I guess he would keep them -- go ahead and be very involved in many areas, but that's not acceptable to the American public.

The public wants these issues debated and open and known and not handled by the justices and people that are on the court for as far as these key issues that should be in the legislative process.

MARGARET WARNER: I guess what I'm really asking here, though, is what were you all -- I mean, you were a member of the committee. Was it just a question of pressure from the conservative base, or did you all, as you met with her, also have a sense of unease about where she was either philosophically or her command of constitutional issues?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Well, the hill for this nominee generally kept growing, rather than getting smaller. And it was also the case that I think a lot of people looked at her and said, when President Clinton was in office, he nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She had been general counsel for the ACLU, an openly known liberal vote that goes on the court.

Why shouldn't there be somebody that comes forward that we know the position, that this is a conservative position? This is what the president ran on. It's what the country voted for. And we should move on forward with that discussion and that debate in the Senate and with the American public.

MARGARET WARNER: Now did you all let the White House know this? Hot Line is reporting today that, in fact, Majority Leader Frist spoke to Andy Card, the White House chief of staff last night, and really told him this was in trouble.

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: I don't know if that conversation took place or not.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Sen. Durbin, how are the Democrats feeling about this decision? Are you disappointed because of fear of what might come next? Or do you think it was the right call, given her lack of judicial experience?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Well, in the privacy of Democratic meetings there were four words given over and over again as a reason to support Harriet Miers, and those four words were: It could be worse.

And now I don't know what will happen next. It's really up to President Bush. I mean, he has to demonstrate, I think, real leadership here. He has to make a choice. He can choose someone from the far right wing of his Republican Party and perhaps unify his party in the process, or he can choose a candidate who is more moderate and centrist, one who represents a consensus view of American values, and unify our country. I hope he chooses the latter.

MARGARET WARNER: So if the four words most commonly mentioned in Democratic meetings were, "It could be worse," are you saying that really Democrats were prepared to vote for her, and that it really was Republican opposition that torpedoed this?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I can tell you that it was Republican opposition that really caused her withdrawal. If you listen to what the Democratic senators said from top to bottom, there wasn't a single one calling for her to withdraw her nomination.

Every one of us had said we owe her the courtesy of a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, let her explain where she stands on the issue. Where the president turns next is in his control at this moment.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Brownback, let me ask you one other question about the opposition to her. She is an evangelical Christian, an adult convert to that that part of the Christian faith.

The president himself said I've known this woman for years. I can tell you, she's shares my judicial philosophy. Why wasn't that enough for conservatives?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Well, there's an advice and consent process, at least for myself, and I certainly weigh and take into factor what the president is saying. But I want to see what else is there. I want to know what else -- what other information exists to be able to base that opinion to give advice and consent on.

And there's another issue here as well. In the past, a number of people have been appointed on the courts saying that they were conservative, and for the first year or two, they were, and then veering left, and getting the courts involved in legislative issues, to the frustration of the greater public in the United States who thinks these issues should be decided in the legislature, and not by the courts.

That happens when you have a lack of set judicial philosophy, and that's why there's always this concern when a nominees can forward without a pretty clear known and set judicial philosophy.

MARGARET WARNER: And what, Sen. Brownback, does this fiasco, if we can call it that, say now about the state of the relationship between the president and his conservative base?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Well, I don't think it says a whole lot into the future. I think it says that this is a big party, and it's a party that's more than one person. And it's a party that cares a great deal about what happens on the Judiciary. And that there's a lot of people out across the country that care a lot about what this Judiciary says about private property rights, about issues like life and marriage, God and the public square, and that these issues should be debated openly and not stealthfully and having that discussion in the U.S. Senate.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Sen. Durbin, if we look ahead -- and you already have mentioned this, the kind of person you hope the president picks -- are you saying you -- Democrats are hoping for someone that many of you could vote for, in other words, a consensus candidate, not the kind of candidate that the legal and social conservatives -- at least that you believe they want?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Well, remember, Sandra Day O'Connor is and was a conservative, Barry Goldwater, Arizona conservative, moving toward libertarianism, who showed during the course of her judicial career that she had an open mind on issues. That's what we're looking for.

A mainline conservative will receive approval from both sides of the aisle in my point of view. But I think we need to take care here. If the president decides that this is about bragging rights within a political squabble as opposed to constitutional rights, which is really the mission of the protection of those rights by the Supreme Court, then we're going to have a terrible confrontation here. We don't need that.

There are so many qualified men -- and let me underline women -- that the president can choose from across America who will have a centrist and moderate point of view, not to far to the left, not to far to the right who really are not going to be caught up in the vortex of the controversy that surrounded Harriet Miers.

MARGARET WARNER: And, Sen. Brownback, what would be your advice to the president and the White House right now? Should he go for a kind of mainstream conservative in the view of Sen. Durbin, or would you encourage him to pick a fight over someone in the mold of Antonin Scalia?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Well, I would urge the president to do as he said during the campaign, that the American public elected him to do, that most of the American public agrees with, and that is to nominate somebody that would push for a court to be a court and talk about judicial restraint and that in a number of these areas, the court shouldn't be involved in and should leave up to the legislative bodies.

And I know my colleagues on other side of the aisle will probably define this as saying that's somebody that's too conservative, but I hope that they'll look at this individual, let them have a fair vote up or down, 51 votes, not a super majority 60-vote requirement, so that we can go ahead and have this consideration, have this debate and give our advice and consent.

MARGARET WARNER: Senators Brownback and Durbin, thank you both.

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK: Thank you.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Now, how it looks to NewsHour familiars Shields, Brooks, and Greenburg: New York Times columnist David Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and Chicago Tribune legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg.

David, Sen. Durbin says the president did this because he caved to his right wing. True or false?

DAVID BROOKS: False. If there was confidence that she was going to be a great witness at the hearings, she'd still be the nominee today. You know, Sam Brownback is one of the most socially conservative members of the Senate, and maybe for him there are fine shades of being pro-life, but for most senators, that they're looking for somebody who could do okay, somebody who will be competent for the court, and be normally conservative.

And I think what did her in, in the end, was the members of the Senate -- and I think most importantly, the White House staff -- didn't have confidence that the week of Nov. 7 would go by with her being a slam-dunk victor, and they didn't want to go through that.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree or disagree?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, I think quite frankly that David overstates the case. I think that there was not a single elected official of either party who called for her withdrawal. And what there was, was an organized effort -- George Bush made an ominous political decision after Sept. 11, 2001, and that was instead of governing a la Eisenhower as a center-right candidate who could lead this country in a bipartisan way with Karl Rove, his boy genius -- his architect as he calls him -- calling the shots, they decided to govern only with Republicans.

When you win an election -- and he won reelection by the lowest margin anybody had since Woodrow Wilson -- you are then dependent upon constituencies that said we were the key to your victory, and this was the claim made by the social and religious conservatives --

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Brownback essentially said that a moment ago.

MARK SHIELDS: He sure as hell did. And that, coupled with, very frankly, the inside-the-beltway elite punditocracy of the conservative movement led by Bill Kristol, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, the National Review

JIM LEHRER: They went after her?

MARK SHIELDS: They really did; they did a big number.

JIM LEHRER: David, do you want to defend being a member of the elite

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. I'm a proud member of this elite club.

JIM LEHRER: But you're not suggesting that you all didn't have anything to do with this, are you? You wrote some very tough columns about this.

DAVID BROOKS: I wrote one tough column, but it was based on the evidence. I don't think anybody took any pleasure in this. And I think there was no sense that Bush had sort of betrayed anybody. There was a feeling on two grounds and there were two parts of this and this is what we're arguing about: one, competence, which was my main argument, and I think for a lot of people was the main argument, whether the person could really make an argument that would inspire law students for generations, and then: how conservative was this person?

And it came down to a marriage of those two which were interrelated. I think the impression one got was that Harriet Miers never had a political discussion in her life that anybody could tell about, and, therefore, she did not have developed political views.

JIM LEHRER: On a more general

MARK SHIELDS: I just didn't accuse David of Shadenfreud, I mean, of enjoying this, I mean, but I do think that your fingerprints are all over it. I don't think there's any question you were very much at the scene of the crime. And there's a lot of hypocrisy going on.

We just heard Sam Brownback said we couldn't go forward until we saw the papers, we saw the White House memos she'd written.

John Roberts is nominated, we can't see them; there's no reason to see them. That's executive privilege.

DAVID BROOKS: Mark, do you think she was qualified to be on the Supreme Court?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't know, but I know the cry of this administration and its supporters has been everybody gets an up or down vote, everybody gets a hearing.

And for goodness sake, she was denied a hearing and she was denied an up-and-down vote, and the hypocrites on the right just kind of just ignored that.

JIM LEHRER: Jan, I'm reluctant to ask you to involve yourself in this, but let me go to a factual issue now. What happens now on the Supreme Court with Sandra Day O'Connor, business as usual, right?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's exactly right, and what happens is we're going to be seeing a lot more of Justice O'Connor than we thought we would be seeing. Of course she announced her retirement at the end of June, contingent on the confirmation of her successor. The White House put the wheels in motion pretty quickly; they nominated John Roberts to take her place.

We all thought Justice O'Connor would not be back in the Supreme Court, but then, of course, when the chief justice died, the president decided to move John Roberts into that center seat, called Justice O'Connor from Air Force One and said get working on your homework; we're going to need you to come back.

Now, she will stay on the court participating in cases until her successor is confirmed.

JIM LEHRER: Now, speaking of her successor, is there anything that you can it will us from your reporting or just intuition as to whether or not the president is going to move quickly and try to come up with a replacement for Harriet Miers quickly?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Yes, reporting I've done today suggests that he will make a decision very quickly, possibly as soon as tomorrow --

JIM LEHRER: Tomorrow?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: -- but certainly in the next several days.

JIM LEHRER: Wow. Is there any word on how he may go? Will he go -- well, is there any word?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Yes, his political advisers are urging him to nominate an experienced judge with a defined judicial philosophy. They believe very strongly that the American people want to know the judicial philosophy, and as we've seen, senators on that Senate Judiciary Committee want to know what this person believes.

So the president is likely now to nominate one of those federal judges that we've heard about and talked about from the very beginning, going back even to when we were thinking that we'd be looking for a replacement for Chief Justice Rehnquist, someone like a Sam Alito from New Jersey, a Mike Ludig from Virginia, perhaps a Priscilla Owen from Texas, but it's going to be an experienced jurist with a record.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that?

MARK SHIELDS: I do. I think that George Bush has very simple options. He can blame the right and say to hell with them, I'm going to nominate somebody in the Roberts mold.

JIM LEHRER: He might say that about David.

MARK SHIELDS: No, but say, I'm not going to bow to them.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: He could be angry and legitimately angry and say, I'm going to nominate a Michael McConnell, who

JIM LEHRER: He said, Trust me,' and they didn't

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: -- so why do anything to help them out?

MARK SHIELDS: Exactly. With a 75/80 vote, or he could say or a Larry Thompson, Al Gonzales, Larry Thompson, the African-American former deputy attorney general, Gonzales would be the first Latino, or he can go to Priscilla Owen's mold and get into a 52/48 fight in the Senate. And that's going to be brutal.

JIM LEHRER: Do you have any wisdom to add to this?

DAVID BROOKS: I hope he talks to us right-wing nut jobs out in Nevada talking to the aliens.

No, I think what he's going to do is pick someone who has been confirmed already, someone who is very familiar. I think this is their logic --

JIM LEHRER: That would mean a judge.

DAVID BROOKS: A judge already confirmed by this Congress, the members of the Judiciary Committee. I think the second thing that's changed because of this is that doesn't -- it no longer has to be a woman. And then the third thing --

JIM LEHRER: Why not? Why not?

DAVID BROOKS: Because I think they've demonstrated their gesture, and the thing that matters most, as Jan said, is competence, and having that strong legal philosophy, where everyone can say this is a really smart, good person.

And then just the final thing

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DAVID BROOKS: -- the conservative movement now so much wants to get back behind the president. There is a palpable desire. If this guy gives them anybody they can really support, they'll be so much with him, because the rift and the unpleasantness of being against the president for a lot of people was anxiety inducing.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: And that's why the White House really believes now it needs a sure thing. People are ready to get behind this president again. They are euphoric over this withdrawal today, and so they need someone with a committed record, someone they're not going to worry about some speech they may have given ten years ago that sounds--.

JIM LEHRER: It's already been vetted, in other words, some process, some public process--

MARK SHIELDS: One of the Republicans said to me that the first priority had to be confirmable, and the second had to be satisfactory to the conservatives.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think of what David said about the woman angle, that he's off the hook on that?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's what my sources are tell me today, too, --

JIM LEHRER: Is that right?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: -- that the president is willing to look beyond the very small number of female candidates that he has looked to and have been interviewed in the past.

So the list has -- you know, he wanted to nominate a woman for this position. He turned to his trusted adviser, Harriet Miers; he was more comfortable with her than the other two women who were kind of in the running at the very end.

Now that list is opening back up, and he is looking at -- and is being advised to -- think more broadly.

JIM LEHRER: Back to the politics of this, do you believe, Mark, and you, David -- I'll start with you, Mark -- that if -- because both of you said, suggested on this program -- Senators Leahy and Specter were on this program last night and said this was never going to happen -- Harriet Miers was not going to withdraw, the president wouldn't back off that if the president wasn't doing so badly in the polls as a result of Iraq, as a result of things that may happen tomorrow with the CIA leak case, that he might have hung in there, that his own -- his weakness in other areas caused him to finally say okay let's get rid of this one problem at least?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I think power is the perception of power -- if enough people think you have power. And they see George Bush's numbers slipping, so there's a greater willingness to establish one's independence, not to confront the president or make life uncomfortable for him, but to establish your independence from him, especially for those who

JIM LEHRER: From his point view.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. Or, would we have caved? It certainly isn't characteristic of George Bush --

JIM LEHRER: That's what I meant his image

MARK SHIELDS: I think they strictly contributed to it in this case.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree?

DAVID BROOKS: I do agree. I think there was heightened panickiness in the Senate because of just the general atmosphere. But again, I think in the meetings yesterday, I think if they were sure that she was doing really well in the discussions and the preparation for the hearings, had done really well with the questionnaire, I think they would have gone ahead with this. They would have said, we'll carry that week and then we'll be fine, but there just wasn't that confidence in her.

JIM LEHRER: You heard Margaret ask Sen. Brownback if he could confirm the fact that Bill Frist called on the president and said, hey, let's get this ting over with. Can any of you can you confirm this?

MARK SHIELDS: I can confirm that he met with Andy Card last night and that the meeting was very candid and said this is going to be a really tough fight and I don't know if he said it's dead, but he laid out just how tough it was going to be.

DAVID BROOKS: Which is just interesting, because as you say Specter and Leahy were on this program at about the same hour, --

JIM LEHRER: That's right.

DAVID BROOKS: -- saying exactly and sincerely they thought she was sailing through. So it's interesting that the majority leader had one message and the chairman and the ranking member of the committee had a different message.

MARK SHIELDS: The other thing is that Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said this week in private meetings that the -- he thought every Republican senator would vote for her. So I mean --.

JIM LEHRER: Every Republican senator would vote for her.

MARK SHIELDS: So he was sure that she was going to be confirmed.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. I remember that, Jan, that everybody was a -- hey, remember he introduced her up there on the Hill. Everybody thought that was the kiss of death for Harriet Miers because all the Republicans out in the country would say, wait a minute, if Harry Reid likes her, there's got to be something wrong with her. Do you have anything you would like to add to this?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Sure. I think that added fuel to the overall suspicions by conservatives that she was not perhaps someone that they were too enthusiastic about but, you know, the table kind of turned upside down for the White House because they did not expect this kind of opposition to Harriet Miers. They thought the base would rally around her, support this choice, and she would sail through with Harry Reid's support.

The White House concluded it was going to take a tremendous fight to get this person on the Supreme Court, a fight with many people in its own party. So if it's going to have that fight, people were advising the president, let's make it be about something; let's make it be about someone who is going to change the future and the direction of the court, who has the intellectual heft to go up against those intellectual heavy weights on the left, like Ginsburg and Breyer. That factors into this decision to withdraw this nomination. We're going to have a fight, let's make it be about something and we're going to have a fight.

JIM LEHRER: Do you guys agree with that?

MARK SHIELDS: Yeah, I do, and I think that's one of the problems and David's right in the meetings that they couldn't even in the briefing sessions get her to be a commanding figure and they were fearful --

JIM LEHRER: A cause, you couldn't rally a cause around her.

MARK SHIELDS: Right. And they were fearful that when she did get into deliberations that she would be deferential, rather than a leader.

And Clarence Thomas does not do that; Scalia alienates people, so they really do need somebody who can build bridges and make the case.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree you already said that pretty much, right?

DAVID BROOKS: I did say that, and I agree with myself.

JIM LEHRER: You agree with yourself (laughing). And they finally came around. Thank you -- all three -- very much.

SERIES 30TH ANNIVERSARY

JIM LEHRER: Now, the fourth of our 30th anniversary updates on stories we have covered, Tom Bearden recently returned to Weirton, West Virginia, a steel town the NewsHour had visited many times before.

TOM BEARDEN: Tucked into a valley in the West Virginia panhandle, Weirton started out as a boom town, home to a thriving steel business. But the boom went bust a long time ago.

It's 7:00 A.M. on a Wednesday morning, the regular monthly meeting of the Independent Steel Workers Union at the Knights of Columbus Hall.

On this day, members talked and prayed about the future of the Weirton steel mill.

SPOKESMAN: I ask dear Lord to watch over these people here at Weirton Steel to find a way out of the mess we're in.

TOM BEARDEN: For some workers, it is a mess. At its high water mark in the 1960's, the plant employed 14,000 people. Twenty years ago it was 7,000.

Today it's 2,000. Eight hundred workers were laid off in just the last six months. Many worry more layoffs are coming, and perhaps a complete closure.

Weirton Steel is emblematic of the ups and downs of the entire industry, a story the NewsHour has been watching and reporting on for more than 20 years.

Weirton used to be an integrated mill that took in raw iron ore, ran it through blast furnaces to make molten steel, and then processed it into finished coils. But the blast furnaces are shut down now; the new owners say it's temporary.

Slabs of steel are shipped in from a more modern plant in Cleveland. Weirton heats them up, pounds and stretches the metal into coils, and then plates the metal with tin. The trend has workers concerned that they will soon be permanently reduced to a finishing plant, employing only 1,500 people.

Dean Harris is a 30-year company veteran who currently works in the tin mill.

DEAN HARRIS: I think it's going to be difficult. But we're just in a bigger market, and what would happen to this town if Weirton Steel were to go under, I really don't know. I don't think there's another buyer out there.

TOM BEARDEN: Harris's concern is understandable, given the history of Weirton Steel. Weirton was once an independent company and the largest industrial employer in all of West Virginia. The plant was the reason the town existed. In fact the, the company built and ran the whole city.

DEAN HARRIS: They paved our streets, they hung our lights, they changed our light bulbs, they, they just did everything.

TOM BEARDEN: From building a community pool to publishing a monthly magazine, Weirton Steel was the town's economic engine.

The pool still exists, but not much else. The streets leading up to mill were once packed with stores and restaurants. With only a fraction of the work force now, the stores are locked up or abandoned.

The NewsHour first visited the company in 1983. It had been sold to National Steel, which had just announced it wanted to shut the plant down. Correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault reported that facing an imminent closure, workers banded together to raise money, (music in background) with concerts, telethons and parades, so they could buy the company through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (1983): Why is it that you think the employees can make it work when National Steel couldn't make it work?

WALTER BISH, Union President (1983): Well, under an ESOP there are several tax advantages, tax shelters an employee-owned company can get.

Also there are the concessions, the concessions that the employees would be willing to give to a corporation that they would own, as opposed to giving concessions back to a corporation where the profits go out to shareholders and stockholders other than the employees.

TOM BEARDEN: The buyout succeeded.

DEAN HARRIS: The entire community rallied around the concept, and we were going to be shut down. And, if we didn't take on the ESOP, we wouldn't be here today.

TOM BEARDEN: But the good times didn't last. The 90's hit Weirton hard. Tough new competition demanded expensive modernization of the facility. Like many other aging U.S. mills, Weirton didn't have the capital to fully upgrade every section of the plant.

Economist Frank Giarratani is the director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Industry Studies.

PROF. FRANK GIARRATANNI: They don't build plants like that anymore in the United States and they have not built plants like that in the United States in many, many years. What they, what they do is refurbish plants like that.

TOM BEARDEN: In addition to competition from newer plants, the steel industry went through an international trade crisis in the late 90's when overseas competitors were dumping cheaper steel in the United States.

Many workers believe that's why their employee-owned company eventually went bankrupt some four years later.

Weirton was sold to Ohio-based International Steel Group in 2003. Workers took pay cuts to entice International Steel to make the buyout, and their pensions were taken over by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Current retirees' incomes were slashed, and most lost health care coverage.

Charlie Mitchel worked at the mill for more than 30 years. He thought he would be able to retire before the age of 65 and live off his pension with full health benefits. Now he does bookkeeping at the local newspaper to supplement his reduced pension and to pay for health insurance.

CHARLIE MITCHEL: They took away approximately 25 percent of the pension, plus you lost your health care benefits, that now we have to pay for. And that's, that's a chunk of money that, that you were planning on for your retirement years.

I mean, you're back to work now; I'll have to work probably till I'm 65 now, you know and I was hoping that I would be able to just piece things together, yeah, I'm bitter.

TOM BEARDEN: In 2004, International Steel sold Weirton again, this time to Mittal Steel, a foreign-owned company with headquarters in Holland and London, the largest steel producer in the world.

Now Weirton has to compete not only with outside companies, but also with other mills inside the Mittal Steel Group.

Dean Harris, whose father, uncle, and a brother all worked at Weirton, says it's a totally different ball game.

DEAN HARRIS: Just being a part of this big corporation, you just don't see the people that, that run the plant. You don't have any connections with the people that run the plant and so you don't know what their thinking is.

You know, all you can go by are rumors that you hear or you know you pick up the paper and you see that Mittal Steel is considering purchasing a steel company in Czechoslovakia. You know it's, it's, it's a big change. It's been it's been a big change for everybody that works at Weirton Steel.

TOM BEARDEN: Harris points to the fact that the blast furnace and blast oxygenation process plant were shut down this summer and 800 workers were laid off.

Andrew Kamarac was one of those laid off workers. He works around his house as he waits for the word to go back to work. He says he doesn't know what the future holds under Mittal ownership.

ANDREW KAMARAC: My wife said, her dad is probably turning over in his grave because everybody thought this mill would be here forever and that's why we went ESOP for our families and to keep this place here. But I don't know. It don't look good right now as, as it sits.

TOM BEARDEN: Mittal Steel's U.S. headquarters is in Chicago. CEO Louis Schoesch says Weirton's ultimate survival depends on cutting costs.

LOUIS SCHOESCH: Weirton has been kind of beating the odds for more than 20 years. I think the main focus at the moment has to be on the other ways that we can make this facility more competitive. I know they're working on a program to try to achieve higher levels of productivity.

We'll certainly be looking at facility investments and so on. I don't think there's any guarantees in this marketplace; we have to do the best we can in the things that we control. If the market, turns against us, then maybe all bets are off.

TOM BEARDEN: Mark Glyptis is the president of the Independent Steel Workers Union, which represents thousands of Weirton employees and retirees.

He says Mittal executives have stated the blast furnace will reopen, and the jobs reinstated. So he's optimistic, even though no one knows when those furnaces might be re-lighted.

MARK GLYPTIS: I believe we have a very bright future. We still need capital improvements. Once we get through those I think we're gong to be very competitive and, I expect those employees that are laid off to be called back and we're doing some things to make sure that, in the event that some aren't, that there's a humane way of treating them, but I'm very optimistic about the future.

TOM BEARDEN: Schoesch says any decision to bring people back to work will be based on whether the Weirton mill can make a profit.

LOUIS SCHOESCH: I think Weirton is in a much stronger position, has much more of the wind at its back, if you will, being part of that global enterprise, successful global enterprise than was the case if it would be a stand-alone company.

TOM BEARDEN: Professor Giarratani says the good old days of job security and full pensions are gone forever.

PROF. FRANK GIARRATANNI: It's never going to go back to the kind of security that you know that was felt during the boom periods through the, you know, in the industry.

But that's true of every American industry now. It's not just true of steel, where, you know, a lot of insecurity of our economic system has been decentralized -- you know -- to the workers themselves and that's part of our life now.

TOM BEARDEN: Facing brutal domestic and international competition, Weirton workers are still trying to keep not only a steel mill, but a community, alive, and competitive, in the global marketplace.

JIM LEHRER: Tomorrow, our 30th series concludes with a Kwame Holman report from Dwight, Nebraska, a small town with a big commitment to military service.

FOCUS SUPER SOX!

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, an 88th anniversary kind of event for the Chicago White Sox. Jeffrey Brown has our story.

NEWSCASTER: It's the middle of the infield, Uribe has it. He throws. Out, out! A White Sox winner and a world championship.

JEFFREY BROWN: The last time those words were uttered was 1917. The Chicago White Sox, a franchise fabled for failure, capped a sweep of the Houston Astros with a final victory last night. The game was scoreless until the top of the eighth inning when World Series MVP Jermaine Dye singled up the middle to drive in Willie Harris for the game's only run.

Two years after they won their last title, the White Sox made history of a different sort in 1919 as the infamous Black Sox' when some team members conspired with gamblers to fix the series. It wasn't until 1959 that they returned to the World Series, losing to the Dodgers.

This year's White Sox won with a remarkable eleven and one run in the play-offs, with good pitching... clutch hitting....

NEWSCASTER: -- hits it in to right, down the line, it is gone!

JEFFREY BROWN: ... and great fielding. And now Chicago fans have something to cheer, or at least some do. The White Sox have long been overshadowed by their north side neighbors, the Cubs. That rivalry goes on. But for now, the south side Sox are on top of the world.

And one of those White Sox fans is Ron Rapoport, who is also a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He joins us now.

Ron, this is a team without a lot of star players. So how did they pull this off?

RON RAPOPORT: It was 25 guys pulling together on the same rope. That's one of the things that makes this so exciting to Chicago people is that this was not a team that was expected to do this by any stretch of the imagination. Michael Jordan doesn't play for this team. This is a team with no offensive players, who came anywhere near to starting in the all-star game. The pitching was tremendous, but at the beginning of the season, nobody really understood that.

So it's a blue-collar work-together kind of team, and I think that's one of the reasons Chicago was so excited today. It sort of fits Chicago's self-image, maybe it's nostalgic, a feeling that stars and celebrities and so on don't necessarily call Chicago home, but this is sort of the team that represents the way Chicago feels about itself, and that's what made it so exciting.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, some teams famous for losing, and I think back to my Boston Red Sox until last year, they had a lot of legend about them. They had mythology. They had the curse, they had poetry written about them.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a lost poetry has been written about the Chicago White Sox over the decades.

RON RAPOPORT: See, that's the thing about White Sox fans. They have such an inferiority complex, even their losing doesn't approach the epic stature of the Cubs, and the Red Sox and the rest.

What you have to realize, Jeffrey, is that the White Sox haven't won a pennant, or a World Series in 88 years, but what that means is, baseball's been played here for more than 88 years. It's a generational thing.

I'm a White Sox fans because my father was a White Sox fan, and his father was a White Sox fan. I got an e-mail today from my dad in Muskegon, Michigan who grew up in Chicago, and he was telling me about taking the streetcar for 15 cents to Comiskey Park. His mother would pack him a sandwich and bottle of pop and be he got a free ticket somewhere to watch Babe Ruth play.

I mean, that's what baseball means to Chicago. It's a generational thing -- almost a birthright sort of thing passed down like a religion.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, tell us a little about how it works in the division between North and South, between Cubs and White Sox. What's that based on beyond geography?

RON RAPOPORT: It's based on kind of a mind set. You know, one of the requirements for being a Cubs fan is to sneer at and look down on White Sox fans. One of the requirements for being a White Sox fan is to think that Cubs fans don't really know anything about baseball. They just like sitting in the sun in their cute little ballpark and that they're a bunch of yuppies. And never the twain shall meet.

I don't think anybody in the White Sox organization thinks they are going to convert Cubs fans. It's just not going to happen. What they would like to do is to promote themselves and get new fans who were sort uncommitted in a way.

But the Cubs-White Sox rivalry will go on and on. There's not going to be any kind of a cease-fire or detente or getting together just because the White Sox have won the World Series.

JEFFREY BROWN: I did want to ask you about the manager because he's a very interesting character. I read today that he's the first -- he was born in Venezuela, the first non-American manager to manage a World Series team.

RON RAPOPORT: Ozzie Guillen, yes. If there is a star on the team, it's Ozzie. He's the one that all eyes turned to. Fox showed the series on TV, and the only person on either team that they devoted a single camera to was Ozzie -- they called it the "Ozzie Cam" because he's so mercurial you will never know what he's going to say, what he's going to do, what kind of action he's going to take.

Two years ago when he was named the manager of the team at the suggestion of Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner, when the general manager, Kenny Williams was going to go in another direction, everybody thought it was crazy, because Ozzie had this great mercurial say-anything, do-anything' reputation.

Well, it turns out he was great in the clubhouse with the players, really just melded them together and he turned out to be simply a brilliant manager. I can't think of a single mistake, a single missed call that he made during the entire play-offs. He really was the right man for this team.

JEFFREY BROWN: So tomorrow is the parade. Does this bridge the divisions for Chicagoans, or what?

RON RAPOPORT: Chicago is very excited. We're not used to this kind of a thing. They're very, very thrilled. I mean, Cub fans are just going to have to sit back and kind of lick their wounds, but this is a great thing to happen in Chicago.

And the mayor, a born and brad Cubs fan, like his father the mayor, who was a White Sox fan -- excuse me, who was a born and bred White Sox fan, just like his father, who is a born and bred White Sox fan will be somewhere near the very front.

It will be interesting to see if the governor shows up. He's a Cubs fan. And one newspaper columnist told him to stay away from the ballpark; he would be bad luck.

I'm not sure that he did come or now, but it will be interesting to see if the mayor gets to do this by himself without the governor of Illinois present.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Well, we'll watch for that. Ron Rapoport of the Chicago Sun-Times, thanks a lot.

RON RAPOPORT: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: Harriet Miers withdrew as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. And investigators charged more than 2,200 companies made illegal payments to Saddam Hussein's regime, in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

JIM LEHRER: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are seven more, plus an eighth which is a correction from one of last night. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening, when Mark Shields and David Brooks will be back, amidst heavy speculation that tomorrow will bring action from the CIA leak grand jury. We shall see. For now, I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.