The wailing! The gnashing! The rending of garments! If the conservative reaction to Harriet Miers is any indication, Bush has no chance of winning a third term. The decision to appoint a relative unknown - or, given her proximity to the Bush inner circle, an unknown relative - has caused many on the right to open a vein and the let the despair flow out into the warm bath of misery, disappointment, and overextended metaphors. Why didn't Bush clone Scalia in a dish and appoint him? Here, use some stem cells if you have to. Anyone but another Souter!

That's the great fear on the right: Souterism. A mild-mannered cipher appointed by a Bush who dons the black robe and promptly starts to eat babies. Souter! How many times have you opened the door at Halloween and seen his face on a child's mask? How many times have you waited in the doctor's office, clammy with dread, waiting for him to slap the X-rays up on the wall and point to a grayish Souter-shaped mass? Miers could turn out to be the conservative's worst nightmare. She could regard the Constitution as a living document, still in its first trimester. She could, at this very moment, be in the attic assembling the shortwave she got while a member of the Resistance in Texas, dialing in Steinem One to report total success, repeat total success.