George W. Bush can now say of Harriet Ellan Miers what Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said in the 1860s about the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe: “So this is the little lady who made this great war!” President Bush’s own supporters have not just questioned his nomination of Ms Miers to the US Supreme Court but have actively repudiated it. The columnist Charles Krauthammer called the pick “scandalous”. David Frum, Mr Bush’s former speechwriter, launched a petition drive against it. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, says she will need a “crash course” in the constitution. Ms Miers has been head of the Texas state lottery bureaucracy and of various bar associations and has served as the president’s personal lawyer – but she has never been a judge. Only 29 per cent of Americans consider her qualified for the job.

As in a marital altercation where furniture gets smashed and glass broken, it is a safe bet that the proximate cause is not the real one. Ms Miers’s nomination reveals a deep dissatisfaction with the president – but it did not create this dissatisfaction. A poll released on Thursday by the Pew Research Centre shows an erosion in Mr Bush’s popularity on all fronts that can fairly be called shocking. Asked whether, in the long run, the Bush presidency will be considered a successful or an unsuccessful one, a solid plurality – 41 per cent versus 26 – believe it will go down as a flop. Only a quarter of Americans want the next president to continue Mr Bush’s policies, while 69 per cent want new ones. A comparison to the Clinton administration will puts these numbers in perspective. Even when Mr Bill Clinton was at the nadir of his impeachment ordeal in February 1999, a majority of Americans said they wanted his successor to pursue the same policies, while only 40 per cent wanted change.