If bad news comes in threes, this would seem to cap a year already featuring the indictment of vice presidential chief of staff (and my old schoolmate) Scooter Libby in a ginned-up “scandal” concerning the leaked identity of a CIA employee (who was never in danger, and who was widely known in Washington circles to work at Langley, anyway.) Not to mention the quagmire in Iraq, where a pre-invasion review of the British experience of 1920 might have proven instructive.

But where some may be tempted to see more bad news, what’s actually on view in the collapse of the Miers nomination is another triumph of the great compromises reached at the founding of this nation.

There was nothing wrong -- there is nothing wrong -- in bringing forward a nominee who has not inched her way up through the lower courts, learning to do everything in the same old way so as to “avoid reversal.” That’s a recipe for stultifying statist mediocrity and the continued “discovery” of new “compelling mandates” for the bureaucrats to gin up any new violation of our rights they find convenient -- hardly this president’s campaign slogan.

But once the field was opened that far, boldness might have dictated the choice of a constitutional scholar such as Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago, or Akhil Amar Reed of Yale. (At least the Senate hearings would have been educational.)

Instead, the public was presented with what clever insiders must have considered a devilish “done deal” -- Christian conservatives could be assured with a wink and a nod that Ms. Miers would vote to restrict abortion, while liberals would find few public utterances in her background to prove it. Best of all, President Bush had the support of anti-abortion Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada, which presumably locked in enough votes from the other side of the aisle.

But what both Sen. Reid and the White House seem to have forgotten in all this was the very purpose of the Senate confirmation process, as established by the founders.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that, faced with such a public vetting of the nominee, “The president would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same state to which he particularly belonged, or in being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance or pliancy to render them obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”

Harriet Miers, the former single-term city councilwoman from Texas, may be a fine woman and a competent attorney, but her photo could easily be used to illustrate that definition of a candidate lacking the gravitas, the independent and hard-won reputation, the proven grasp of our founding documents, to justify elevation to such a post.

After a few days of deferential silence, the press and public began to mouth words like “unqualified crony.” Sen. Reid’s pro-choice national constituency (including his fellow Senate Democrats) showed no more inclination to accept his “trust me” than did the president’s oft-disappointed constituents of the Christian right. The majesty of the American system of government promptly asserted itself, leaving the architects of this “done deal” looking like little kids snookered by an exploding cigar.

But an obviously grouchy President Bush need not be the big loser here. He has proved himself wise enough to change horses before his mount drowned, and now has an opportunity to promptly rectify this misstep.

It is Democrats who must surely wonder what Sen. Reid was thinking. For decades they have squawked like the boy who cried “Wolf!” warning that every Republican nominee was a “stealth opponent of reproductive rights.” Finally the real thing (to all appearances) comes along ... and Sen. Reid smiles and gives her his blessing?

George Bush faces no re-election campaign. He has shown more than once a willingness to defy mewling cries for “bipartisanship” and instead do what he believes is right. Let him do so now.

Enough of these undistinguished placeholders, colorless enough to offend no one, chosen for their “lack of a paper trail.” Enough of those so lacking in a coherent political philosophy as to be swayed by the last argument for bureaucratic convenience whispered in their ears, earning obsequious deference inside the Beltway as “flexible moderates.” Surely that road has now reached its ignominious end.

“The president and his team should not shy from a national debate,” urges Manuel Miranda, who heads the Washington-based Third Branch Conference, an alliance of 150 conservative and libertarian groups.

Indeed, what is more worth fighting for? And since Democrats will attack any nominee as Attila the Hun in drag, what is there to lose?

“I hope he won’t be swayed by any concern for diversity but this time will seek the best nominee,” adds Roger Pilon, director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington.

Let the president now bring forth a statesman or woman of established wisdom and rectitude, a strict constitutionalist who can remind the senators that, lo, their own grasp of the vital and uniquely American concept of “a government of powers sharply limited” has hardly been beyond reproach, these past 90 years.

Let the president now send forth a constitutional champion with a sword as well as a shield. It is time.