I got caught up in the wave of criticism of Harriet Miers when she was nominated. I don't really know enough to speak to her competence relative to that of any given member of the Court today. However, on purely political grounds, I didn't realize until afterward that it was mostly the right trying to scuttle her nomination so that they could get a more ideological candidate, like Alito, in there instead.
I sympathized with Miers from the git go. She wasn't really qualified for the position, so it would've been a heckuva lot more respectful of Bush to not nominate her than to nominate her. Funny.....GHWB's Thomas wasn't qualified either. I wonder what that tells us about the Bush family's perspective?
A coupla weeks ago, I happened across a fascinating panel discussion on PBS, that I'm guessing was from around 35-40 years ago. It was MC'd by Charles Ogletree and included about a dozen erudites of that time, to include Scalia.
The subject was a theoretical capital case. To a lesser or greater degree, every member struggled to reconcile his/her personal feelings, with their understanding of the constitutional law. Scalia stood out even then, for having LESS trouble with this than anyone else. Even then, Scalia seemed convinced that his personal opinion was superior to the law.