WHAT OTHER WHITE HOUSE COULD HAVE KEPT IT QUIET FOR A YEAR?:

A Year of Work to Sell Roberts to Conservatives (DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, 7/22/05, NY Times)

For at least a year before the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court, the White House was working behind the scenes to shore up support for him among its social conservative allies, quietly reassuring them that he was a good bet for their side in cases about abortion, same-sex marriage and public support for religion.

When the White House began testing the name of Judge Roberts on a short list of potential nominees, many social conservatives were skeptical. In hearings for confirmation to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he had called the original abortion rights precedent "the settled law of the land" and said "there is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

And they were frustrated, as many Democrats were this week, by his not having left a long record of speeches and opinions that laid out his views.

But with a series of personal testimonials about Judge Roberts, his legal work, his Roman Catholic faith, and his wife's public opposition to abortion, two well-connected Christian conservative lawyers - Leonard Leo, chairman of Catholic outreach for the Republican Party, and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of an evangelical Protestant legal center founded by Pat Robertson - gradually won over most social conservatives to nearly unanimous support, even convincing them that the lack of a paper trail was an asset that made Judge Roberts harder to attack.

Both had been tapped by the White House to build the coalition for judicial confirmation battles.