"Disappointed, depressed, demoralized." That's how Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, reacted to President Bush's nomination of His Girl Harriet to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Yes, that about sums it up. I've tried hard to shake the feeling. And harder still to understand it.

In the playbook of the mainstream press, the judges war is between "moderates or mainstream conservatives" and the "hard right." You know, those awful zealots who care about the 1 million unborn babies terminated by abortion each year. But the heavy hitters among the religious right yesterday mostly came out strongly for President Bush:

James Dobson's Focus on the Family press release welcomed the nomination as "outstanding." The influential Jay Sekulow's endorsement emphasized his personal knowledge of Harriet Miers after working with her on other judicial appointments.

Don't get me wrong: I believe Harriet Miers should and will be confirmed. I believe this even though I think the American Bar Association will give her the weak "qualified" rather than the stronger "well-qualified" recommendation. I believe it, even though I think Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is planning right now to backstab the president, reserving the right to filibuster Miers after recommending her.

The president has the right to make Supreme Court appointments, and the process of confirmation should not be politicized. I even believe Justice Miers will most likely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (which invented a right to abortion) and return the abortion debate back to state legislatures, where it belongs.

According to the media playbook, I should therefore be one satisfied Bush customer. So why does the Miers nomination leave a taste of ashes in my mouth?

And not just me.

Author David Frum: "I confess that I've been more shaken by the Miers nomination than by almost anything President Bush has done since the night of Sept. 11 itself."

National Review editor Rich Lowry: "Bush thus made a strong statement that the court has room for highly distinguished justices and not-so-distinguished justices, for nominees who have made their reputations in the wider legal world and for nominees people have hardly heard of, for world-class lawyers and for lawyers he happens to know and like."

This is not political disappointment. This is something deeper.

The Supreme Court is not a political game to me. I was sitting in Judge Robert Bork's living room the day President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, another undistinguished jurist, to the Supreme Court. A few years later I watched in horror when the Democrats succeeded in demonizing Judge Bork's nomination to the bench, shattering a consensus that Supreme Court nominations should not be politicized. For me and a generation of conservatives, these were formative experiences.

The Constitution means a lot to me. Those of us who respect the rule of law have only one pathway to protecting the Constitution we revere: patience, tact and hard work. That means avoiding tit-for-tat (which means supporting Democratic nominees like former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg), organizing intellectual networks to help the best arguments prevail (The Federalist Society), getting into politics and working hard to elect presidents who share this commitment to the Constitution, and gaining a Senate majority to protect his nominations from political attack by Democrats.

And what was all this hard work, this self-denial, this commitment to principle for? What is so that President Bush could name a "longtime friend and former Texas lottery official" to the Supreme Court?

Let me make this clear: I didn't want a fight. What I wanted from President Bush was a nominee about whom, win or lose, we could all be proud.

Instead, turning to His Girl Harriet, President Bush for once thought small.

And that means, on this one President Bush is already a loser.