WHEN President Bush shocked supporters and opponents alike a month ago by nominating Harriet Miers, his White House Counsel, to the vacancy on the Supreme Court, an intriguing conspiracy theory did the rounds in Washington.

Ms Miers, so self-evidently unqualified for a seat on the nation’s highest court, was a kind of stalking horse, the theory went. The real Bush plan, masterminded no doubt by his Machiavellian amanuensis Karl Rove, was to put an extreme conservative jurist on the court, someone who would vote to overturn abortion rights, outlaw affirmative action and break down the barriers between Church and State.

The problem was that someone like that would have a very tough time getting confirmed by the Senate. Though the Republicans have a majority in the upper house of the Congress, which must approve Supreme Court candidates, the Democrats, who would obviously oppose such a nominee, have enough votes to block his (or her) confirmation.

The best way to proceed, then, was to put up first a candidate the White House knew would get knocked down. Having “regretfully” and “humiliatingly” withdrawn that candidate, the President could then, with heavily orchestrated reluctance and irritation, put up the suitably qualified favourite.

The Democrats would have a hard time in the court of public opinion if they now took exception to someone who was, whatever their judicial intentions, at least smart, capable and experienced. They wouldn’t want the potential opprobrium of throwing out a second nominee.

Goodbye Harriet. Come on down, Attila.

It was always fanciful. Democrats did not, in fact, have much to do with the defeat of the Miers nomination. It was Republicans who most objected to her. The theory is further undermined by the fact that Mr Rove has been otherwise engaged for most of the past month or so, desperately trying to avoid the indictment that many Washington observers think will be handed down to him today by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor.

But with Ms Miers’s departure yesterday, Mr Bush does at least have a chance to salvage something from the wreckage of a disastrous few weeks. Most importantly, her forced martyrdom was an absolutely essential first step in the President’s broader political recovery.

The greatest danger for a political leader is when his own side turns on him. After the deepening problems in Iraq and the poor handling of the Katrina relief effort, Mr Bush needed his Republican base more than ever — and it was just at that moment that he most enraged them with the choice of Ms Miers.

The opposition had come almost exclusively from conservative Republicans who not only disliked what they saw of her views, but felt she was simply too lightweight to advance the conservative cause. Yesterday they were returning to Mr Bush’s side, at a crucial moment for the presidency. The National Review, a conservative magazine that showered the White House in bile over the Miers choice, said in an online editorial: “Gloating would be unseemly” but “today is the best day Republicans have had in some time.”

And not before time. If the special prosecutor does strike at the White House today, Mr Bush will at least not have to face the fire with its conservative supporters in a fractured and demoralised state.

The Miers withdrawal gives Mr Bush a chance to relaunch his presidency. If he does lose some of his most important advisers to the CIA leak investigation, supporters have been telling him, he must act quickly to seize control of the political agenda again. Picking a better nominee would be the ideal way to do that. If he finds someone more acceptable to his own party it may lead to a fight with Democrats but Republicans will at least feel they have recovered a sense of direction and momentum.

Events beyond his control — in Washington courtrooms, on the streets of Iraq — may still be the political undoing of the remainder of Mr Bush’s presidency. But throwing Ms Miers to the wolves has at least given him another chance to take charge of events presidents are really supposed to control.

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