Well, I’d written this Miers post-mortem for Tech Central Station two weeks ago — minus some minor adjustments — but my editor thought it was too optimistic about the chances for her withdrawal.

So, ahem, now that I’ve been proven right…

The Harriet Miers nomination is dead. Long live the Harriet Miers nomination.

The political fallout from the Miers withdrawal will likely be minor. The Democrats will get a day of Snoopy-dancing, and conservatives will get a day of tearful embraces — brothers and sisters laying down their arms. But the long-term impact on the judicial selection process is (at the risk of being optimistic) likely to be positive.

If nothing else, Miers has proved that the vaunted “stealth nominee” tactic is a game of Russian roulette — not just for the Constitution and the American people years down the line, but for the president pulling the trigger in the here and now.

Sure, with the perfect, straight-A, spotless-attendance, gold-starred, shiny-haired, white-teethed, adorable-childrened, Reagan-White-House-tenured Judge John Roberts, you can get away with it. Conservatives have already forgotten how perplexed and disappointed they were by Bush’s first Supreme Court pick. The sheer glint in his eye and unflappable competence calmed them like a cool, September breeze.

But there just aren’t that many John Robertses in the world, with impeccable resumes and non-existent paper trails, both at the same time. Jokes about cloning John Roberts were made when he was confirmed. Now, conservatives are thinking of lifting Bush’s federal-embryonic-stem-cell-research-funding ban — if it might help the process along.

Withdrawal: It’s a good thing.