WASHINGTON — President Bush on Tuesday defended his latest choice for the Supreme Court, Harriet E. Miers, from charges on the right that she was not sufficiently conservative and from charges on the left that she was a White House crony unqualified for the job.

The president also said he did not recall ever talking to Miers, whom he has known for more than a decade, about her personal views on abortion, and he reiterated that he was a "pro-life president" who nonetheless had no litmus test on the issue when selecting judicial candidates.

He insisted that Congress and the American public would come to be impressed with Miers, the White House counsel and a former president of the State Bar of Texas who was once Bush's personal lawyer.

"I can understand people not, you know, knowing Harriet," the president said in a 55-minute news conference in the White House Rose Garden, designed in large part to give Miers a boost as many conservatives remained agitated about the choice the day after she was named. "She hasn't been, you know, one of those publicity hounds. She's been somebody who just quietly does her job."

The president, who appeared at ease during the news conference but intent on pressing his case for Miers' nomination, added: "But when she does it, she performs, see. She's not a person in Texas saying, 'Look at me. Look at how stellar I have been.' She just did it, and quietly, and quietly established an incredibly strong record."

In an attempt to calm conservatives, Bush said three times that Miers would not change her philosophy, assuming she is confirmed, over decades on the court. "I know her well enough to be able to say that she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today," Bush said.

The president appeared to be alluding to Justice David H. Souter, who was nominated by his father, the first President Bush, and who has disappointed Republicans looking for a reliable conservative on the court. Later, when asked if he thought the appointment of Souter was a mistake, Bush chuckled and replied, "You're trying to get me in trouble with my father."

On Capitol Hill, Miers again met with senators crucial to her confirmation. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican on the Judiciary Committee and a leading opponent of abortion rights, said in an interview that he might vote against confirming Miers, depending on what she said in her hearings.