Jeffrey Rosen: The Myth of Biden v. Bork
[Jeffrey Rosen is the author, most recently, of “The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.”]
WHEN Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands on the podium in Denver tonight as Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee, conservatives of a certain age will see a bogeyman who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.
Those hearings are to conservatives what the Clinton impeachment is to liberals, and conservatives blame Senator Biden for inaugurating the post-Bork politics of personal destruction. To them, Mr. Obama’s selection of Mr. Biden reveals the insincerity of his pledge to change politics as usual in Washington.
The charge is unfair. Twenty-one years ago, during the Bork nomination, I worked for Mr. Biden as an intern on the Senate Judiciary Committee. From that modest vantage point, I saw Mr. Biden struggle to focus the hearings on Judge Bork’s judicial philosophy rather than his private life, in the face of overwhelming political pressure from interest groups on the left. Mr. Biden’s efforts to protect Judge Bork’s and Judge Thomas’s privacy demonstrate that, although he was present at the creation of the post-Bork era, he did not cause it. On the contrary, he did everything in his power to resist the collapse of boundaries between nominees’ public and private lives.
When President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the court in 1987, some liberal senators and interest groups were eager to distort his record. Hours after the nomination was announced, for example, Senator Edward Kennedy charged that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions.”
Senator Biden, who had built a national reputation by attacking the excesses of liberal interest groups, made clear that he would not tolerate these ad hominem attacks. He promised to focus the questioning on Judge Bork’s substantive views about the right to privacy, rather than demonize him by conflating his personal and judicial views or trolling for private indiscretions.
When confronted with a request to subpoena Judge Bork’s video rental records in a search for possible pornography, Mr. Biden refused. (The records, which revealed that Judge Bork’s only weakness was for Cary Grant, were leaked anyway to The Washington City Paper.) At this same time, Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign collapsed in the face of plagiarism charges, but he won bipartisan praise for conducting the Bork hearings with fairness and restraint.
His performance during the Thomas hearings in 1991 was just as restrained. He focused his opposition on Judge Thomas’s radical views on property rights and limitations on federal power. When Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment began to circulate in private, Senator Biden angered liberal interest groups by insisting that the Judiciary Committee handle the accusations confidentially....
Read entire article at NYT
WHEN Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands on the podium in Denver tonight as Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee, conservatives of a certain age will see a bogeyman who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.
Those hearings are to conservatives what the Clinton impeachment is to liberals, and conservatives blame Senator Biden for inaugurating the post-Bork politics of personal destruction. To them, Mr. Obama’s selection of Mr. Biden reveals the insincerity of his pledge to change politics as usual in Washington.
The charge is unfair. Twenty-one years ago, during the Bork nomination, I worked for Mr. Biden as an intern on the Senate Judiciary Committee. From that modest vantage point, I saw Mr. Biden struggle to focus the hearings on Judge Bork’s judicial philosophy rather than his private life, in the face of overwhelming political pressure from interest groups on the left. Mr. Biden’s efforts to protect Judge Bork’s and Judge Thomas’s privacy demonstrate that, although he was present at the creation of the post-Bork era, he did not cause it. On the contrary, he did everything in his power to resist the collapse of boundaries between nominees’ public and private lives.
When President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the court in 1987, some liberal senators and interest groups were eager to distort his record. Hours after the nomination was announced, for example, Senator Edward Kennedy charged that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions.”
Senator Biden, who had built a national reputation by attacking the excesses of liberal interest groups, made clear that he would not tolerate these ad hominem attacks. He promised to focus the questioning on Judge Bork’s substantive views about the right to privacy, rather than demonize him by conflating his personal and judicial views or trolling for private indiscretions.
When confronted with a request to subpoena Judge Bork’s video rental records in a search for possible pornography, Mr. Biden refused. (The records, which revealed that Judge Bork’s only weakness was for Cary Grant, were leaked anyway to The Washington City Paper.) At this same time, Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign collapsed in the face of plagiarism charges, but he won bipartisan praise for conducting the Bork hearings with fairness and restraint.
His performance during the Thomas hearings in 1991 was just as restrained. He focused his opposition on Judge Thomas’s radical views on property rights and limitations on federal power. When Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment began to circulate in private, Senator Biden angered liberal interest groups by insisting that the Judiciary Committee handle the accusations confidentially....