Two well-publicized strategies should be ruled out in the battleshaping up over confirming U.S. Appeals Judge Robert H. Bork as aSupreme Court justice.
Senate liberals opposing confirmation should abandon any idea ofstalling the nomination until next year, and the White House shouldput a damper on talk that President Reagan could place Judge Bork onthe court as an interim appointee in the event the Senate fails toact before recessing for the rest of this year.
No question of legality exists here. Either strategy would belegal, but that doesn't make them right.
Republicans must not presume that the Democratic Senate will actirresponsibly. With Senate Judiciary Committee hearings beginningSept. 15, the full Senate has ample time to act before its scheduledOctober recess, and any pretense that the matter requires more studywould be transparent deception for unacceptable partisan reasons.The White House has every reason to expect a timely up-or-down voteand should not even dignify with discussion the possibility of aninterim appointment.
On another Bork front, Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.), chairmanof the Judiciary Committee, has been making amazing utterances. Themore he puffs up his own importance in the controversy, the more hesounds like a complete ninny.
Sen. Biden's discomforture is of his own making. He doesn'tknow how to get out gracefully from a pro-Bork remark he made lastyear. And, despite outspoken opposition to the nomination, he keepsinsisting he can do an impartial job presiding over the hearings.
Last November, Sen. Biden was discussing the last Reaganappointee to the high court, conservative Antonin Scalia. He said:"Say the administration sends up Bork and, after our (Senate)investigation, he looks a lot like Scalia. I'd have to vote for him,and if the (liberal) groups tear me apart, that's the medicine I'llhave to take."
Sen. Biden, as a candidate for the Democratic presidentialnomination, is no longer willing to take the medicine. He explainshis turnabout something like this: Judge Bork would be good for thecourt if his views weren't shared by a majority of his colleagues,but he would be bad for the court if he was in the majority.
His actual words two weeks ago were, "The court should have aBork on it . . . but it doesn't mean it should have a Bork that isgoing to be the deciding vote." Why doesn't the senator just say, "Iwas wrong last November"? His rationalizations don't imply that heis against rigging the court in one direction so much as they implythat he wants to keep it rigged in another direction.
The liberal Washington Post already has criticized Sen. Biden'sability to assure a fair hearing when he "has already cast himself inthe role of a prosecutor." We don't expect the senator to relinquishthe gavel, but neither do we buy his assertion that it is possible,in the manner of the celebrated Judge Roy Bean, to give a fair trialto a man you already have decided to hang.
Joe Biden must have a good friend somewhere willing to pull himaside and tell him simply to shut up.
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