Wouldn’t it be nice if those who vilified Robert Bork in life would acknowledge their unfairness now that he has died?
Starting with Vice President Joe Biden, who as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman presided over Bork’s 1987 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Bork, who died yesterday at 85, was an intellectual giant — a forceful and eloquent advocate of judicial restraint and a legal scholar who inspired a generation of conservative jurists and officials.
Which is why President Ronald Reagan selected him for the US Supreme Court.
And why Democrats aimed to destroy him.
Sen. Ted Kennedy led the despicable charge, barely an hour after his nomination, saying Bork favored “a land where women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters [and] rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids.”
Indeed, his name soon became a verb: To “bork” someone meant destroying his reputation utterly without merit.
The Senate defeated his nomination — and because “borking” worked, politics in America has been a more coarse and degrading process ever since.
Though embittered by his Senate experience, Bork stood by his views.
He was a gentleman to the end. RIP.