The other George W.; in a letter to the Chicago Tribune:

The article, “Should Alito’s philosophy be fair game?” (News, Nov. 29), asserted that President Reagan’s 1987 nominee, Robert Bork, was not the first Supreme Court nominee to be defeated because of his ideological views.
This claim was based, at least in part, on the premise that George Washington’s 1795 nominee, John Rutledge, was similarly defeated “because of his opposition to the Jay Treaty.” This account of Rutledge’s defeat, though, is inaccurate.
When George Washington nominated John Rutledge in 1795, he immediately became Chief Justice because the Senate was in recess at the time of his nomination. While the Senate was still in recess—and while he was serving as Chief Justice—he traveled to South Carolina and delivered a blistering speech in opposition to the Jay Treaty. Witnesses to the speech reported that “Rutledge talked like a crazy man.”
When the Senate got wind of his speech, most of its members were outraged. It was the height of arrogance—and, as one historian has described it, “judicial tactlessness”—for a sitting Chief Justice to so brazenly and publicly insert himself into the middle of one of the most controversial political questions of the day. This mixture of politics and judging was not one that the Senate thought appropriate, and they voted against Rutledge both because they thought his judicial temperament lacking and because the content and delivery of the speech suggested even to those in the Washington Administration “proof of the imputation of insanity.”
Thus, Rutledge’s defeat stands for the very opposite of the article’s assertion: the founding generation thought that temperament and competence—not ideology—was the proper basis for evaluating judicial nominees.