That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post, which explores one big lesson that strategists for George W. Bush drew from the defeat of Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination 17 years earlier: the need to launch a political campaign in support of Bush’s nomination of John Roberts. On Supreme Court nominations, unlike long-distance running, the surest way to finish ahead is to jump ahead at the beginning.
In acting on offense, the Bush White House on Roberts had several significant advantages over the Reagan White House on Bork. An excerpt:
Roberts had a much thinner record of his legal thinking than Bork did, so there was much less for Democrats to attack. Beyond his handful of years on the D.C. Circuit, Bork had been a Yale law professor for two decades and had written prolifically on a broad range of issues. In sharp contrast, Roberts had written virtually nothing on his own behalf (rather than on behalf of clients) before joining the D.C. Circuit in 2003. Ironically, Democrats had done a favor of sorts for Roberts in making his first nomination to the D.C. Circuit, way back in 1992, die by inaction, and in obstructing for two years Bush’s nomination of him to that same court in 2001. A judicial record of thirteen years, or even of four years, would surely have provided much more fodder for criticism, even if ill-founded.
I invite you to sign up for Confirmation Tales.