If Robert Bork's Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week can be said to have had a moment of epiphany, it came Wednesday morning. That is when Judge Bork was explaining to Sen. Alan Simpson how Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famous civil libertarian, had once upheld a law that allowed the sterilization of the mentally retarded. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," Holmes had written, in what Judge Bork described, in charitable understatement, as "not (Holmes's) finest hour." Sen. Simpson then paused for a moment, looked around at his colleagues, and quipped, "Perhaps we ought to bring him back up here," and the hearing room broke up in laughter. Sen. Simpson has a searing wit, but the unfunny truth is that, having written that phrase, even the eminent Justice Holmes would have trouble making it through the political swamp that passes for today's Senate confirmation process. Justice Holmes would have spent much of his confirmation battle explaining how it was that he could hold such benighted views, and defending why he really wasn't prejudiced against the handicapped. Judge Bork isn't Justice Holmes, though he is probably one of the half-dozen best qualified Supreme Court nominees since Holmes. He is surely the most prolific, as well, and so the capital's standing army of activists and senators has this week been busily replaying everything he ever wrote or said, all in an attempt to prove he is a judicial extremist, a threat to the republic. Judge Bork defended himself well this week, with scholarly precision and often with humor, but in Washington reasonableness alone is not enough to win a seat on the Court. By now, the politics of judicial appointment in the Reagan years has become drearily predictable, like a Herblock cartoon. Any nominee at all at odds with the judicial orthodoxy of recent decades is immediately attacked as someone out of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The essential weapons are, as Sen. Simpson put it in his opening statement, "a deft blend of emotion, fear, guilt or racism." The idea is to raise such a public furor about the nominee's "extremism" that the fanatic moderates who often hold the balance of power in the Senate won't dare risk guilt by association by voting in favor. If a nominee's reputation happens to be shredded amid all of this politicking, well, too bad, but that's life in the big city. The activists started things off by supplying the emotion and fear. A group known as "People for the American Way" papered Washington with ads headlining the case of "Robert Bork vs. The People," suggesting, apparently, that anyone who supports Judge Bork opposes "the people," not to mention the American way. The same ads implied that Judge Bork had no objection to "sterilizing workers," didn't believe in any right to privacy, and just might "Turn the clock back on civil rights?" The question mark was a nice touch, apparently meant to suggest the ad writers might actually have some doubt. Once the hearings began, the directors of these lobbying groups huddled amid the marble colonnades in the back of the Senate Caucus Room, smiling or wincing as events played out. Ralph Neas, the amiable leader of the activist troops and the subject of a flattering profile in Tuesday's Washington Post, was always ready with a quote. "I think things are going well," he'd say, time and again. "We're laying out the record that shows how extreme he is." The senators themselves were more respectful, perhaps because they know that TV cameras have been unkind lately to inquisitors. Judiciary Chairman Joe Biden appeared to have taken a course from Miss Manners; he displayed none of the florid sarcasm that drove Ursula Meese to tears when her husband was seeking to be confirmed as attorney general. The questioning, however, left little doubt about its goal -- to suggest that Judge Bork cares not at all for the rights of women, of minorities, of the press, or of pretty much anyone else. Hadn't Judge Bork done something "illegal," charged Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, by dismissing the Watergate special prosecutor in 1973? Judge Bork explained -- as he has dozens of times before -- his moral dilemma in seeking as solicitor general to follow the orders of a president, yet also keep the special prosecutor team from disbanding. He succeeded on both accounts, as the special prosecution force's own final report concluded. Isn't Judge Bork beyond the pale, implied Sen. Biden, for believing there is no right to privacy in the Constitution? Judge Bork had to explain that, yes, there are all kinds of privacy rights in the Constitution (the First, 4th and 5th amendments, for example), but he didn't believe there is any "generalized, undefined" right. Isn't Judge Bork in effect a racist because he once opposed that part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination in public places? implied Sen. Edward Kennedy. Judge Bork explained that he was concerned at the time about government coercion in private decisions, but that he had retracted that position more than a decade ago. So Americans were left with the spectacle of this distinguished judge and scholar having to plead in public that he is not a bigot, that, indeed, he had once persuaded the senior partners in his Chicago law firm to end their quota on Jewish attorneys. Judge Bork's supporters in the White House believe that all of this helped his cause, that it proved he wasn't, as one put it, "a neanderthal." They believe he has improved his chances to win the support of at least one of the three undecided senators on the Judiciary Committee, and thus make it at least to the Senate floor. If Judge Bork is not confirmed, however, the record of this week suggests that the reason will result less from his own failings than from the ferocity and distortions of his opponents. -- Mr. Gigot is a writer on the Journal's editorial page.
Senators this week have been busy attempting to prove that Judge Robert Brennan , President Obama 's nominee to the Supreme Court , is a judicial extremist , a threat to the republic . They are replaying anything controversial that he ever did or said . Further , they are aided by activists who claim he does not support the rights of women , minorities , the press and other groups . One group , " People for the American People " suggests that anyone who supports Bork opposes " the people . " Senators of the judiciary committee are following these lobbyists lead in their questioning . Bork defended himself well , with scholarly precision and often humor .