JULY 2014
continued from p. 1
Some conservative groups were effective in rallying support, but the damage was
done. In October the Senate rejected the nomination, 58-42. In another contrast
with current times, two Democrats voted for Bork, and six Republicans opposed
him. The next month, Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy, whom the Senate approved by a slim 97-0 vote.
Bork’s fitness as a Supreme Court justice remains in contention. He did have some
unusual views, and most observers agree that he did not represent himself well
at his Senate hearings. On the other hand, no one questioned his intellect, and
he is credited with influencing the thinking of the conservative justices who
followed.
But in one area his legacy is indisputable: His nomination led to the creation
of a word, bork, defined at dictionary.com as “to attack a candidate or public figure systematically, especially in the media.” The Oxford English Dictionary even added an entry for bork in 2002.
The most notorious use of bork as a verb occurred in 1991, when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the court. As opposition swelled, a member of the National
Organization for Women gave a speech stating, “We're going to bork him. We're going to kill him politically.”
NOW and others did indeed bork Thomas, but this time the nominee prevailed,
pointing out the clear need for a word meaning “to overcome being borked.”
Disillusioned by it all, Bork would resign his seat on the U.S. Court of
Appeals. He became a fellow at a think tank and later taught law. He also
worked as a legal adviser for the Mitt Romney campaign. Bork died in December 2012.
Attacking a political opponent is as old as, well, politics. The oddity about
Bork’s experience is that he was not a politician but a judge; at the time of his
nomination, being confirmed by the Senate was pretty much a given. It also didn’t help that he had such a great name. Try making your name into a verb.
Today it’s assumed that every nomination will provoke controversy, and both sides keep
their PR machines on 24-hour alert. But the nomination of Robert Bork remains a
good reminder: While judges rule in the court of law, in the court of public
opinion PR pros have a very strong case to make.
