Promises to Keep by Joe Biden

Author:Joe Biden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588366658
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

WITHIN A FEW weeks of the nomination the White House released “Materials on Judge Bork,” a paper that cast Bork as a moderate in line with Justice Lewis Powell. The paper actually obfuscated Bork’s most controversial views. If that was the White House strategy, I thought, it was going to be running counter to the nominee’s instincts. I didn’t think Bork himself was going to go into the hearings and shave his beliefs. He had well-reasoned views that he had forcefully articulated, and I thought he would be pretty damn honest in defending them. Bork would say later he viewed service on the Court as an “intellectual feast.” To me the upcoming hearings were going to be intellectual combat.

By early August I was beginning to believe that if Bork engaged in a debate about fundamental rights, he could be kept off the Court—and the country would be better for it. But there wasn’t much room for error. There would be plenty of other senators ready to fight the nomination, but as chairman I knew to be ready to meet Bork head-on and forthrightly. I was determined to be prepared.

I cut huge blocks out of the campaign schedule—two and three days at a time—to meet with legal experts and continue my reading on Bork. I had set the hearings to begin September 15, and that meant six weeks of preparation, two or three more weeks of hearings, and then possibly a tough fight on the Senate floor. I would be managing that vote. The people running Biden for President operations in Iowa and New Hampshire were understandably panicky. Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts, and his hometown media market included neighboring New Hampshire. He was practically a native son there, and the people on my staff from Massachusetts talked about the Dukakis ground campaign like it had all the precision and resources of the Prussian army. They were rolling through Iowa counties locking down votes block by block, while I fiddled with Bork. Richard Gephardt had practically moved to Iowa, and he had the lead in the early polls. If I gave up the rest of the summer, my advisors counseled, and let Gephardt get too far out front, I’d never catch up. Now was the time for me to be in people’s living rooms and dens, sewing up support among state legislators, local mayors, town council members, and regular voters. Junkins and Wilhelm were both saying August was the time for me to be in Iowa closing the deal with the caucus voters. So I asked my wife to go there for me.

Jill was working part-time as an English tutor for children in a psychiatric hospital, so she had much of the summer off, but this was a big leap for her. Up to now Jill was going along with my dream. She had never had any great desire to be in the White House—the thought of it worried her. I had always told her she wouldn’t have to

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