Word: bork
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Baker has indeed shown that his style is one that avoids confrontation. He helped steer Reagan into a Central American "peace plan" partnership with House Speaker Jim Wright. He engineered the strategy of selling Robert Bork to Congress as a distinguished moderate rather than a centurion of right-wing values. And he prepared the ground for the President's reluctant compromise on a budget plan. Had such strategies proved successful, Baker's conservative critics might have forgiven him. But given the results, even some of his fans are wondering if he is the wrong man for the times...
What they do not share, however, is political style. Confrontation brought Reagan to power. As his rhetoric on Bork, the budget and Central America demonstrates, he remains most comfortable when he is taking his opponents head on. As Senate majority leader, Baker successfully yinned to Reagan's yang in crucial legislative battles. But as Baker has unhappily discovered, the White House is very different from the Senate. Says his longtime aide James Cannon: "In the Senate, they fight with boxing gloves; in the White House, they fight with guns and knives." More important, he has had difficulty blending into...
...Bork was done in by a tragic flaw, his behavior and that of his supporters since the floodgates opened against him has shown it to be the stuff of low tragedy, not high. First, the president tried to tie in a vote for Bork with a vote to get tough on crime, abandoning all pretense that the judge was a moderate. Then after the Judiciary Commitee voted not to recommend his nomination to the full Senate, Bork vowed to fight on, to bring his nomination onto the Senate floor to force a vote of the full Senate...
...laughable for the clients of Richard Vigueire to decry direct mail fundraising and campaigning. Less humorous is the notion that Blacks and women represent narrow special interests in American society. But now Bork is showing his true colors and waging a political campaign on behalf of an "unpoliticized judiciary." Of course, Bork long ago might have had his place at the pinacle of America's "unpolitical judiciary" had not Reagan instead decided to nominate the first woman to the Court in 1981 and the first Italian-American...
...question now is who will be next, a question which reportedly is dividing the Administration itself. Some advisers are said to be counselling that Reagan maintain his support for the Judge until the Senate votes, and then appoint another brash conservative, one with less clips than the prolific Bork. They want to force a confrontation with the Senate. In an off-the-cuff remark Tuesday, Reagan vowed to do just that...