Bork Hearings Could Boost Biden Candidacy or Sink It

When the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Robert H. Bork’s Supreme Court nomination open Tuesday, one participant will have nearly as much at stake as Bork.

He is Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the committee, Bork’s archadversary and, not incidentally, a struggling seeker of the Democratic presidential nomination. Depending on how Biden handles Bork and, more important, himself, his White House candidacy could soar to lofty heights of public approval or sink, conceivably into oblivion.

Because the struggle over Bork’s nomination embodies a far-flung variety of controversies touching vital concerns of individuals and special-interest groups--from abortion and birth control to job discrimination and antitrust rules--millions of television viewers will be closely scrutinizing Biden as well as Bork, Democratic pollster Peter Hart said. “And, when the hearings are over,” Hart added, “each man will get a judgment, one way or another.”

The judgment on Bork will, of course, be on his suitability for the high court. The verdict on Biden will be based mainly on his ability to manage the hearings and himself.

The key question, analysts believe, is whether Biden will seem balanced in his beliefs and fair in his treatment of Bork--even though he opposes him and even though as a presidential candidate he can ill afford to antagonize the forces in his party who are bitterly opposed to Bork’s conservative dicta and carry great weight in the nominating process.

For all of the difficulties posed by the Bork nomination, the hearings nevertheless offer Biden a welcome opportunity to turn attention away from the problems he has encountered as a presidential candidate.

These include the controversy that flared this past weekend over Biden’s unattributed use in a televised Iowa campaign debate last month of stirring rhetoric initially delivered by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

Biden later explained he did not have enough time to credit Kinnock, whereas he had taken care to credit Kinnock on other occasions.

Making the contest over Bork even more important is the fact that, until that struggle is settled, Biden will have little time for stumping in the hustings. “For the next 30 days this is his candidacy,” Biden press secretary Larry Rasky said of the battle over Bork. Moreover, for most Americans, the hearings will provide their first close-up view of the hitherto relatively obscure senator.

Networks’ Coverage

While the three major networks are expected to announce their coverage plans today, the Public Broadcasting Service has scheduled gavel-to-gavel coverage, C-SPAN intends to rebroadcast the proceedings in the evening and Cable News Network will offer excerpts throughout the day.

No wonder then that, in the days before this confrontation, Biden drastically reduced his campaign schedule and retreated to the relatively cloistered comfort of “The Station,” his rambling Georgian home on the outskirts of Wilmington. Here, he has been spending what aides reckon as “hundreds of hours” charting his course at the helm of the committee.

From a shady spot on his spacious lawn, while his son tossed a football to a friend nearby, Biden pored over Bork’s record and a list of potential witnesses, pondering his predicament.

“I think it’s the toughest dilemma any candidate could face,” the 44-year-old senator said. “I don’t think there is anyone who has run for the presidency in memory who has had as difficult a test as this will be because of the nature of the hearing process, the nature of the issues and the nature of the conflict.”

Pressure Inevitable

To some extent, the pressure on Biden is an inevitable result of Bork’s conservative views and the alarm they have created among such influential Democratic constituency groups as feminists, labor and blacks.

“If he doesn’t take a strong enough position against Bork, liberals will think he has betrayed them,” said Kathleen Jamieson, University of Texas political scientist and a specialist on television and presidential politics. “If he comes on too strong, it will hurt his chances to position himself as a centrist candidate.”

But, for all the inherent difficulties, some critics say Biden has made things even harder for himself by what they regard as a string of gratuitous and inconsistent statements. In brief, months before Bork was nominated Biden said he would support him, a week after his nomination Biden said he would oppose him and 10 days after that he said his statement of opposition had been premature.

Some politicians viewed these self-inflicted wounds, most particularly his early declaration against Bork, as fatal to his presidential hopes. “Biden is dead,” one Democratic Senate colleague of his, a moderate Southerner, told a reporter during a visit back home to take soundings on the presidential race and the Bork nomination. “Bork did it.”

‘Prejudgment Stuff’

“People can’t take this prejudgment stuff,” said this senator, who counts himself as a friend of Biden.

Other Democrats, including some competing against Biden for the presidential nomination, believe it is too early to bury Biden’s candidacy because the Bork hearings, for all of the hazards they present, also offer Biden a valuable opportunity.

“If you were looking at it from purely political terms, you certainly couldn’t pick a better vehicle for name recognition,” Biden’s press secretary Rasky says.

“This is a major governmental decision being made,” said Paul Tully, national political director for the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. “Its implications go beyond this year and even this century, far out into the future.”

Indeed, in some ways the hearings appear well-suited to the special nature of Biden’s bid for the presidency. Contrasted with his rivals--who, with the exception of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, are generally low-keyed and cautious--Biden’s is a theatrical candidacy, one designed to take advantage of his high-flown rhetoric and his personal panache.

Impassioned Exhortation

With his fondness for impassioned exhortation--”He will raise you up on eagle’s wings and bear you on the breath of dawn,” is the Biblical peroration to his standard stump speech--Biden has had a difficult time so far catching hold amid the pedestrian settings and parochial concerns of Iowa and New Hampshire, which have provided the backdrop for the early stages of the 1988 presidential campaign.

But give him the struggle for the nation’s highest court for a script, the Senate Judiciary Committee for a proscenium and a million television viewers for an audience, and Biden could sweep to the forefront of the Democratic race.

Still, everyone, including Biden and his aides, acknowledge that he faces a complex and demanding task. He is not likely to be judged simply on whether he can bring about the rejection of Bork’s nomination, which everyone agrees will be difficult to accomplish.

More important than the end result of the hearings in shaping the judgment of Biden will be “the quality of his performance,” said William Carrick, campaign manager for one of Biden’s rivals for the Democratic nomination, Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt--”how he looks, how he acts, how he behaves.”

Coolness Needed

What’s needed most, many analysts say, is coolness, restraint and self-discipline. And these are qualities for which Biden is not noted. More typical of his Senate career are such episodes as his angry confrontation last year with Secretary of State George P. Shultz over South African policy, an encounter that jarred many sensibilities but in which Biden claims still to take pride.

“He’s a throwback to the old-style orator,” says Texas University’s Jamieson, author of “Packaging the Presidency.” And, she says, “most people who are good stump speakers are not good at asking questions at a committee hearing.”

“If he (Biden) sounds ideological, or if he becomes needlessly confrontational,” she warns, “he could destroy his candidacy.”

Biden professes confidence about playing his role. “I’ve been a senator for 15 years,” he told an interviewer. “I’ve been heading up this (Judiciary) committee in the majority and minority role for five years. I don’t think there’s any difference between being the chairman and being the ranking (minority) member.”

Exercises More Control

But there are some differences. The chairman exercises significantly more control over such things as the committee calendar and rules, and in general has more prestige and responsibility than the ranking minority member.

Biden, who had been ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, did not move up to chairman until after the Democrats took control of the Senate from the GOP in the 1986 congressional elections. And some of his utterances on the Bork nomination since he assumed his new role have caused controversy and raised questions.

When asked about how he would deal with prospective Supreme Court nominations, Biden told Larry Eichel of the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Say the Administration sends up (Judge) Bork and, after our investigation, he looks a lot like another (recently confirmed Justice Antonin) Scalia, I’d have to vote for him and, if the groups tear me apart, that’s the medicine I’ll have to take. I’m not Teddy Kennedy,” he said, referring to Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, also a member of the Judiciary Committee and considered one of its liberal bulwarks.

Announced Opposition

Some politicians speculate that by his comments Biden intended to establish himself as a more moderate figure than Kennedy. But, whatever Biden’s intent, soon after President Reagan nominated Bork to fill the next vacancy on the court, Biden announced his opposition after a meeting with leaders of special-interest groups opposed to his nomination.

Biden’s explanation for the apparent contradiction is based on what might be called situational jurisprudence. What he meant, he said later, is that he could have voted for Bork if he had been chosen to replace another conservative--”if, for example, (Chief Justice William H.) Rehnquist had resigned and Bork had been nominated.”

However, because Bork had been selected to replace a moderate justice, the retiring Lewis F. Powell Jr., Biden felt justified in opposing him. He did not need to wait for the “investigation” he had referred to earlier, he said, because he already knew enough about Bork to know that he is “a hard conservative” whose appointment would “fundamentally change the court.”

Admits His Mistake

Nonetheless, Biden himself later said he should not have stated his opposition until he could give a detailed explanation of his stand. But in the interview here at his home he amended that statement, saying the mistake was made in coming out against Bork at the same time that special-interest groups were stating their objections to the nomination.

“It’s politically damaging if it’s done in the context of other (special-interest) groups’ talking,” he said.

Biden’s declaration of opposition has stirred criticism not only from supporters of Bork who accused Biden of unfairness but also from those who contend that Biden has tarnished his position on Bork, as well as hurt his own presidential candidacy, by seeming to rush to judgment under pressure from special-interest groups fighting the nomination.

“He made a great tactical error,” said Austin Ranney, UC Berkeley political scientist. “Now he has a touch of Mondale’s disease,” he said, referring to frequent criticism that the former vice president and 1984 Democratic standard-bearer was overly influenced by special-interest groups.

Biden dismisses the argument that his stand could hurt chances of stopping the nomination, contending that not enough people are aware of what his position is for it to matter.

Like ‘Alice in Wonderland’

“The American people have no idea of what I’ve said on Judge Bork,” he argued. “They don’t even know Judge Bork. It’s like ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ It’s as if someone really has a notion of what Joe Biden’s position is on Judge Bork.”

Once the hearings start and people do pay attention, Biden contended, their reactions will depend not on what he has said, but on what he does.

“Every day, they will be looking at me and making a judgment on whether I’m fair or not.”

Meanwhile, Biden contended, his opposition is helping to bring converts to the cause from the ranks of undecided moderates on the committee. “It makes other people look twice, who otherwise wouldn’t look, saying to themselves maybe we ought to look at our position on this now that Biden is against it.

“I’ve had more requests from senators for my briefing material for the memoranda written for me than I have ever had in my life on any issue.”

‘Low Expections’

Given what he says are “the rightfully low expectations” for his dealing with the difficulties posed by the hearings, Biden sees an opportunity to improve his political standing. When the hearings are over, he said as he prepped at The Station, “if the conclusion reached is that this guy did well--then it’s a home run.”

In a way, Biden welcomes the chance to deal with low expectations because up to now, he complained, his candidacy has been judged against an artificially high standard, apparently derived from his vaunted oratorical gifts.

To journalists who tell him that “we all had such high expectations of you,” Biden said he replies: “If you did, I didn’t know about them.

“I feel like the guy who wakes up with a hangover and everybody says, ‘Boy, you had a great night last night.’

“Well, if I did,” Biden said, “I don’t know when the hell it happened.”

Staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.