Souter Script Calls for the Human Touch : Hearings: Supreme Court nominee and White House coaches have crafted skillful political plan. But the opposition is also well-organized.

In his two days of scrupulously prepared testimony, Supreme Court nominee David Hackett Souter made a point of describing the two lessons “that I took away with me” from a 20-year career as a lawyer and jurist.

One is that, when a trial is over, “some human being is going to be affected.” The other is that, as a result, judges should do their best “to get those rulings right.”

These may not seem like revelations for someone who is a Phi Beta Kappa and a Rhodes scholar.

But the points show how far Souter and his White House coaches have endeavored over the first two days of hearings to portray the nominee as someone in touch with normal human feelings, an apparent strategy to counter reports that he has led an obsessively reclusive, cerebral and solitary life.

Nor is Souter the only one with a meticulously crafted political plan. When a variety of special interest groups on Friday announced their opposition to him, the announcement was arranged beforehand to follow questioning by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), knowing precisely what questions Biden would ask and having a strong idea what Souter would answer.

It is all evidence of the extent to which Supreme Court confirmations have become “political theater--and anyone who thinks it’s not is kidding himself,” in the words of Thomas Rath, a Souter friend who has been brought in by the White House to help coach him.

“There is an important cosmetic aspect to the process--how the American people feel about this man,” Rath said before the hearings had even begun.

Senators now craft reelection commercials from the footage of such televised hearings. Biden, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has received nearly as much coaching, both from aides and law professors, as Souter has, particularly with an eye to improving follow-up questions.

Special-interest groups on the left and right are vying to position themselves as the primary authority on such nominations, which can help fund raising.

And Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) even brought in a private investigator to look into Souter and help the senator prepare for the hearings.

Anyone not convinced that politics and theater have equal weight with the law here might note the 40-foot gantlet of television cameras that lines the entrance to the Senate committee room, where the hearings are being held, a media swamp where the special-interest groups and committee staff members on all sides engage in the black art of spin control, or trying to influence the media’s interpretation of the event.

Souter’s script has involved three primary aims.

The first, which perhaps has involved more of his effort than any other, is to humanize himself.

The second is to demonstrate that he is not another Robert H. Bork, the nominee rejected by the Senate three years ago on the grounds that his judicial philosophy was too far from the mainstream. Souter has been careful to agree with legal principles that Bork rejected.

And the third is to avoid at all costs answering questions that would disclose how he might vote on the constitutionality of abortion, which would almost certainly prove politically explosive.

By the time he had finished with his first answer on the first day of the hearing, Souter had managed to lay out all three.

Souter had several practice sessions in the Old Executive Office Building answering questions fielded by friends and White House aides. He also pored over thick loose-leaf briefing books prepared by the Justice Department and reviewed videotapes of four previous nominees in their confirmation hearings.

Another part of the White House staging was asking special-interest groups from the right to keep out of sight for fear of making the nominee look ideologically too extreme. They have complied so far, staying on the periphery of the media and away from the klieg lights and microphones.

Instead, Republican staff members on the Senate Judiciary Committee have worked closely with the White House aides, even passing notes back and forth to them during the hearings.

Democrats, meanwhile, are working just as closely with special-interest groups on the liberal side, so much so that these groups knew on Friday morning what Biden would be asking later that afternoon.

At least one senator, freshman Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.), seemed put off by just how highly politicized the selection of judges had become, on both sides.

Noting that four White House aides were seated behind Souter, Kohl told the nominee: “Your independence as a Supreme Court justice would be more clearly apparent if you were here today without their company.”

“No one has been lobbying me, subtly or otherwise,” Souter answered.

If that were true, he might have been the only one in the room who could say that.