Recommended: The Ugliness Started With Bork

Joe Nocera makes a point in today's New York Times that I have made often: The Ugliness Started With Bork. It was the bitterness, and essential unfairness, of the liberal battle to prevent Robert Bork from being appointed to the Supreme Court in 1964 that started the civil war between the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress.

As Nocera says:

I bring up Bork not only because Sunday is a convenient anniversary. His nomination battle is also a reminder that our poisoned politics is not just about Republicans behaving badly, as many Democrats and their liberal allies have convinced themselves. Democrats can be — and have been — every bit as obstructionist, mean-spirited and unfair.

I’ll take it one step further. The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics. For years afterward, conservatives seethed at the “systematic demonization” of Bork, recalls Clint Bolick, a longtime conservative legal activist. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution coined the angry verb “to bork,” which meant to destroy a nominee by whatever means necessary. When Republicans borked the Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright less than two years later, there wasn’t a trace of remorse, not after what the Democrats had done to Bork. The anger between Democrats and Republicans, the unwillingness to work together, the profound mistrust — the line from Bork to today’s ugly politics is a straight one.

It is not that the liberals opposed his nomination - that was understandable. It was that they were willing to use any means available, fair or unfair, truthful or not, to destroy him. So they should not be surprised that the same tactics are now used against themselves.