A Long and Winding Odyssey

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For an advocate of judicial restraint, Bork has not been terribly successful at exercising personal discipline in recent years. He regularly smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, despite promises to himself to quit. After breaking his arm in an accident on icy steps outside his home two years ago, he began losing control of his now Falstaffian weight. A series of exercise machines -- a rowing machine, cross-country machine, stationary bicycle -- sit broken or largely unused in his attic. Bork has taken up poker in a floating game that regularly includes Scalia, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Education Secretary William Bennett and others. Bork is a popular addition: he is so unknowledgeable about the game that he keeps a list of winning hands beside his chair. "I never played poker before," says he, "and I think I'm paying for it."

A jovial man whose company is enjoyed even by ideological foes, Bork amiably uses smiles and quips to soften his forcefully expressed views. After a Justice Department official commented that a certain decision would be made "over my dead body," Bork noted, "To some of us, that sounded like the scenic route." His disarming humor is likely to help him seem personally sympathetic and even comfortably moderate during the televised hearings. But the prolonged wait has taken its toll, and his irritation with the drum roll of criticism sometimes prompts him to grind his teeth nervously and show flashes of anger.

Bork has shown his independent streak even after his nomination. The afternoon that Reagan offered him the job, Bork was taken aside by William Ball, the White House legislative liaison, and told not to talk to the press. He nodded, but within hours was giving thoughtful interviews about his life and legal beliefs. He also disregarded advice not to talk to Senators about his legal philosophy. His strategy worked well, both to humanize his image and to explain his complex ideas. Even though he has successfully assured the Senate on two previous occasions that some of his forceful and abrasive writings were merely the deliberately provocative views of an inquiring intellectual, he knows that this time the stakes are higher. In considering whether he should become the nation's 104th Supreme Court Justice -- and determine the court's future balance -- the Senate should and will intimately review not only his current views but his entire personal odyssey.