BUSH ALMOST PICKED BORK FOR HIGH COURT; ADMINISTRATION'S "NO-BEARDS" POLICY KEPT HIM OUT


WASHINGTON - A senior Bush administraiton official revealed that appeals court judge John Roberts, 50, was not President Bush's first choice to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court. Bush actually selected controversial former circuit judge Robert Bork as his nominee last week only to rule him him less than two hours before announcing Roberts as his choice in a televised address.

Bork was the center of a Supreme Court nomination maelstrom in 1987 following his selection by President Ronald Reagan. The Senate ultimately rejected Bork's nomination following a hotly contested debate that focused on Bork's numerous writings dealing with women's and civil rights.

"The President wants to rectify the failures of previous Republican administrations," a senior administration official said. "For example, from the day he got in office, he was going to finish what his old man failed to do -- oust Saddam. This Bork fetish was the same deal."


But it was not Bork's controversial stances on the issues that caused Bush to change his mind; it was his grooming. On the afternoon of July 18th, Bush summoned both Bork and Judge Roberts to the map room of the White House in advance of the evening television announcement of his nominee. "Roberts was there as the decoy to throw off the media," the senior administration official explained. But events quickly took a strange turn.

"The President doesn't publicize it but he's just gone to a no-beards policy, so he politely asked Judge Bork if he'd shave," the senior administration official said. "Bork had a fit -- cussing, hurling chairs about the map room. See, the beard is his trademark." Bork violently reached into the President's shirt pocket and yanked out a box of Smith Brothers' cough drops. Pointing to the well-known picture of the Smith brothers, Bork shouted: "You trust the Smith Brothers to cure your cough. Well, their beards are far more prominent than mine! Far more prominent!" Two secret service agents subdued the 78 year old Bork.

"Bork had a meltdown, plain and simple," the senior administration official said. "Judge Roberts was cowering in the corner, praying he'd get out of there alive." While Bork's hands were being tied behind his back, the President calmly exited the room and asked an aide if she could track down Harold Carswell or Clement Haynesworth, two Nixon Supreme Court nominees who also failed to obtain Senate approval. But in the end Bush decided it was too late to find anyone else without canceling his television broadcast, and he announced to the nation that Roberts was his choice.

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