Anthony Kennedy: Reagan’s worst mistake

The year was 1987. It was fall. It was November 11. It had been a tough year for President Ronald Reagan. Liberals were going bonkers with Iran-Contra as a hopeful tool to destroy a great president on the verge of winning the Cold War. The media was dubbing Iran-Contra the worst mistake of Reagan’s presidency. It was not. What happened on November 11, 1987 would, in due course, constitute the worst mistake of the Reagan presidency: the nomination of Anthony Kennedy for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Kennedy pick was supposed to calm the waters after the storm generated by the Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg nominations. Bork would have been a brilliant justice, but leftists savaged the man, transmogrifying him into an ugly beast — a gargoyle. Bork suffered the ignominy of the likes of Senator Ted Kennedy portraying him as “anti-woman.” A new verb was introduced into the political lexicon: the process of being “Borked.”

In the end, Anthony Kennedy got the nod, and was sworn in February 18, 1988. His subsequent 30 years of judicial decisions literally redefined things as basic as life and marriage. His calamitous three decades on the court will be followed by an endless maze of legal-cultural wars and church-state battles dealing with the disastrous dust-up of what he unleashed.