Flashback to the 2005 Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Chief Justice John R. Roberts Jr. Then-Democratic Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. pursued an aggressive line of questioning in trying to get the jurist and former Reagan administration lawyer to give his views on the Reagan White House's policy regarding Title IX discrimination. So aggressive that Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, became irritated and admonished Biden and fellow Democrats for not giving the nominee a fair shake.
Specter pointedly told Biden to give Roberts a chance to answer, prompting Biden to complain, "his answers are misleading, with all due respect."
"They may be misleading, but they are his answers," Specter shot back, eliciting laughter from the audience.
Though they've frequently taken opposite sides during high-stakes debates, the veteran senators from neighboring states long enjoyed a cordially cantankerous relationship, chiding each other about their politics and their parties. Specter on occasion would pause on Nov. 20 to publicly wish Biden happy birthday on the Senate floor. And the pair collaborated on disparate efforts such as a diplomatic mission to China, legislation to punish governments that carry out violent attacks against religious believers and even a long-shot attempt to force Major League Baseball and the National Football League to contribute more to the financing of new stadiums.
It turns out the relationship endured after Biden left for the vice president's suite in the White House. Biden was a key player persuading Specter the change his party affiliation, according to sources close to both men, who said the phone calls and personal meetings intensified after Specter became one of only three Republicans to support President Obama's economic stimulus package (PL 111-5) in February. Biden is said to have harped on the GOP's rightward drift, portraying his blunt and self-assured colleague as more ideologically in sync with the Democratic party.
Biden certainly had first-hand knowledge about Specter's political predicament. The native of Scanton, Pa. was an important cog in the Obama ground game that led some 200,000 registered Republicans in the Keystone State to switch their registration and become Democrats last year. That left the state's Republican party leaning much further to the right and greatly reduced Specter's chances of prevailing in a GOP primary, even before his February stimulus vote. Specter has long antagonized conservatives by supporting abortion rights -- in 2004, he famously declared that the Senate was unlikely to confirm judicial nominees who favored ending the legal right to abortion -- and by increasing domestic spending.
Biden on Tuesday called Specter "a man of remarkable courage and integrity" and predicted he'd remain a "powerful and independent" voice for Pennsylvania and the country. But White House officials were decidedly mum on whether Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel or others in the west wing had anything to do with Specter's dramatic leap.
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