[TheDon]

In no small part, the ease of Roberts’s passage was due to his positioning as Bork’s inverse doppelgänger: humble where Bork was arrogant, silken where Bork was spiky, cherubic where Bork was Mephistophelean—and evasive where Bork was candid.

Just think if Bork had behaved like Roberts in the confirmation hearing what he could have been doing the last 18 years.

[Verginius Rufus]

The liberals had it in for Bork because of his role in the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973 (his firing of Kennedy man Archibald Cox) and because they feared he would be the decisive vote against Roe. It might have done no good for him to behave like a pussycat instead of a lion at the confirmation hearings.

[jeltz25]

Bork couldn't behave like Roberts because he already had a record.