He enjoys the perks of power, including foreign junkets tailored to meet his unusual demands, such as air-conditioned squash courts and suitable partners. But colleagues also say he is an especially diligent lawmaker who demands as much of himself as his staff.
Specter is also a nimble political operator who has straddled the liberal-moderate-conservative ideological line on taxes and other major issues, giving him ammunition to fend off attacks from both left and right, as he did in his most recent reelection campaign. He is a thoughtful and courageous pragmatist, according to friends, and a wily opportunist, according to critics.
"He's a very smart man and a very hardworking politician who always wants to have it both ways," said Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel III (D-Pa.), his opponent in the Nov. 2 election. Democrat Lynn Yeakel, who almost defeated Specter 12 years ago, put it more harshly, calling him "a back-and-forth windshield-wiper kind of senator."
"He considers the issues, one by one," responded David Urban, a former Specter chief of staff. "That's not being an opportunist; that's being thoughtful." Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), ranking Democrat on the judiciary panel, agreed: "He's an independent thinker, which is what a senator is supposed to be."
Throughout his career, Specter has sometimes toed the GOP line and sometimes crashed through it. Congressional Quarterly ranked him 48th of 51 GOP senators in support for Bush's positions in 2003. Often he makes mid-course corrections, as he did in voting against legislation to ban what critics call "partial birth" abortions and then voting to override President Bill Clinton's veto of the bill. Sometimes he offers complicated, legalistic explanations that confound both enemies and friends.
This is one of those moments.
With his reelection, Specter was poised under the Senate's seniority tradition to succeed Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who must relinquish the post under the Senate GOP's six-year term limits for chairmen. But at a post-election news conference, Specter said, in words that lent themselves to varying interpretations, that it is unlikely the Senate would confirm a Supreme Court nominee who would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion.
"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe versus Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said at the Nov. 3 news conference. He noted that he previously said the Roe decision is "inviolate" and did not back away from that characterization.
Even though Specter expressed similar sentiments during the campaign, conservative groups immediately mobilized to oppose him, flooding Senate offices with demands that Republicans reject him as judiciary chairman. Relying on some news accounts of his remarks, they interpreted the comments as warning the White House against sending antiabortion nominees to the Senate and suggesting he would apply a "litmus test" to block nominees who oppose abortion rights.
Specter promptly denied he had issued a warning to the president, saying he was "very respectful of his constitutional authority on the appointment of federal judges." Nor, he said, has he suggested any kind of litmus test. He noted that he has voted for all of Bush's first-term judicial nominations and supported the confirmation of William H. Rehnquist as chief justice even though Rehnquist opposed the Roe decision. "I expect to support the president's nominees," he said in interviews.
He was simply stating the political facts of life, Specter said: that Republicans next year will be five votes short of the 60 needed to break a Democratic filibuster that is almost certain if Bush names a resolutely antiabortion person to the Supreme Court.
But Specter's entanglement with Supreme Court nominees -- from Bork to the current controversy -- has had deep and enduring consequences.
Although he says no one has raised any substantive fault with his combative interrogation of Hill, it helped inspire the 1992 "Year of the Woman" in politics and nearly cost Specter his Senate seat to Yeakel.
And it did nothing to mollify conservatives, who continue to evoke the memory of Bork after 17 years. "He ran for reelection in 1986 as someone who would help get President Reagan's nominees approved . . . and then turned around and dealt a lethal blow to Bork," complained Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee. "He's a chameleon."
But Johnson and others also suggested a broader concern over Specter.
"Many Republicans fear an opportunity to govern would be squandered by someone who doesn't share the core principles of the party," said Rep. Pat Toomey (Pa.), a conservative who gave Specter a scare in the Pennsylvania GOP primary last spring.
Some Republicans are especially miffed that Specter appeared to distance himself from Bush during the campaign, even after Bush weighed in on behalf of Specter during the primary, apparently figuring Specter would be the stronger defender of the seat in November.
In the Senate, Specter has championed tough anti-crime laws, more spending for education and health research and, more recently, more federal support for embryonic stem cell research.
Specter's independent streak showed through vividly when he tried to invoke Scottish law to vote "not proven" during Clinton's impeachment trial. Rehnquist, who was presiding over the trial, was not impressed and recorded Specter as voting for acquittal.
