Roberts's Rules

Whether you love or hate his judicial philosophy, John Roberts is one canny bureaucratic player.

As you plow through the blizzard of memos he wrote as a government lawyer, you get the sense of a man who is more conservative, more combative and more sarcastic than he has been portrayed in these walk-on-water profiles. It's no surprise that this Harvard man clerked and lawyered his way to a Supreme Court nomination.

You will, by the way, hear almost none of this on TV. Understanding the memos requires walking through the background and legal context of each controversy at the time, and television has no inclination to do that unless there's an inflammatory phrase that the pundits can argue about. (TV people keep talking about the battle over the documents while saying very little about what's in them.) It is, in short, a classic newspaper story.

Roberts is quite familiar with bureaucratic dodges and the art of Washington insincerity, the documents suggest..

As the New York Times noted: "Responding to a letter from the American Jewish Committee in 1981, he asked a supervisor, 'Is this draft response O.K. - i.e., does it succeed in saying nothing at all?'"

Is that his confirmation hearing strategy?

As The Washington Post pointed out, he advised then-AG William French Smith in 1982 on how to tell Coretta Scott King that Justice was axing a $250K grant for what he called the "very poorly run" MLK Center in Atlanta. JR's advice: Just tell Mrs. King " 'there is simply no money available for additional funding,' and 'indicate support for the activities of the King Center, and even pleasure that the Justice Department was able to be of assistance in advancing' its goals."

A real pleasure, right.

And when Olson said his strategy would "be perceived as a courageous and highly principled position, especially in the press," Roberts underlined the words "especially in the press" and wrote: "Real courage would be to read the Constitution as it should be read and not kowtow to the Tribes, Lewises and Brinks!" He meant Lawrence Tribe, ABA chief David Brink and NYT columnist Anthony Lewis.

The Boston Globe examined Roberts's "deeply skeptical review of a report outlining the need for affirmative action" by an outgoing Carter aide. "'The logic of the report is perfectly circular: the evidence of structural discrimination consists of disparate results, so it is only cured when 'correct' results are achieved through affirmative action quotas." What's more, wrote Roberts, "the affirmative action program required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates."

Did Roberts suggest making this potentially explosive argument in public? No way. He wrote Smith: "I have drafted an innocuous reply to [the civil rights commission chairman]. The report is attached, although I do not recommend reading it."

This NYT sidebar has Roberts dismissing a proposal by then-Democratic congressman Elliott Levitas for a conference on power-sharing between the WH and the Hill: "There already has, of course, been a 'Conference on Power Sharing.' It took place in Philadelphia's Constitution Hall in 1787, and someone should tell Levitas about it and the 'report' it issued."