Roberts Looks Like Early Archie Bunker

by Marie Cocco

John Roberts' self-portrait has been revealed, and it turns out the Supreme Court nominee bears a keen resemblance to a most familiar American character. He is Archie Bunker with a pedigree.
The buttoned-down federal judge does not share Archie's weary, rumpled look. He does not sit in the overstuffed chair from which the loading dock foreman of television's landmark "All in the Family" show launched diatribes against the social changes he felt threatened his neighborhood, his job and his standing as king of his castle.

The seat of Roberts' revolt against social progress of the 1960s and 1970s wasn't plopped in the middle of a fraying house in a blue-collar neighborhood. It was carefully positioned in the corridors of power.

As a young lawyer in the forefront of the Reagan administration's efforts to stanch social change, Roberts would use his intellect and legal acumen to try to reverse what Archie could only rant against: federal courts that had established too many "rights" for African-Americans, for women, for students who attended segregated schools, for children of illegal immigrants in Texas who sought an education.

Archie was comical in his crudity; his jibes against blacks, Hispanics and Jews almost always were undercut by some turn of events revealing his hypocrisy or humanity, or both. Roberts, too, seems to have fancied himself something of a comic, but he lacked the befuddlement that softened Archie's wit.

Writing a memo in 1983 in favor of the president's granting an interview to the Spanish Today newspaper, Roberts said: "I think this audience would be pleased that we are trying to grant legal status to their illegal amigos." Asked whether a female White House official could enter a contest to honor women who'd changed their lives after age 30, Roberts opined, "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

Roberts' apparent pique at the civil rights and women's movements led him to positions not even his fellow conservatives embraced. He sought to water down the Voting Rights Act by making only "intentional" discrimination at the polls a violation, a notion that, taken to its logical conclusion, would allow literacy tests and poll taxes. Congress rejected the idea, with even Sen. Strom Thurmond voting for a tougher law.

In his disdain for cases that sought to end discrimination against women, he argued that state budget constraints justified bias against female prison inmates who did not receive job training while male inmates did. He decried women's efforts to gain equitable pay for female-dominated jobs that require similar levels of skill, training and responsibility as higher-paying positions typically held by men. He saw this as some kind of Marxist plot.

"I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept," Roberts wrote in 1984, referring to efforts supporting pay equity by then-Reps. Olympia Snowe, Claudine Schneider and Nancy Johnson. "Their slogan may as well be 'from each according to his ability to each according to her gender.'" Archie would have said: "What dingbats!"

Americans grew to love Archie despite, and because of, his prejudices. He embodied the contradictions and fears so many blue-collar whites felt during the tumult of those times. He resented blacks, but eventually came to terms with his neighbors, the Jeffersons. He hated "women's lib" but cherished his liberated daughter, Gloria. By the time "All in the Family" segued to "Archie Bunker's Place," Archie had gone into business with a Jewish partner.

At his confirmation hearings next month, Roberts no doubt will claim a similar conversion. It is not in vogue anymore to show open disdain for the aspirations of women, African-Americans or immigrants. Roberts' wife, a lawyer, will be at his side - proof, we'll be told, that he isn't some conservative caveman.

But the only tangible evidence of an evolution in Roberts' thinking may lie in documents he generated from 1989 to 1993, when he was a high-ranking Justice Department official for President George H.W. Bush. The current President Bush refuses to release them. Without a look at them, America won't be able to see whether John Roberts matured and mellowed - the way Archie Bunker did.He would use legal acumen to try to reverse what Archie could only rant against.