'Kicking Down' (cont.)

A tip of The Scrapbook's cap to our readers: We asked for dirt on senators who "kick down," and you responded! This, after Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee like Joe Biden and Barbara Boxer had complained that John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was unfit for high office because he was allegedly rude to subordinates.

One of our correspondents volunteers "some fairly reliable hearsay"--always our favorite kind of hearsay--that "Ted Kennedy once called his own staff 'bastards' in a large meeting my colleagues were in--with lots of members and staff. It was a bioterrorism bill conference meeting, and he was told by a Republican conferee that his staff were holding up something he had agreed to. He turned around to his staff and yelled, 'You bastards, get it done!'"

Another correspondent writes that "Joe Biden's assumption of the moral high ground in his treatment of John Bolton is particularly interesting coming, as it does, from a person reportedly kicked out of Syracuse Law School for cheating. He was readmitted, but the details of the affair were kept rather fuzzy."

As best we can determine, Biden flunked his legal methods class at Syracuse after handing in a plagiarized paper, and then was allowed to retake the class. But The Scrapbook wants to emphasize--to quote Senator Biden's own statement during the Bolton hearings--that all of the above "allegations are just that; they're allegations. They've not been substantiated, by and large. They're still allegations. And we've tried to look into them as best we can. We have shared all this information as it's come to us." Words to live by in these sorts of inquiries, both for respected public officials like those serving on the Senate Foreign Relations committee and respected journalistic institutions like The Scrapbook.

Yet another of our esteemed readers sends us this terrific anecdote from an October 2001 Michael Crowley piece in the New Republic:

Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot's cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. "I hope you will support my work on Amtrak as much as I have supported you," he begins. (Biden rides Amtrak to work every day and is obsessed with the railroad.) "If not, I will screw you badly." A dozen faces fall in unison as Biden lectures on. "You've not been good to me. You're also damn selfish. You better listen to me. . . . " It goes on like this for a couple of minutes. Strangely, Biden keeps grinning--even fraternally slapping the stunned man's shoulder a couple of times. When we finally head into the building, Biden's communications director, Norm Kurz, turns to me. "What you just witnessed is classic Senator Biden."

We also received a nice note from Tim McPike, writing "as a former Senate staffer of Carter-Reagan vintage." Says McPike, "I can attest to observing (and in a few instances being on the receiving end of) the time-honored 'kicking down' behavior of several senators who could fairly be described as bullies. But more relevant to the issue of John Bolton's fitness is a personal anecdote about Bob Dole: Senator Dole wasn't above reaming his staff in public. Once, when I was standing in a hearing room waiting for a meeting to start, Dole and a quaking staffer walked in and stood next to me. I did my best to look oblivious of the tongue-lashing Dole was delivering, but he turned to me (I was not on his staff) and snarled, 'So, you find all this interesting?'

"The true measure of Dole's character was what happened next. With some heat, I protested, 'Senator, I was here first.' Dole arched an eyebrow, turned back to his staffer, and began an equanimous discussion of the meeting agenda.

"There is a difference between a boss with a temper and a bully."

Finally, we would be remiss in not noting last week's karmic convergence between the life stories of Senator Biden and one of the more colorful of Bolton's accusers, a former USAID contractor named Melody Townsel (founder, coincidentally, of the Dallas chapter of Mothers Opposing Bush). Biden, as it happens, memorably gave Townsel a national stage for her accusations at the Bolton hearings on April 19, when, having specified that her allegations were unsubstantiated, he proceeded to read them into the record: "The USAID worker in Kyrgyzstan alleges that she was harassed and--by--that's not sexually harassed--harassed by Mr. Bolton, who was then in private practice, representing a company. And he followed her through Moscow, she alleges. He banged on her door in the middle of the night, went to Kyrgyzstan before she got back there, saying she had absconded with U.S. funds and so on and so forth, and that she shouldn't be listened to. . . . That's what she alleges. I don't know if they're all true or not."

Last week, to her adoring fans at the lefty website DailyKos.com, Townsel confided that "Republicans have dredged up un [sic] unfortunate chapter of my life and, clearly, are about to announce it to the world. . . . When I was in college, 22 years ago, I plagiarized some columns while working for my college newspaper, and I was removed from staff. Months later, while working for another college newspaper, I wrote a review for a local play that tracked closely in format to another writer's review--and, although it was not plagiarized, it made my editors, who had become aware of my recent past, very uncomfortable, and we mutually agreed that I would no longer submit stories to them."

Naturally, this has no bearing whatsoever on Townsel's probity as a witness, and we imagine Senator Biden is looking forward to swearing her in for testimony and questioning when the Bolton hearings resume.

Meanwhile, we want to hear more. So keep those cards and letters coming to scrapbook@weeklystandard.com. We'd especially enjoy hearing Barbara Boxer anecdotes. And we don't mean those snarky comments about her personal appearance you've been sending. We've already forwarded enough of those to ABC's Extreme Makeover.

Laurence Tribe Postscript

We neglected to note last week that Harvard president Larry Summers and law school dean Elena Kagan finally released the official findings of their investigation into the plagiarism charges against their distinguished colleague Laurence Tribe, first aired in these pages by Joseph Bottum. Guilty as charged. For more, much more, on the nuances of their report, visit the "Harvard Plagiarism Archive" at authorskeptics.blogspot.