I generally revile Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his hyper-partisan leadership of the Senate, his unethical statements and his manner of conducting himself.  Still, I am bound to take this rare opportunity to defend Sen. Reid, who is taking the brunt of  criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for weakening the filibuster last week. True: he didn’t have to take this course, and I think it will probably, as the talking head shows Sunday seemed to agree, make the toxic and dysfunctional politics in Washington worse, not better. Reid, however, is not the primary one at fault. He was doing his job as he saw it, dealing with circumstances that are now beyond his control.

What led to the so-called “nuclear option” becoming reality was an unplanned convergence of Machiavellian politics, breaches of professional duty, dishonesty, irresponsible legislating, lack of statesmanship, unfairness, disrespect, bad luck, incompetent leadership, and most of all, a cycle of revenge that is now only likely to continue. Most of this was out of Harry Reid’s hands.

History shows that U.S. Presidents were once virtually always given the benefit of the doubt regarding judicial appointments to the federal courts, except in the rare cases of serious ethical questions or dubious qualifications. It was a good system, and the right system, and both parties followed it, realizing that the ideological mix in the courts was fluid and cyclical, and that today’s new conservative judge would eventually be offset by the appointee of the next liberal President, and vice versa. Democrats destroyed that tradition and accord on judicial appointments when in 1987, the Senate Democrats blocked President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork, who had been selected by President Reagan to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Reagan, it can be argued, lit the fuse by nominating Bork despite warnings by Democrats, in the also traditional “advise” part of the nomination process, that he was not to their liking, and would face more than the usual opposition. But Reagan had been elected in two landslides, and it seemed reasonable for him to claim that the Right had earned the opportunity to have a conservative heavyweight on the Supreme Court.

By any previous standard, Bork was such a  heavyweight, and an unusually well-qualified one. Democrats, however, had been spoiled by the long, long tenure of a very liberal Supreme Court majority led by Earl Warren, and the succeeding Burger Court had proven to be surprisingly moderate, in part because several Justices had moved to the left to counter the influx of conservative jurists like William Rehnquist. Judge Bork, however, would be replacing Lewis Powell, one of the Court’s moderates and a frequent swing-vote (much like Justice Kennedy today), and the former  Solicitor General had a well-earned reputation for being frighteningly smart, impressively persuasive, and as conservative as they come, all bolstered by impeccable scholarship. The Left feared that Bork would lead a conservative judicial revolution on the scale of the Warren Court’s liberal one—which, by the way, the Republicans and conservatives lived with and survived, though complaining mightily—so Demoicrats decised to blow up the tradition of reciprocity and comity.

First, the American Bar Association, which then was supposed to render an objective assessment of any nominated judge’s qualifications for the Court, gave Bork a low rating, thus fertilizing the ground for attacks on his nomination. This reflected the strong liberal bias in the ABA, and was, frankly, a disgrace: it violated the spirit of the groups own stated ethical rules by claiming an objectivity in its national assignment that it knew it was incapable of delivering. Then Democratic allies like the NAACP and the Civil Liberties Union coordinated with the party to–and there is no other word for it—destroy Bork’s reputation and portray him as a rights-opposing monster, which he was not. The low point in Bork’s destruction, for which he was understandably unprepared since it had never happened to any nominee of his caliber before, was the vicious calumny spoken by Sen. Ted Kennedy. Its substance can only be defended on the unethical basis that it worked:

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy … President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice..”

Robert Bork’s rejection marked the beginning of the end of  either party’s willingness to ignore ideology and to agree to respectfully confirm judges, regardless of their judicial philosophies, as long as they were honorable, learned, experienced and respected. As a result, future high court nominees had to arrive at their Senate confirmation hearings with little published scholarship that could be attacked on partisan grounds (Bork had been a copious writer), and then lie before the Senate by claiming, under oath, that they had “no views” on contentious matters like abortion, unless actual candor was protected by a Senate super-majority backing the President. This meant, in many cases, that the most qualified judges could never be confirmed, because they could be “Borked.” The lack of the traditional bipartisan accord not only harmed the functioning of the Senate, it also diluted the quality of the Supreme Court and made it progressively more polarized.

The toxicity and growing dysfunction of the once smoothly operating and fair system that had served the nation and the courts well was ratcheted up again when President George H.W. Bush’s SCOTUS nominee, Clarence Thomas, was the victim of a last-minute, below-the-belt, unsubstantiated accusation of sexual harassment by Anita Hill that almost derailed his historic opportunity to become the Court’s second African-American Justice. This was another Democratic injection of hard-ball politics in the judicial nomination process. It created bitterness and a further deterioration in cooperation between the parties.

The GOP’s reaction was to apply the principle of revenge. Its partisan opposition to President Clinton from day one of his first term was as vehement and unyielding as any President had faced since Abraham Lincoln. Clinton’s ethically dubious and manipulative governing style, combined with a series of scandals of varying seriousness, made the problem worse. So did Clinton’s impeachment, which he deserved.

At this point, really bad luck struck in the form of the disputed 2000 election. Every previous time a President had been elected without a plurality of the popular vote there was lingering anger and partisan dysfunction, but this was the first time it had occurred 1) since the onset of mass communications and sophisticated opinion marketing and 2) when relations between the parties were already at such an abysmal level of discord and distrust. The Democrats, to their eternal shame, decided to risk eroding the bonds of the democracy by promoting the despicable myth that Bush’s election was “stolen” by the Supreme Court. This energized the Democratic base at the cost of polarizing the parties and the electorate, crippling the new President, and weakening the trust that a democracy must foster to survive. It was complimented, on the Republican side, by an unusual combination of ruthless and conniving political thugs and ideologues in the party’s leadership the likes of which the nation hadn’t endured since Reconstruction. This culminated in such scorched earth as the extensive use of the filibuster by Democrats to block President Bush’s judicial nominations, justified by the theory—encouraged by mainstream media and liberal pundits— that he wasn’t legally elected, and also that a conspiracy of judges had swept him into office—all the more reason to keep those conniving conservatives off the bench,  President Bush, the strategy dictated, didn’t deserve deference.

At the end of Bush’s eight years, the GOP was again in revenge mode. Extreme factions among the party’s followers were challenging the new Democratic President’s legitimacy —he was a Muslim; he wasn’t a citizen: distrust breeds distrust. Revenge is no way to run a democratic government, as it is emotional rather than rational or ethical. The good fortune of having a Democratic President who had the political skills and the determination to accomplish his goals by persuasion, outreach, negotiation and compromise would have greatly mitigated this problem, and indeed this is exactly the kind of leader Barack Obama had promised to be.

He had neither those skills nor the inclination to develop them, however.  Instead, it often seemed as if he intentionally pushed the GOP further away, and encouraged intractable opposition so he could blame Republicans, past and present, for the failures of his own policies and initiatives. To this end, Obama and other Democrats worked to convince the public that Republican leadership began his presidency determined to sabotage his efforts. How many times have you heard or read that Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, set the stage for advanced dysfunction when he announced, in the midst of the nation’s bipartisan good feeling following the election of its first black President, that the primary goal of the Republican Party was to make Obama a one term President? By last year, this had become a refrain. The Washington Post’s Factchecker, Glenn Kessler, wrote,

“Clearly, a theme has emerged among Democrats: Republicans were so determined to thwart President Obama’s agenda that the Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, even announced from day one that he was determined to make Obama a one-term president.”

That theme didn’t emerge on its own, however: Obama, the Democrats, and Kessler’s colleagues created it. Here’s the President on CBS’ “60 Minutes,”  Sept. 23, 2012:

“When I first came into office, the head of the Senate Republicans said, ‘my number one priority is making sure president Obama’s a one-term president.’ Now, after the election, either he will have succeeded in that goal or he will have failed at that goal.”

Here is Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), on the Senate floor, two days earlier:

 “It was no surprise, because the senator from Kentucky [ McConnell] who just spoke, announced at the beginning, four years ago, exactly what his strategy would be. He said, his number-one goal was to make sure that Barack Obama was a one-term president.”

It was a lie, designed to harden bipartisan opposition while using that opposition to dodge accountability. It has been an effective one, too: until I checked, I remembered McConnell’s comments as coming shortly after Obama’s election (but it is also easy for me to believe the worst about Mitch McConnell). In fact, McConnell made his statement in an interview a few days before the 2010 mid-term elections, when it was clear that Democrats were going to lose big. After two years and the bruising fight over health care, with the deficits soaring, unemployment still at unacceptable levels and Obama still blaming the previous President and Republicans for all of it, McConnell’s stated goal of making sure the Obama Presidency was a short one was neither unfair or remarkable.

The quote was preceded by McConnell telling an interviewer that   “…we need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, ‘Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.'”  Then, in response to the question, “What job?”, Sen. McConnell said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.”

Granted, it was a stupid and blunt way to say what McConnell meant, which was ‘Republicans are not going to be able to fix a thing until we get this guy out of the White House,’ and played right into the hands of the ongoing Democratic strategy of framing all opposition to this President as personal rather than principled. Still, it would have been but a footnote and quickly forgotten in an Administration that was willing to make concessions and compromise to get its own agenda accomplished.

The levels of distrust have been ratcheted up even more since 2010, with a President who deigns only to accomplish things by edict and who approaches impasses with the single goal of using them to increase partisan anger, and an opposition that has concluded, correctly, that attempts at bargaining and negotiation are useless.

The unprecedented number of Presidential appointments that are languishing because of Republican opposition is absurd and irresponsible. The specific trigger for the “nuclear option,” Republican refusal to fill three vacancies on the important D.C. Court of Appeals, however, could have been dealt with, and would have been dealt with in past administrations, by political horsetrading of the kind that a competent President can always use to get his way. Presidents always have bargaining chips aplenty, and those who are willing—as competent and effective leaders always are—to accept two-thirds of a loaf rather than getting nothing and vilifying the opposition because of it, can achieve most of their objectives.

Obama won’t do this and apparently doesn’t know how. In part, his problem is similar to the GOP’s—an angry, take no prisoners radical base that will regard any moderation as betrayal. But as commentators from both sides of the partisan divide have now observed, this President’s political tools begin and end with speechmaking. An effective President might have persuaded the Republicans to confirm two of his nominees in return for replacing a third with a more moderate judge. Would the GOP have passed on the judges if Obama agreed to other actions that Republicans could show to their constituency, actions that Obama should have already taken, such as firing Attorney General Holder? My guess is that the party would have accepted such a deal rather than have Reid take away the filibuster. How about an early concession on the deficit? Moderation on immigration reform? A retreat on gun control? Approval of the Keystone pipeline? A sincere and genuine re-institution of the bipartisan advise component of the advise and consent process on future nominations? Dozens of House bills have been passed and just ignored by the Senate (this is Reid’s fault), which is not the way the legislative system was designed to work. If Obama told Republicans, “I’ll have Harry bring a House bill to a vote for every nominee of mine you let the Senate vote on,” would it have broken the impasse and made the weakening of the filibuster unnecessary? Past Chief Executives have made those kinds of deals.

Last week, Harry Reid had run out of tools. The last, best hope was the President’s personal popularity, and the ACA debacle seemed to signal that this was in freefall. Obama had burned his bridges, and could not rebuild them when he was on the defensive and likely to be for the foreseeable future. The Republicans smelled blood in the water, and while they once—perhaps?— could have been persuaded to be reasonable, statesmanlike and do what was right (allowing the D.C. Court of Appeals to operate at full strength, and allowing a President to appoint the judges he chooses is right), it was obviously not going to happen. There are three more years of this to go, and the gridlock is likely to get worse, not better. Of his limited options, Reid chose the only one that would ensure that something gets done.

It didn’t have to be this way. While Sen. Reid is not without responsibility for getting us to this miserable point, the chain of events that led us here was begun 35 years ago. Sometimes important traditions get destroyed because they have been around so long nobody remembers why. That. I think, is what happened when the Democrats decided to kill the Bork nomination, and it all began unraveling from there.

It just isn’t fair to blame it all on Harry.