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In last week’s Democratic presidential debate, Joseph Biden made the interesting choice of highlighting his performance in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of John Roberts and Samuel Alito:

As some of you know, some of the people out on this stage and the press criticized me for being awful tough on Justice Roberts and awful tough on Alito; The problem was the rest of us weren’t tough enough on them.

Is that really what Joseph Biden thinks other people think of his performance as a Senator during the Alito and Roberts hearings? That he was too tough? Joseph Biden thinks that he sets the standard other Senators didn’t meet?

Here’s what I remember. I remember that when Samuel Alito was up for confirmation to the Supreme Court and Senator Joseph Biden had the opportunity to question him, Joseph Biden missed that opportunity entirely. A disciplined, strategic and determined Senator would have unveiled a disciplined, strategic and revealing line of questions for Alito. Instead, Joe Biden careened onto the national stage to pull a blowhard act. In one twelve-minute period (40% of Biden’s total alloted time), Samuel Alito was given an opportunity to speak just one sentence. For the rest of that period, Joe Biden held the stage — stammering, repeating himself, and making a number of comments about his kids, his dad, and how much he didn’t like Princeton. Biden appeared to be unreheared and unprepared for this highly consequential moment.

I remember that when John Roberts was up for confirmation to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice and Joseph Biden had limited time to question him, Joseph Biden frittered away his time with undisciplined “questions” like this:

BIDEN: You know, to continue your baseball analogy, I’d much rather be pitching to Arthur Branch, sitting behind you there, on “Law and Order,” than you. It’s like pitching to Ken Griffey. I mean, you know, I’m a little concerned here that — I’d like you to switch places with Thompson. I know I know as much as he does.

BIDEN: I don’t know about you.

(LAUGHTER)

Judge, look, I want to try to cut through some stuff here, if I can. I said yesterday this shouldn’t be a game of “Gotcha,” you know. We shouldn’t be playing a game. The folks have a right to know what you think. You’re there for life. They don’t get to — this is the democratic moment. They don’t get a chance to say, “You know, I wish I’d known that about that guy. I would have picked up the phone and called my senator sand said, ‘Vote no,’ or, ‘vote yes.’” Whichever.

And so what I’d like to do is stick with your analogy a little bit, because everybody’s used it: baseball. By the way, to continue that metaphor, you hit a home run yesterday. I mean, everybody — I got home and I got on the train and people saying, “Oh, he likes baseball, huh?” Seriously. The conductors, people on the train. And it’s an apt metaphor, because you just call balls and strikes, call them as you see them, straight up.

But as you well know, I’d like to explore that philosophy a little bit, because you got asked that question by Senator Hatch about what is your philosophy, and the baseball metaphor is used again.

As you know, in major league baseball, they have a rule. Rule two defines the strike zone. It basically says from the shoulders to the knees. And the only question about judges (ph) is: Do they have good eyesight or not? They don’t get to change the strike zone. They don’t get to say, “That was down around the ankles and I think it was a strike.” They don’t get to do that.

But you are in a very different position as a Supreme Court justice. As you pointed out, some places of the Constitution defines the strike zone. Two-thirds of the senators must vote. You must be an American citizen, to the chagrin of Arnold Schwarzenegger, to be president of the United States — I mean born in America to be a president of the United States.

BIDEN: The strike zone is set out. But as you pointed out in the question to Senator Hatch, I think, you said unreasonable search and seizure. What constitutes unreasonable?

So, as much as I respect your metaphor, it’s not very apt, because you get to determine the strike zone. What’s unreasonable?

Your strike zone on reasonable/unreasonable may be very different than another judge’s view of what is reasonable or unreasonable search and seizure.

And the same thing prevails for a lot of other parts of the Constitution. The one that we’re all talking about — and everybody here, it wouldn’t matter what we said, from left, right and center — is concerned about the liberty clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It doesn’t define it. All of the things that we debate about here and the court debates that deserve 5-4 decisions, they’re almost all on issues that are ennobling phrases in the Constitution, that the founders never set a strike zone for.

You get to go back and decide. You get to go back and decide like in the Michael H. case: Do you look at a narrow or a broad right that has been respected? That’s a strike zone.

So, as Chris Matthews said, “Let’s play baseball here.” And it’s a little dangerous to play baseball with you, like I said. But really and truly, it seems to me maybe we can get at this a different way.

The explicit references in the Constitution are — you know, there’s nothing anyone would expect you or any other judge would do anything about. You wouldn’t say, “You know, that’s a really bad treaty they’re voting on, so we’ve got to make it require 75 votes in the Senate.”

You can’t do that.

But again, as Justice Marshall said — and I quoted him yesterday — he said that Marshall’s prescription that the Constitution endure through the ages — I might add, without having to be amended over and over and over and over again — after the first 10 amendments, we haven’t done this very much in the last 230 years.

So many of the Constitution’s most important provisions aren’t the precise rules that I’ve referenced earlier.

And sometimes the principles everyone agrees are part of the Constitution or as the late chief justice — your mentor — said, quote, “tacit postulates.”

BIDEN: He used that, as you know, in a case just before you got there, in Nevada v. Hall.

He used the phrase “tacit postulates.” He said that these tacit postulates are as much ingrained in the fabric of the document as its express provisions. And he went on to conclude that — this case was about — the case is not particularly relevant, but the point is, I think — Chief Justice Rehnquist made this vital point and it was about state’s right and language that didn’t speak directly to them in the Constitution.

And he concluded that the answer was a rule he was able to infer from the overall constitutional plan.

So, Judge, you’re going to be an inferrer, not an umpire. Umpires don’t infer. They don’t get to infer. Every justice has to infer.

So I want to try to figure out how you infer. I want to figure out how you go about this. And so let me get right to it. And I want to use the Ginsburg rule. I notice Ginsburg is quoted. I’m quoted all the time about Ginsburg: “Judge, you don’t have to answer that question.”

I might point out that Justice Ginsburg, and I submit this for the record, commented specifically on 27 cases, 27 specific cases.

I will just speak to a couple of them here.

SPECTER: Without objection, it will be made part of the record.

BIDEN: I thank you very much.

Now, you have already said to the chairman that you agree that there’s a right to privacy. And you said the Supreme Court found such a right in part in the Fourteenth amendment. My question is: Do you agree that — not what said law is — what do you think?

Do you agree that there is a right of privacy to be found in the liberty clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

That was ONE question. Biden simply could have spoken his last sentence and not wasted many minutes of questioning time meandering his way toward it. Biden couldn’t manage that. Biden wasn’t prepared enough to do that. Biden wasn’t disciplined enough for that. And so the opportunity to develop a significant, prosecutorial line of questioning was lost. Biden followed this soliloquy with many others, and then further wasted time with the repeated observation that he didn’t have much time left.

No, Senator Biden, the problem was not that other Senators weren’t as “tough” as you in questioning John Roberts and Samuel Alito. The problem was that you were more interested in hearing yourself talk than in exposing the most dangerous aspects of Roberts’ and Alito’s authoritarian records. Partly as a result of your incompetence, Senator Biden, Roberts and Alido glided onto the Supreme Court where they were free to put a wrecking ball to American civil liberties.

You have been a hack as a Senator. What kind of hack job can we expect from you as president?