Sandy, the point I was making is that a LOT of the President's actions outlast him (or, eventually, her) by decades. It's an important job, for many reasons, not just the occasional Supreme Court nomination. Folks who use that as their sole criterion on election day are short-sighted, in my opinion.

I'm not a huge fan of either Bork (was "Borg" an intentional misspelling?) or Thomas. But I also am not fond of the way in which people tried to derail Thomas's nomination. Perhaps YOU (DougR's point is well taken) "won" with Bork because the objections to his nomination were essentially honest -- it was his ideology that people found objectionable, and that turned out to be the basis of the Senate's decision not to consent to his nomination. In Thomas's case, people objected to his ideology (and, to a lesser extent, his relatively modest legal accomplishments), but they tried to derail the nomination with a smear on the man's character -- whether or not you believed Anita Hill, she never had a case that would be considered adequately supported by people who hadn't already made up their minds. It was a dishonest smear campaign, which reflected negatively on the people who mounted it. Whether or not I think Thomas was the best person for the job, I'm glad he ultimately survived the process and got the job, if only because I really detest the way people tried to block it.