n his acceptance speech in Los Angeles, Vice President Gore delivered a promise and a prediction on abortion rights. ''I will protect and defend a woman's right to choose,'' Gore said. ''The last thing this country needs is a Supreme Court that overturns Roe v. Wade.''
Since he opposed some abortion rights in the 1970s, Gore was less exercised about the possibility of this alleged rollback than other orators at the Democratic National Convention. A student of history, Gore also knows that no president can guarantee how an appointee will act once draped in that lifetime black robe. Hence his veiled prediction: A repeal of Roe v. Wade is probably the last thing the country will get, partisan frenzy notwithstanding.
History is a stronger precedent than rhetoric. ''Presidents seldom get what they expect when they appoint judges,'' says Stephen J. Wermiel, an authority on a notoriously unpredictable appointee, the late William J. Brennan Jr., chosen by a conservative, President Eisenhower. Brennan became a liberal lion on the court for 33 years.
''It was October in an election year, 1956, and Republicans wanted to shore up the Catholic vote in the Northeast, so here was a state court judge in New Jersey with a moderate record,'' says Wermiel, a professor of law at American University in Washington. ''Eisenhower engaged in electoral politics, not judicial politics, an important point. He wasn't trying to reshape the court. One argument is that by appearing bipartisan in choosing Brennan, a Catholic Democrat, Ike got just what he wanted: help in the '56 election.''
Politics can backfire, even in abortion rights. The repeal of Roe v. Wade has been a Democratic staple of Halloween hyperbole since the court affirmed abortion rights in 1973. Since then, eight justices have been confirmed for the court. Six of the eight - all but Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - have backed Roe v. Wade, which protects first-trimester abortions. President Clinton appointed Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Republican presidents chose the other four: John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, and David H. Souter.
The historical record does not diminish political sniping. ''Five people can decide the destiny of unborn children,'' Pat Robertson told a Republican rally in Philadephia as he fashioned actuarial tables into fright totems: ''It looks as if two or three of those unelected officials are getting ready to retire or go on up to that great court in the sky.''
The reverend's fellow alarmist, Bill Clinton, said of Republicans during the GOP convention: ''What they want to do is to seem safe and reliable and compassionate and inclusive. They're not going to be up there saying, `Vote for us, our favorite Supreme Court judges are Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia, and we're going to repeal Roe v. Wade,' but that's what's going to happen.''
The Democratic platform seconds that sentiment: ''This year's Supreme Court rulings show to us all that eliminating a woman's right to choose is only one justice away. That is why the stakes in this election are as high as ever.''
If that rhetoric were not high-pitched enough, abortion rights supporter Kate Michelman told the Democratic delegates that ''if he has the opportunity, George W. Bush will appoint enough Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade and end legal abortion.''
Bush and his party oppose abortion rights, but he says he will follow no litmus test. He calls himself ''a uniter, not a divider'' and is unlikely to roil the country by picking full-time ideologues like Scalia and Thomas.
The framers of the Constitution tried to shield it from politicians. In Federalist Paper No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote that ''the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power.''
That explains why every four years, the Supreme Court is a tempting target for demagogues on both sides.
Martin F. Nolan's column appears regularly in the Globe.
