A colleague of mine in History at Amherst recalled the day, as a young professor, that he walked into his first class, to begin his career as a teacher. He had been asked to teach a course on modern European history, beginning with the French Revolution. But as a literate young man, newly delivered from his graduate studies, he had an unnervingly precise sense of the vast gaps in his knowledge, as a man who would “profess” to teach the history of modern Europe. Nevertheless, there was the assignment. And, passing over other estimable candidates, knowing more or even less than he, the department had hired him. This was, then, his office, and for better or worse, the only thing he could do, as Henry James would say, was to grasp his warrant. As he later recalled, “I became a certified expert on modern European history at 9 A.M. on that Monday morning.”

Something of the same sense must have broken in upon Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware after the Democrats regained the Senate in the elections of l986. Senator Edward Kennedy had decided to forego the position he could claim as the Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. He had, in his sights, other projects that seemed to be more pressing in the Committee on Education and Labor (the problem of breaking the logjam that was stalling a bill on civil rights).