TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102191/1021104.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 13.0 KB | 267 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 46

THE POLITICAL INTEREST

Shame on Them All


By Michael Kramer


    From this day forth, the mere mention of Anita Hill's
name will conjure an authentic moment, one of those flashes of
reality that are seared in the collective consciousness. Brought
immediately to mind by a name or place, such instances are rare.
Typically, the conditions they connote have long plagued a
minority. Then, as epiphanies normally experienced through
visual images, they are apprehended by the majority. And then,
when an expression of national outrage follows, the attendant
demands for redress carry the day.

    The sight of young black children entering a previously
all-white Little Rock, Ark., school as Army troops stood guard
caused millions of Americans to instinctively understand the
rightness and the promise of integration. "Bull" Connor's
Birmingham cops and dogs signaled the distance still to travel
and helped spur the end to de jure segregation. The image of
Richard Daley's Chicago cops clubbing peaceful demonstrators in
1968 caused the Democratic Party to reform itself. To hear the
words Kent State is to recall how Americans came finally to
recognize the lies and dissembling that characterized the
Vietnam War's prosecution by two Presidents. More recently, the
amateur video of Daryl Gates' Los Angeles cops beating Rodney
King sensitized the nation to police brutality.

    And now Anita Hill's testimony has awakened men to an
issue too few appreciate, and to regulations too few follow. The
workplace will never be the same.

    Will our politics change as well?

    The answer is elusive. Will a yes vote for Clarence Thomas
carry political risks comparable to a no vote on the gulf war
-- at least among the part of the electorate that judges Hill
more credible than Thomas? Will the gender gap that again shows
women 5% less likely than men to support President Bush's
re-election grow? Will Bush, who has already appointed a record
number of women to federal posts, feel compelled to increase the
number of female senior White House aides, who now number two
of 14? Will more women become candidates for office, and will
those already challenging males in the 1992 elections see their
prospects brightened? Will significant social legislation be
affected? Bush has threatened to veto the parental-leave and
civil rights bills on the verge of congressional passage. Will
he follow through on those threats, and if he does, will
Congress muster the votes required to override those vetoes?

    Will Congress finally get with the program and have its
workplace governed by the laws that apply in the rest of the
nation? Congress has exempted itself from most
antidiscrimination statutes. As the matter stands, a
congressional staff member who charges sexual harassment can
complain only to Congress's ethics committees, which have been
notoriously tone deaf to such complaints. (In 1989, for example,
Representative Jim Bates, a California Democrat, admitted making
lewd remarks and touching female members of his staff. The House
ethics committee issued its mildest form of discipline, a letter
of reproval.)

    Most important, is there any hope of moving away from the
corruption that suffuses American politics, a climate of
cynicism the Thomas nomination has illuminated from the moment
of his selection for the Supreme Court on July 1? At every
juncture, the process of considering Thomas' fitness for the
court has been a charade.

    It began at the beginning, when Bush asserted that Thomas
had been chosen because he was highly qualified for the job --
adding weirdly that "we're not going to discriminate against
[him because] he's black." I've "kept my word to the American
people," said the President, "by picking the best man for the
job on the merits."

    The best man? In off-the-record comments, White House
aides agree with the analysis of Harvard law professor
Christopher Edley: "If Thomas were white, he would not have been
nominated . . . [Bush's] meritocratic language is fatuous
unless one takes both color and ideology into account in
deciding what it means to be the best qualified."

    Contrast Bush's refusal to state the obvious with the
pride Lyndon Johnson expressed when he nominated Thurgood
Marshall in 1967: "I believe it is the right thing to do, the
right time to do it, the right man and the right place." By all
accounts, Bush understands and appreciates the moral rightness
of having a black on the Supreme Court and undoubtedly would
have liked to echo Johnson. Had he done so, he would have
immeasurably aided the national discussion of race. But politics
trumped morality. The President's opposition to quotas, repeated
over the years, constrained him from saying what he should have
said, and what we can only hope he wishes he had been
politically capable of saying: "Sometimes affirmative action
makes sense, and this is one of those times."

    As the discourse began with a lie, so the confirmation
process itself became mired in evasions, half-truths and
bullying. Even the N.A.A.C.P., which opposed Thomas, succumbed.
Despite its dedication to equality and free expression, the
national leadership in Washington threatened officers and
members of the Compton, Calif., branch with expulsion because
they endorsed Thomas.

    In his September appearance before the judiciary
committee, Thomas himself was a disaster. Prepped by White House
handlers to avoid anything that smacked of controversy, however
mild, Thomas repeatedly invoked the compelling tale of his
rags-to-fame life. On everything else, he was an empty vessel.
For all that he revealed about his legal philosophy, he may as
well have been wearing a bag over his head. When pressed on
matters of moment, he backed away from most every opinion he had
ever expressed. Incredibly, he told Senators with a straight
face that he had "no opinion" on Roe v. Wade, thus marking
himself as probably the only person in the U.S. without a view
on the Supreme Court's landmark abortion-rights decision.
"Thomas' answers and explanations about previous speeches,
articles and positions," said Alabama Senator Howell Heflin,
"raised thoughts of inconsistencies, ambiguities,
contradictions, lack of scholarship, lack of convictions and
instability."

    And yet the Senate was on the verge of confirming his
nomination to a powerful and prestigious position that, given
his age, 43, he might occupy for three or four decades. "The
truth is ugly," concedes a Republican Senator who was poised to
vote for Thomas. "We read the polls with the best of them, and
those of us with sizable numbers of black constituents, which
is almost all of us, were simply afraid to vote against a black
nominee, the more so when the White House insisted that party
loyalty demanded that we go with the guy. The problem now is
that with little in the record that can support a claim to
Thomas' legal distinction, there is nothing much for those of
us who would otherwise support him to latch on to as a way of
offsetting Anita Hill's very credible presentation."

    As unimpressive as Thomas' testimony was, as cynical as
Bush was in nominating him in the first place, as
antidemocratic as the N.A.A.C.P. was in attempting to muzzle
dissent, nothing matches the Senate's craven perform ance. One
can side with Hill over Thomas and still understand why Thomas
described last week's hearings as a "high-tech lynching." No
matter the breaches of confidentiality, there had to be a way
to consider Hill's allegations in closed session. But that is
a complaint about process.

    What will forever disgrace the Senate is the way in which
it postponed its vote on Thomas' confirmation in order to
consider Hill's charges. "We delayed because all of us realize
it's a serious charge, and it needs to be explored," said
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. But that was two days after the
Senate acted. In fact, the delay did not come about because the
nomination process works or because Senators finally realized
that an allegation of sexual harassment could not be dismissed
summarily. The delay occurred because politicians know when
their backs are against a wall. Their phones were ringing off
the hook. By 5 to 1, citizens urged delay.

    The Senators tacked with the political wind -- and a few
were frank enough to admit it. "The Senate is on trial," said
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. "What is at stake is the
integrity of the Senate," said John Kerry of Massachusetts. "We
don't have the votes" to confirm Thomas, said minority leader
Robert Dole of Kansas, explaining the Republicans' willingness
to delay. Clearly, if the Senate really does awaken to the issue
of sexual harassment, serendipity should be credited.

    What might be done to reform the system? To achieve a
balanced Supreme Court, the President could consciously nominate
candidates known to disagree with his views. But that will never
happen. The court is a political institution, and Presidents
eager to project their policies beyond their own terms of office
will invariably support Justices who share their outlook.
Perhaps life tenure should be reconsidered. As contemplated by
the Constitution's framers, life appointments guarantee
independence. Could not the same goal be served with terms of
10 or 15 years, with the more frequent injection of new blood
a healthy consequence? At a minimum, Justices should face
mandatory retirement at, say, 70 or 75. Like most people,
Justices usually suffer a decline in energy and acumen as they
age.

    As for Congress, the Thomas affair strips away all
pretension to high purpose and supports the growing call for
term limitation. California, Colorado and Oklahoma have already
enacted term-limitation laws for state offices, and similar
propositions will probably be on the ballot in 17 other states
soon. The first legal challenge was resolved last week, when the
California Supreme Court held that the right to seek office can
be abridged in order to guard against "an entrenched, dynastic
legislative bureaucracy."

    No legislature is more entrenched and more dynastic than
the one in Washington. Congress has become a ruling elite
insulated from accountability to all but the interests who spend
lavishly to win its attention. Attempts to level the playing
field -- for example, by instituting campaign-finance reform
laws that would even the odds of a challenger's unseating an
incumbent -- have been regularly gutted. If real reform is
beyond the capacity of Congress to fashion, the only option left
is to kick the members out.

    Term limitation is not a new idea. The Continental
Congress precluded members from serving more than three years
in any six-year period. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower
advocated a cutoff, as did the 1988 Republican Party platform.

    The premise of limitation is simple: if there must be life
after Congress, then maybe its members will consider the
national interest before their own re-election.

    It is true that not all old blood is bad blood. Many and
perhaps most Congressmen are qualified and competent. But
together, as an institution, they are paralyzed. Expeditious
action on Capitol Hill is reserved for nonsensical commemorative
resolutions and reciprocal pork-barrel bills. Important issues
are ducked, and contrivances like automatic spending cuts
substitute for judgment.

    Critics say limitation may create an even less desirable
group of unresponsive incumbents -- the 31,000 congressional
staff members whose power as a permanent government is already
menacing. But freed from the never ending necessity to raise
funds for their next campaign, legislators might find the time
to lead rather than follow their staffs.

    George Will recently suggested that the steady decline in
voter participation reflects the electorate's satisfaction. If
people were upset with the state of affairs, Will asserted, they
would vote in greater numbers. As so often when he is at his
most entertaining, Will was dead wrong. People don't vote
because they're turned off. Term limitation could energize the
potential electorate. But even if it didn't, it would, by its
very terms, shake up Congress, and no one who watched last
week's spectacle can deny the attraction of that.


________________________________________________________________
    Has Bush's strong support for Judge Thomas made you more
likely or less likely to vote for him for President?

          More likely        Less likely      Won't affect vote

                10%                16%                  68%

    Has the Senate done a good job investigating the harassment
charges against Judge Thomas?

                Yes                 No               Not sure

                32%                 38%                 30%


    [From a telephone poll of 500 American adults taken for
TIME/CNN on Oct. 10 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling
error is plus or minus 4.5%.]