The Political Interest Shame on Them All

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 performance. 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.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: 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%.

CAPTION: Has Bush’s strong support for Judge Thomas made you more likely or less likely to vote for him for President?

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