<<A Wife's Tale
By Michael Kinsley
Monday, March 18, 2002; Page A17
If you're not careful, you can squander an entire journalistic career swatting flies from the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But sometimes resistance to temptation is futile. The question ordinarily posed by these classics is whether the author is staggeringly disingenuous or sincerely addled by ideology. In the case of an op-ed published in the Journal Thursday, though, the explanation is more benign. This article was an attack on Democrats for opposing President Bush's nomination of Charles W. Pickering for a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. (The Senate Judiciary Committee killed the nomination later that day on a party-line vote.) The author was Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose own confirmation ordeal has made him a martyr-saint of American conservatism. Thomas, as you will recall was pummeled so brutally by vicious gangs of Democrats and liberals -- who accused him of being a right-wing ideologue with a closed mind about abortion rights, among other vicious lies -- that he now lies comatose in the Supreme Court, able only to issue reliably right-wing opinions and vote against abortion rights. Naturally his wife is bitter, and self-righteous bitterness on behalf of an embattled spouse is forgivable, even appealing.
Virginia Thomas is also "director of executive branch relations" at the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing propaganda machine that masquerades as a tax-exempt nonpolitical research institution. That a Supreme Court justice's spouse could write this article, and the nation's most influential conservative opinion forum could publish it, illustrates that, for all the talk of the insular liberal culture of Washington, the conservative Washington culture is large enough and insular enough for its members to live within an echo chamber of their own views.
Or maybe I'm the one who is divorced from reality. But here is reality as I see it. The Constitution gives the Senate the authority to "advise and consent" on the appointment of federal judges. Whatever this means, it must mean more than the obligation to rubber-stamp the president's nominees or merely to pass on their basic competence. Since Ronald Reagan, presidents of both parties have become more careful to nominate judges who reflect their own judicial philosophy -- and there is nothing wrong with that. In response, the Senate -- especially when controlled by the opposing party -- has weighed judicial philosophy more carefully in exercising its advice and consent -- and there is nothing wrong with that, either. Both political parties oppose nominees from the other one and pompously deplore "politics" when the other party does the same.
Somewhat more tendentiously, Republican presidents have been more disciplined than the one recent Democrat, Bill Clinton, about nominating judges who won't surprise them, which makes the Republican indignation about "ideological" opposition to the president's choices more hypocritical. On the other hand, Democratic politicians and interest groups have been somewhat less principled about distinguishing judicial philosophy -- how a judge interprets the law and the Constitution -- from the vulgar question of whether they like the outcome. Meanwhile, though, Republicans pretend or imagine that a few magic words such as "judicial restraint" and "strict constructionism" add up to a philosophy beyond legitimate dispute -- that to believe otherwise is not just misguided but more like cheating -- even though it is a philosophy that even they don't apply with any consistency.
It seems to Virginia Thomas, by contrast, that anyone who opposes judicial nominees of Republican presidents -- people such as Tom Daschle -- represents the "hard left" that cares only "about abortion and homosexuality," and doesn't "think of [opponents] as human." Oh, yes, and these hard leftists "demonize" people they disagree with! "Senate Democrats are actually claiming that some views are so politically incorrect that judges (or others) cannot be allowed to hold them," she wrote, and her husband and Pickering are defending "a culture . . . tolerant of philosophical disagreement."
Unless I'm crazy, "hard left" is not an accurate description of the average Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In reality, both sides of these disputes care disproportionately about abortion. (Homosexuality seems more like a right-wing obsession.) That is why abortion is so contentious. If one side stood for single-issue "litmus tests" and the other stood for "tolerance of philosophical disagreement," we wouldn't be having these set-piece standoffs every few years. The battles happen because both sides have litmus tests, which is another way of saying these are issues they feel strongly about. In Virginia Thomas's opinion, should Republican senators vote to confirm a judicial nominee who believes that Roe v. Wade was correctly decided? Or is that view "so politically incorrect that judges (or others) cannot be allowed to hold" it -- which is just an overheated way of saying you disagree?
Looking around the real world, it is hard to see this martyrdom that Clarence Thomas supposedly has suffered for the sin of holding views that the all-powerful hard left wants to suppress. He had a rough confirmation battle, but now he is a Supreme Court justice, even though he clearly lied under oath -- or at the least willfully deceived -- in claiming he had never discussed Roe v. Wade and had no opinion about it. He probably lied about more notorious matters, too. If he's in pain, it must only hurt when he laughs.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company>>
<<COMMENTARY
FROM THE ARCHIVES: March 14, 2002
To Judge Pickering : They
Can't Take Away Your Honor
By VIRGINIA THOMAS
An Open Letter to Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr.
Dear Judge Pickering : Your nomination to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will come up in the Senate Judiciary Committee today. The way things look, you're likely to be defeated on a party-line vote. Don't take this process personally. It's just Washington.
You are but a pawn in a much larger battle over whether an independent judiciary will prevail, or whether a liberal judicial litmus test will transform our courts into another political branch with a liberal activist bent. You are at the mercy of many people right now, unable to speak out for yourself. You may have thought your reputation was something valuable -- that you had led your life with integrity and honor -- and that these attributes would be appreciated. But then you offered yourself for public service.
And so, today, you hear that you are unqualified, and that you are "polarizing," because you will not pledge to rule in favor of the hard left's political agenda. Instead, you believe the role of a judge is not to prejudge cases, but to fairly apply the law (not politics) to cases that may come before you in the future. Your principled view of a judge's role brands you as "unqualified" in their results-oriented world.
All this has reminded me of a tearful young woman who came to my office a few years ago, asking me to forgive her for her part in my husband's confirmation process for the Supreme Court -- where outside groups, media representatives and senators cast my husband, Clarence Thomas, as a man far different from the one his family and friends knew.
Through her tears, this woman told me of a religious experience she had that changed her liberal political philosophy. It was for this reason she asked to meet me. She recounted stories of feminists, civil rights groups, and other leftists in the media, and told me that "she hadn't realized we were human." Her point to me was, "It was all about abortion and homosexuality," and of making sure those rights could never be threatened by a judge who applied the law differently from their views. Every calumny had seemed appropriate to maintain those freedoms, and she asked me to forgive her. Today, I see you vilified too, by people impervious to the truth.
You wrote a three-page law review article that made reference to interracial marriage -- way back in 1959, when you were a freshman in college. The People for the American Way now say they find it disturbing that you failed, then, to express adequate moral outrage over the state law banning interracial marriage. But in the 14 years of my interracial marriage, I've found many more people on the left exercised over my union (and others like it) than on the right.
Your critics say that your record doesn't demonstrate "an affirmative commitment to civil rights protection." Yet they are deaf to powerful assertions made in your favor -- which deny that you were opposed to civil rights -- by such advocates as Charles Evers, the brother of the murdered activist Medgar Evers.
Judge Pickering , the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the outside groups that egg them on don't think of you as human right now. You are just a way to project an ideology and protect "rights" that the left has worked for decades to make "mainstream."
Senate Democrats are actually claiming that some views are so politically incorrect that judges (or others) cannot be allowed to hold them. Why? Because they are "outside the mainstream" and inappropriate for public service. Facts matter little to those waging this war; it is merely the perception they can create, so as to create a chilling effect that, they hope, will influence votes, scare off conservatives from being nominated, being defended or even applying for such positions in public service. It also doesn't hurt their fund-raising efforts.
It feels personal to you and your family because it is. You may have to live with a new reputation that the left is smearing on you. What America is saddled with, from these battles, is a culture less tolerant of philosophical disagreement. Why anyone offers themselves for public service is increasingly beyond me, yet I hope people like you will continue to do so.
You and your family have been through the Washington ordeal. Take it from me, it could have been worse. You may find, as we do, that people are shocked when they have the opportunity to meet you. It shocks them to find that you are not the devil your enemies are making you into.
As a judge, you may not care what people think; you have the integrity to call your decisions as you see them, regardless of what people think of you. Yet your family may still struggle with this. It helps to find your faith and be reminded that you are not called to be popular, but rather to have integrity.
If they can demonize you, Judge Pickering , they can do it to anyone. It is a painful process, but a process even more damaging to the nation's health than to an individual's life. It is wrong, but the hard left doesn't care. All they see is the political stakes for rights they view as sacrosanct with an intensity previously found only among the religious.
Take comfort in seeing how those who know you best are coming to your defense -- white and black alike. No matter how today's vote turns out, thank you for offering yourself to the nation's service.
Ms. Thomas is director of executive branch relations at the Heritage Foundation.
Updated March 14, 2002>> |
