Coaches Drill Thomas for His Senate Face-Off

While his opponents and defenders are laying down a heavy cross-fire over his nomination to the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas is quietly preparing for the most crucial test of his life at hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled to begin Sept. 10.

Even though most observers believe that his confirmation is likely, Thomas is taking no chances as he faces strong opposition from many of the same organizations that helped to defeat conservative federal Judge Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the high court in 1987.

With the aid of public relations experts, Thomas has reviewed videotapes of the Bork hearings, just as a professional football player watches films to evaluate his own past performance and that of a future opponent.

The conservative black jurist reportedly has rehearsed for his role as star witness, fielding tough questions in mock interrogations just as presidential candidates prepare for campaign debates.

Thomas’ head coach in these preparations is Kenneth M. Duberstein, a public-relations consultant and former White House chief of staff who was brought in by the Bush Administration last year to guide David H. Souter through Senate minefields in his successful quest for the Supreme Court.

Other officials playing key prepping roles are White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, chief White House congressional lobbyist Frederick D. McClure and Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), once a Thomas employer and his Senate sponsor in the confirmation process.

Duberstein and the others are closely guarding most details of their strategy, as illustrated by the unusually cautious statement of White House spokeswoman Judy Smith: “Off the record, we don’t talk about that.”

But allies of Thomas said they are trying to present him as a fair, reasonable, level-headed jurist, contrasting with opponents’ depiction of him as a rigid extremist, angrily disdainful of Supreme Court precedents.

Thomas is certain to stress his humble origins in the segregated South, his faith in hard work and reliance on self-help rather than government welfare programs to rise to his present post as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

At the same time, the 43-year-old jurist is reviewing scores of his own speeches and statements dating back to his first federal appointment in 1981, aware that Senate critics will be searching for controversial opinions that could become a focus of the inquiry into his qualifications to serve on the high tribunal.

For unlike Souter, last year’s so-called “stealth” nominee, Thomas has left a long paper trail, with strong, sometimes harsh, opinions on previous Supreme Court rulings as well as long-running controversies such as school prayer and racial preferences in hiring or college admissions.

At Thomas’ confirmation hearings, senators are expected to probe most extensively into his record as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and his views on abortion and the use of “natural law” to interpret the Constitution.

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, has been in the forefront of critics suggesting that Thomas often failed to enforce the law as head of the EEOC for eight years. Thomas is expected to assert that he rescued the agency from chaos and investigated numerous charges of discrimination.

Another member of the judiciary panel, Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), has served notice that he will try to pin down Thomas on abortion.

“I’m tired of reading tea leaves,” Metzenbaum said after the Senate failed to get much more out of Souter than meager clues on the controversial issue.

Thomas is widely presumed to oppose abortion but, like Souter, is expected to try to duck the question because it involves cases pending before the Supreme Court.

Some of the toughest questioning, according to an aide to Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), will focus on Thomas’ espousal of natural law theory. The jurist has suggested that various rights of freedom are God-given and inherent and not granted by the Constitution or by Congress.

Critics such as Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe scoff that the theory has been out of fashion for 50 years. Some complain that natural law arguments have been used in the past to knock down government intervention in the marketplace, including child-labor and minimum-wage laws.

Thomas, arguing that natural law was used by the authors of the Declaration of Independence, has said that judges need to keep that in mind in interpreting the Constitution. But Thomas’ supporters said he also is likely to tell senators that a judge’s duty is to interpret the intent of Congress and not to impose his own views.

Although civil rights leaders have denounced Thomas for criticizing affirmative-action programs--which have helped him achieve success--liberal Democratic senators are expected to touch only lightly on the issue at the hearings.

A Democratic aide said that such questions might reinforce politically damaging charges by Republicans that Democrats support job quotas for women and minorities.

“The subject might come up but it will not be a focal point,” said the aide, who requested anonymity. “There is not a lot of political mileage in that for Democrats.”

Thomas faces strong opposition from civil rights leaders, the AFL-CIO, women’s groups, Latino organizations and some advocates for the elderly. Yet he has a strong patron in Danforth, who is the architect of a compromise civil rights bill and is respected by his Senate colleagues.

With Danforth at his side, Thomas already has visited 59 of the Senate’s 100 members in an unprecedented example of personal campaigning for the Supreme Court seat that is held by retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first and only black to serve on the high court.

The personal touch already has paid off. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), one of the most influential members of the Senate, agreed during a chat with Thomas to serve as his home-state sponsor and introduce him when the hearings begin.

So far, most news coverage of the nomination has centered on groups and leaders who have come out for and against Thomas.

“There have been no real huge surprises. You could have predicted that civil rights groups would express discontent and conservative groups would express satisfaction,” a Senate aide said.

“But now,” he added, “it’s going to come down to how well he does in the hearings. If he conducts himself poorly, he’ll of course have some problems. But we know these guys (at the White House) are preparing him within an inch of his life.”