Hostile Environment : A Supreme Court Nomination Disintegrates Into an Ugly Political Brawl

The confirmation fight over Clarence Thomas has turned into a bare-knuckles brawl that could not only knock him out of a seat on the Supreme Court but leave a bitter legacy in the politics of the nation’s capital. Landmarks as far-flung as the civil-rights legislation and National Public Radio could be damaged before all the blood is spilled.

Both conservatives and liberals think they resorted to the only strategy open to them during the past three months, but they are equally convinced that the other side has played dirty pool.

Despite Anita F. Hill’s testimony Friday that she was sexually harassed, conservatives will always believe--win or lose--that a zealous army of left-wingers savagely and unfairly set out to destroy their man because he didn’t conform to their politically correct views. Liberals believe they were engaged in a just cause to stop a cynical Administration from packing the Supreme Court with yet another right-wing ideologue whose qualifications they regard as minimal at best. It’s one of the ugliest confrontations in years.

None of the city’s power brokers comes out of this smelling sweet. Only a few days after the House of Representatives was ridiculed across the nation for bounc ing rubber checks, the Senate has persuaded many women that, if anything, its habits are even worse. How could the Judiciary Committee possibly have let Hill’s story pass without at least holding closed hearings before submitting the nomination to the full Senate? George Bush, the anti-quota President, is blamed for using race as a litmus test in choosing Thomas and then, when the attacks turned per sonal, offering him only a clumsy defense. Leaders of women’s groups and civil-rights organizations have helped themselves with their constituencies across much of the country, but their hard-nosed tactics against Thomas have deeply alienated some key senators such as Repubican John C. Danforth of Missouri, Thomas’ mentor and champion.

In settling on a Supreme Court nominee, the White House and the Senate are supposed to weigh a candidate’s judicial temperament and the kind of philosophy he or she will bring to the bench. But just as presidential campaigns have shifted away from issues and toward personality, this nomination quickly centered on individual character--and it is that which has made it so riveting to the nation, splitting people by sex and class.

As has been reported, there was no desire by the Thomas team to engage in a serious discussion about sensitive court issues with the Judiciary Committee. With the ghost of Robert H. Bork hanging over the hearing room, they thought if Thomas discussed his views on Roe vs. Wade, he would hang himself. Any hint that he might vote to overturn the decision would have touched off a firestorm among pro-choice groups, dooming his nomination. Thus, from the beginning, the strategy was to win on his biography.

What was less certain was how to handle his previous statements as a public official. Contrary to most accounts, Thomas--not his “handlers”--decided what substantive responses to give. He made clear that he felt a number of his past speeches were made in a political context, when he was trying to establish favor within the Reagan Administration, so that he could push a pro-civil-rights positions, and did not bear upon his decisions he might make on the bench.

Many criticized Thomas for abandoning his more controversial views for the purposes of his testimony, but he never saw a contradiction. Why Thomas chose to tell the committee he had never even thought about Roe vs. Wade is not clear.

Frustrated by their inability to pick apart Thomas on substantive grounds, his opponents turned to the only seeming alternative: discrediting his character. Early on, they seized on and spread rumors about his personal life, starting with an allegation that he had frequently beaten his first wife, a charge that soon proved unfounded. Other stories soon followed, mostly groundless as well.

What so infuriated Thomas backers in the Senate was the concerted campaign by the staffs of liberal senators--fingers point most frequently at those of Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts--to work with outside interest groups in scouring the country, looking for muck.

Some employees of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported to conservative senators that they have been called as many as 20 to 30 times, asking for anything that would reflect badly on the nominee. Advertisements reportedly appeared in alternative newspapers, asking people to come forward.

Juan Williams, a black reporter for the Washington Post, who has chronicled Thomas’ career over the past decade, wrote Thursday of repeated calls he has received, one asking if there were anything on his tapes that could be used to stop Thomas. Williams wrote that, in the past three months, foes turned Thomas into a monster he no longer recognizes.

It was a staff member from the Senate Labor Committee--not Judiciary--who finally struck pay dirt a few weeks ago with a telephone call to Hill in Oklahoma. That conversation led to a flurry of activity as she presented her story.

Some Republicans feel she was lured into telling it and then embroidering on it by Democratic staff members--the same members they blame for then leaking it to the press just before the full Senate was to vote. The stage was thus set for the explosive hearings that opened Friday in an extraordinarily poisonous atmosphere.

If Thomas wins the nomination, time might heal the wounds, but should his quest fail, repercussions will be significant and long-lasting. The Bush White House will have to come up with a replacement, and there is rampant speculation in Washington that Bush will select someone who will give liberals fits: Judge Edith H. Jones of Texas. For months, Jones has been the bogyman in the closet, a potential nominee so conservative the very mention of her candidacy would encourage Democrats to vote for Thomas. If the Bush White House wants to retaliate against the left for striking down Thomas, Jones could be its vehicle.

There are other possibilities, of course. Before nominating Thomas, Bush was thought to be looking closely at a Latino candidate, and he might turn in that direction again. Politically, Republicans would surely seize on a Thomas rejection to tell black voters, especially in the South, that the Democrats denied them a rare opportunity to have a black on the court and, with a Latino nominee, they would try to make inroads among those voters as well.

Still another scenario calls for Bush to name Jones as U.S. attorney general, a job now vacant, and then to nominate Kenneth W. Starr, currently solicitor general, to the court. Starr is a well-respected former court-of-appeals judge who would be a near shoo-in for the Supreme Court.

Beyond the possible nomination of Jones to the court, Republicans will look for other ways to get even. The civil-rights bill that a few moderate Republicans have been carefully crafting with a majority of Democrats will clearly be imperiled. Republicans are especially angry with the aggressive role the Leadership Conference on Civils Rights and its leader, Ralph G. Neas, played in organizing opposition to Thomas. Danforth, leading architect of the civil-rights bill, is reportedly so disgusted that he will have personal difficulty working with Neas.

Conservative resentment has also built up against National Public Radio for what is seen as its complicity in the campaign against Thomas. The Washington Post’s Williams added weight to that charge last week, writing that NPR had blown up every allegation against Thomas to scandal proportions. NPR’s advocates sharply disagree, arguing that the network’s reporting has been straight. Nina Totenberg, who broke the story of Hill’s allegations, is regarded by most journalists as doing exactly what any good reporter would do. Nonetheless, it would not be surprising if conservatives now push for a reduction in congressional appropriations for public radio.

The Thomas nomination could also reverberate into the 1992 presidential campaign. Democrats sense that Bush may be newly vulnerable among women voters because of Thomas and will surely test attacks against him on women’s rights. With the economy showing continuing weakness, some in Washington also began speculating last week that New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo might even jump into the race.

But the biggest fallout from the nomination will come in the atmosphere of Washington and the capacity of people of different views to work together as easily again. Near-paralysis has gripped the city for a long while, but, across the country, people are demanding that Washington politicians get their act together--if not before the 1992 election, then soon after. The Supreme Court fight has injected such a massive dose of venom into Washington life that the country’s hopes, like those of Thomas, may soon be crushed.