Carol Moseley-Braun : Making the Senate Floor a Focus for Matters of Conscience

After a few minutes talking to Carol Moseley-Braun, it becomes clear that she’s tired of one subject: being the first black woman in the U.S. Senate. It’s not that she isn’t proud of the distinction--she is. But Moseley-Braun wants to be taken seriously as a lawmaker. And she recognizes that to do that, she has to quit being a symbol and get on with the serious business of legislation.

Though she’s a new figure on the national scene, Moseley-Braun, 46, is no political novice. The daughter of a Chicago policeman, she received her law degree from the University of Chicago before going to work as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office. In 1978, she began her political career when she was elected to a seat in the Illinois legislature. There, she developed a reputation as a feisty debater, and became the floor leader of Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington. In 1987, she was elected Cook County Recorder of Deeds.

Moseley-Braun launched her Senate candidacy in response to what she thought was the mistreatment of Anita F. Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. After beating incumbent Alan J. Dixon in the 1992 primary, and Republican Richard S. Williamson in the general election, she joined Judiciary, as well as Housing and Urban Affairs, Banking and the Small Business Committee.

Since her January swearing-in, Moseley-Braun has received the greatest amount of attention for speaking out on an issue of conscience and identity. In February, she moved to deny a federal design patent to the Daughters of the Confederacy for an insignia that includes a Confederate flag. After her dramatic floor speech on the subject, dozens of senators from both parties changed their minds and voted with her to defeat the patent’s renewal.

Moseley-Braun is divorced with one teen-age son. She is engaged to South African-born Kgosie Matthews, who managed her senatorial campaign.

The senator was suffering from a cold when she sat down to talk in her office earlier this month. Despite the sniffles, she lived up to her reputation for charm. Though she can be blunt, Moseley-Braun does a more pleasant job of sidestepping uncomfortable questions than anyone else I can think of in the Senate.

Question: Senator, a lot of people felt Hillary Clinton was patronized when she testified about health care. Everyone was amazed that a woman was so knowledgeable about policy. Did you sense that?

Answer: I don’t think so. I think they were going out of their way to be nice. Here was the First Lady of the United States in a role that has not been taken, I would dare say, not even since Eleanor Roosevelt. It may have reflected people coming to grips with the way you treat First Ladies at a ribbon cutting, on the one hand, as well as the way you treat somebody of that stature coming in to testify on substantive policy. Look at the genuflecting that goes on when you get Lloyd Bentsen or someone like that coming over. It’s pretty much the same, at least in my experience. I didn’t think it was patronizing.

Q: Do you feel you have been patronized by your male colleagues, or by your white colleagues since you’ve been here?

A: No. No. If anything, I think that one of the most positive aspects of this job so far has been that my colleagues have, in fact, dealt with me as a legislator.

They have accorded me the same kinds of access and attention to my issues--but not anything special, not anything different, either in a positive or a negative way.

Q: You were elected, in part, over the anger a lot of people had at the way Anita Hill was treated by the Judiciary Committee. Now you’re on that committee. Has it changed?

A: I think it has. I think Sen. (Dianne) Feinstein and I have made a difference in the way the committee now sees itself and in the way the committee addresses issues. I think there is an increased level of awareness, an increased level of sensitivity--in some regards. Just the other week, they were reliving the Anita Hill fiasco around a nomination of a U.S. attorney.

This woman U.S. attorney had been counsel to Anita Hill. The question being raised by some of the Republican colleagues was whether or not she had told them the whole truth about what she had known about the Anita Hill thing.

Sen. Feinstein and I were sitting there, and I leaned over and said to her, “Why are they doing this to themselves?” The were literally flagellating themselves, rehashing and refighting that issue. (Sen.) Joe Biden (D-Del.) and some of the others could see we were mystified about why they were doing this. At some point in the conversation they recognized they were on a slippery slope, and they just let it go.

Q: Did you sense in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg hearings that the committee will be less aggressive in the way it questions Supreme Court nominees from now on?

A: I don’t know. Ginsburg was the first one I participated in. And the interesting thing about that was that she defined the debate. She set the parameters of what she was and was not going to talk about. And I think that out of relief that they had a non-controversial nominee, no one really challenged those limits. It was almost as if they welcomed her as a softball.

Q: Your colleague in the House, Mel Reynolds, who is not quick to accuse anyone of racism, feels that he has been subjected to a higher standard by the press, particularly, because he’s black. They’ve questioned his credentials, they’ve mistrusted him on a whole range of issues. Do you think you’ve been subjected to a higher standard?

A: I make it a point not to talk about the press at all. Other than the first day here, when they gave me a spouse’s card, I haven’t had any problem. I pointed out I was not a spouse, I was a senator.

Q: Lani Guinier, Clinton’s nominee for the civil-rights job at justice, never came up for a vote. But did you have a view on her views?

A: Yes, I don’t believe what she wrote was in any way a disqualifier for the position. We’ve had cumulative voting in Illinois forever. We just got rid of it a few years ago. That was one thing she recommended as a way of protecting the rights of minorities. It had been used in Illinois since the turn of the century exactly for that reason. That system gave our legislature a representative character it has not since been able to recapture.

Q: New York may be about to follow Chicago and Los Angeles in electing a white mayor after its first black one. Do you think there’s any reason for that trend?

A: I don’t buy into that. I don’t know that Dinkins is not going to win that election. In Los Angeles, there was no black candidate (in the runoff). In Chicago, clearly, there were too many black candidates. If anything, I am encouraged that people are beginning to transcend race and racism as an exclusive determinate of making electoral decisions. I came out of a state that’s got 11% black population. I got votes all over Illinois.

Q: President Clinton made the opposite point when he appeared with Dinkins and said people were reluctant to vote for someone unlike themselves. What did you think of that?

A: I didn’t hear the whole of the President’s speech, and I don’t know the context. But in any situation, women candidates have to get men to vote for them, white candidates have to get blacks to vote for them. Everybody has a chance to go up the pop charts, and be accepted or rejected by the voters.

Q: The Black Congressional Caucus recently had Louis Farrakhan as a speaker at its annual meeting, and announced an alliance with him. Are you critical of that?

A: Well, nobody asked me. Reverend Jackson talks about what he calls operational unity--meaning that people will come together around common interests, even though they do not agree 100% on all issues at all times. We used to have an expression from Chicago politics, from my early days, about not having permanent friends, or permanent enemies, but permanent interests.

I can’t imagine that the caucus intends to embrace anti-Semitism. I think it wants to reach out to the following that Farrakhan has around issues of economic development, around issues of self-help, around issues having to do with the stability of the community. I think that’s what they were reaching out for. I think, if anything, they didn’t consider the hurtful implications that would come from such a move.

Q: Do you think Farrakhan is a racist?

A: Farrakhan speaks to the fears and frustrations of a lot of people who are looking inward to the black community for support, as opposed to looking outward for coalition-building. I don’t know whether that is properly characterized as being a racist or not. It could be in some regards. Some statements he has made have been clearly inflammatory.

Q: Let’s talk about domestic policy. You have advocated a single-payer health - care plan. Why is that preferable to a managed - competition plan like the President’s?

A: Because it will effect the efficiencies we all want to see. The question is the extent to which insurance companies become gatekeepers. Under single payer, the insurance companies aren’t gatekeepers at all. Under managed competition, instead of 1,500 different insurance plans, you may have 50. Managed competition reduces their role but doesn’t eliminate it altogether.

The problem with single payer, while logically it makes the most sense, is that nobody has figured out a way to transform all the premiums into a payment to the government and not have to call it a tax. The fact that people are already paying the same money in premiums gets lost in the conversation.

Q: Do you think the President’s plan will work better than what we have?

A: No question. Rube Goldberg couldn’t come up with what we’ve got. The status quo is absolutely unacceptable. It is non-function on every possible level. I support the President’s plan.

Q: You were originally for the Freedom of Choice Act. Now you’re against it. Tell me why you changed your position?

A: I changed my position because, on examination, I did not feel this was a bona fide freedom-of-choice act. It has exceptions and limitations written into it, and it erects into statutory stone discrimination or incentives to discrimination that I don’t believe are countenanced under Roe vs. Wade. Specifically, it allows discrimination against poor women, it allows discrimination against younger women. I think that is an unacceptable compromise.

Q: You’ve had strong support from unions in the past, yet you support NAFTA. How do you explain that position to your friends in labor?

A: We just disagree. You have to be able to disagree and not be disagreeable. I think that the issue is job creation. I believe we have to focus on the job-creation strategies that will boost our economy and put our people back to work in good-paying jobs. I believe that getting rid of trade barriers has historically done nothing but increase trade. And as you increase trade, you increase jobs . . . .

The “sucking sound” defense neglects, in my opinion, that job flight, companies closing, runaway plants--all of those things--happened without a NAFTA. This is just frightening people and playing to their fears. If we play to our hopes, if we play to our opportunities, then the conclusion is that NAFTA makes sense for working people.

Q: The Brady Bill, which imposes waiting periods for handgun purchases , seems like common sense. But with the number of guns out there, do you really think it will have an effect on crime?

A: Yes. We don’t right now have a national policy, or even the capacity to screen out felons or people who have a history of mental illness . . . . Responsible gun owners should also address the carnage that is going on in our communities. For the NRA (National Rifle Assn.) to continue to whipsaw well-meaning people into protecting untenable positions out of fear that the Constitution is going to be messed with is wrong. The call and the challenge now is to take the issue of gun control to the mainstream, to show the American people that responsible gun control is not inconsistent with the Second Amendment.

Q: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned since you’ve been here?

A: I can’t tell you on the record. (Laughs.) This really has been an important learning experience. The ecology of this place, who talks to whom, what fish swim in the same direction. What about the flora and the fauna--all that. I should keep a diary. I can’t bring myself to do it. When I was 11, my little brother found my diary and read it to his friends. I was devastated. I haven’t been able to do that ever since. It shows you how early life experiences can mess you up.