Senators Have Words With Nominee Over Drug Remarks

Words are a powerful tool in this city. They can be used to praise or to clobber, to goad or to dissemble. And sometimes, as Robert Raben found out recently, they can come back to haunt you.

Especially when you’re relying on Congress to sign off on your next job.

Raben, a soft-spoken lawyer from Miami, wants to be confirmed by the Senate as an assistant attorney general. He’s a popular guy on Capitol Hill after spending several years as a Democratic aide. And as he sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee, showered with kind words from politicians on both sides of the aisle and buttressed by his wife and smiling 8-year-old daughter, his nomination looked all but assured.

Until the pesky matter of that drug-testing column surfaced.

What exactly did Raben mean, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) wanted to know, when he wrote a few years ago about Saturday-night joint smokers?

In a 1997 column he penned for a Capitol Hill newspaper, Raben ridiculed a new drug-testing rule for House employees as simply another “wrongheaded” salvo in the war on drugs.

Mandatory testing was “silly” and “humiliating,” he said, and probably unconstitutional as well.

Then there was the kicker: “Those who lose sleep knowing that someone else has taken a hit from a joint on a Saturday night are on a roll with this drug testing program,” Raben wrote.

Out of the mainstream? A bit. Radical? Probably not. More than a quarter of those surveyed in a Gallup Poll a few years ago said they, too, opposed further employee drug testing.

But when you’re up against the Senate Judiciary Committee, dominated by tough-on-crime Republicans, the political axis has a way of tilting to the right. Add to the mix the fact that Hatch, the powerful chairman, has a beef with Raben’s boss, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

The ensuing exchange spoke volumes about the politics of power in Washington and, ultimately, about how quickly a nominee may have to retreat from his words if they don’t conform to the prevailing wisdom.

Raben squirmed a bit as Hatch pressed for an explanation.

The column was intended merely as satire, he said. “Satire fallen flat,” he added quickly. Never did he mean to suggest lawbreakers shouldn’t be pursued, Raben said. “All of our laws should be enforced,” he declared.

But Raben wasn’t out of the woods yet. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) wanted to grill the nominee.

The column was smug, Sessions said. And, yes, as an ex-prosecutor, he was one of those who lost sleep thinking about kids doing drugs on a Saturday night.

“You are going to be the spokesman, the representative of the Department of Justice” on legislative matters, Sessions said. “It’s against the law to utilize drugs. How can you be effective if this is your view about this matter?”

Raben appealed for mercy. The column was not just smug, he offered, but flip and arrogant. And in the end, he said, “it was a mistake.”

Sessions wanted to know if Raben would really have considered suing over drug testing, as promised in 1997.

No, Raben said. “I was confused.”

The deconstruction was complete. But to what end? Would Raben now be the next C. Lani Guinier or Robert H. Bork, felled by his own words?

Guinier, nominated in 1993 for a top Justice post, was attacked as the “quota queen” because of her writings on minority empowerment. Bork’s articles on privacy and other topics muddied his 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court. Both nominations stalled.

Raben--for all the tough questioning--appears headed for a kinder fate when the Senate votes on his nomination, likely this fall. Hatch expressed hope that he might actually improve things at the Justice Department.

No matter how the debate turns out, Rob Stewart of the Drug Policy Foundation said he believes Raben’s “uncomfortable” spot offers a sad commentary on the nature of political discourse in Washington.

“Drug policy has always been a politicized debate, based more on emotion than common sense or reason,” said Stewart, an analyst for the Washington-based think thank that supports more resources for drug-abuse treatment.