Is Joe Biden a Women's Issues Advocate? Clarence Thomas Hearings May Be Indicative
Saturday August 23, 2008
Ask women of a certain age what they know of Joe Biden, Obama's choice for VP, and many will immediately mention the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings back in October 1991. The riveting testimony of law professor Anita Hill about alleged sexual harassment at the hands of her former boss, Clarence Thomas, turned a routine hearing over a Supreme Court nominee into a landmark moment in American political history.
As a young mother at home with a four-month-old baby, I watched the hearings non-stop, seeing Joe Biden play a major role as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I recall feeling outraged at the tone of the questioning from the all-male panel, but came away with the sense that Biden was supportive of Hill and tough on Thomas during the proceedings. Since that time I've regarded him as an advocate of women, based on that impression from long ago.
Was I right? Or way off the mark? Here's what other women have to say:
- Florence Graves, the founding editor of Common Cause Magazine, was a research fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics in 1994 when she reported on the hearings in retrospect, interviewing Joe Biden in 1992 and one of Anita Hill's former law school professors, Harvard academician Charles Ogletree, in 1993. Writing for the Alicia Patterson Foundation Reporter Vol. 16 #2, Graves observes, "even though millions of people witnessed the hearings, the public still doesn't believe it has gotten the full story," and asks, "Why didn't Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden defend Anita Hill more aggressively?"
- Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of the National Review Online, also thinks it's appropriate to look back to the 1991 hearings to consider whether or not Biden is a good VP choice. And her take? "It’s a winning ticket for the GOP."
- Blackhippychick remembers those hearings and thinks Obama made a big mistake. On her blog, she writes in bold type, "This is a big slap in the face to the WOMEN of America. It falls in line with Obama’s record on abortion. This is a blatant disregard for women and children to choose Joe Biden."
- Feministing.com covers the hearings and more of Biden's track record in its "Meet Joe Biden" assessment of Obama's VP.
More on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings:
Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas - 16 Years after Her Senate Testimony
More on Joe Biden at About.com:
Comments
I was there too. In the rooms, on the Hill, serving as a Congressional Intern and I don’t know how any woman there could have felt comfortable with saying that he is someone women should feel good about as a VP. It is so depressing to start the year thinking it might be possible for a woman to be the nominee, and end up with a ticket that shows such disregard for woman. If the DNC and Barack Obama think that I am going to vote for them because I certainly won’t vote for McCain, then they are wrong. You need me to show up and vote and I will – at the state and local level. I will abstain from the Presidential election because I am so tired of being taken for granted. I’ve done it year after year and I am over it. This was the absolute wrong choice. Change, my rear end.
I am a (white, gay) man, and I, too, was INCREDIBLY upset to hear on NPR just a little while ago that Biden was the choice, precisely because I, too, remember how atrociously Anita Hill was treated. I really was hoping that Hillary was going to be Obama’s VP choice — and I wasn’t even a supporter of hers during the primaries. (I wasn’t an Obama supporter, either, actually. I went for Edwards; of course, given recent events, that might not have worked out so well!) But I certainly thought she was the right choice now. I am going to vote for Obama pretty much ONLY because I feel neither the country nor the WORLD can afford four more years of these disastrous Bush/Cheney/etc. policies, and that’s what we’ll get with him. Not to mention that a McCain win almost certainly means Roe Vs. Wade being overturned.
Daniel
It would be helpful to know specifics before making judgments on this information. What specifically did Joe Biden say or not say during the hearings that made these commentators so angry? How “aggressive” would he have to have been to have made them happy? What did he say or not say that made you initially supportive of him?
Also, is it fair to assess Joe Biden’s entire record on women’s issues based on vague assessment of a single judgment call he made seventeen years ago? This man is a six-term Senator who has tried to run for president before himself. Surely he has left an extensive voting record and series of position statements which would prove a far better source of information on which to judge his position on women’s issues than this single incident. And what, exactly, is wrong with (NARAL-endorsed) Obama’s track record on abortion?
I plan to give Biden a fair and comprehensive evaluation even though he wasn’t my first choice (I would have preferred Kathleen Sebelius). I hope Clinton’s supporters are willing to do the same.
A CLARIFICATION TO MY PREVIOUS COMMENT
I realize I made an error that makes it unclear what I meant to say in one sentence — I had written “I am going to vote for Obama pretty much ONLY because I feel neither the country nor the WORLD can afford four more years of these disastrous Bush/Cheney/etc. policies, and that’s what we’ll get with him.”
That final word “him” should (obviously, I hope) have been “McCain”. Sorry.
Joe Biden sucks. He showed it at the hearings and that he hates women! he was nasty, rude and discusting to Anita Hill and he was obviously on Clarence Thomas’ side. That’s justice?
First off, I’m a women and a feminist, but not like the new ones that give us a bad name by being hypocrites and weaklings. Personally, I find these comments so pitiful as I think the elections are bigger than women. First off, having Hillary would have killed Obama’s chances, and seriously, I prefer a good democratic male president and a male VP, than McCain and either gender VP. I feel like so man women are so focused on having a women as pres of VP, without realizing that the world doesn’t revolve around us. Stop being idiots and realize that we have come very far, and we don’t need so many dramatic changes, we have an energy crisis and a war and others on the horizon, so I simply want the best candidate, and Obama/Biden is it.
I read the comments, refer to “more on Joe Biden” at the end of the article. Good ol’ boys, probably had done what Thomas did, so, no big deal to them and just went through the process at that time. I would think and maybe foolishly, that men with child-daughters would be more sensitive to Ms Anita. Roe-Wade will Never be overturned. Did you notice that Bush managed to dodge this for 8 years. Truth, the back room, cloths hanger abortions will be the reason.
Taylor, proof that women are our own worst enemy.
Marial, hear, hear, however, I “Will Remember in November” Go McCain. Nobama is still not presidential material and Ms Hillary and Bill just did what they HAD to do. Actually, Biden was probably the only real choice & ok with me.
H*ll no I did not want Ms Hillary as VP. Now, she IS, PRESIDENTIAL, or was, sad,sad. Nah, don’t start that get over it, it’s a done deal,etc. I don’t care, it’s a chick,loyalty thing. And besides, as a feminist for equality, I really wanted her to win.
She would have been GREAT!!
I have memories of the equal rights amendment not passing on two occasions because it was not supported by women. If this memory is correct, why are so many women upset about Obama earning a chance to be president before a woman? I recall pictures of white men and women turning the hanging of black men into carnival picnics. If a white woman sides with genocidal practices and then opposes a black candidate on the basis of his race and not his character, what does that make her? Help me out on this one somebody!
In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times (see below), a former Biden staffer (Jeffrey Rosen) reveals the disappointing role Mr. Biden played in the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Specifically, Biden aided and abetted the very public character assassination of Anita Hill and then proceeded to bring the hearings to a premature close in order to expedite the nomination.
Op-Ed Contributor
The Myth of Biden v. Bork
By JEFFREY ROSEN
Published: August 26, 2008
Washington
WHEN Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands on the podium in Denver tonight as Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee, conservatives of a certain age will see a bogeyman who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.
Those hearings are to conservatives what the Clinton impeachment is to liberals, and conservatives blame Senator Biden for inaugurating the post-Bork politics of personal destruction. To them, Mr. Obama’s selection of Mr. Biden reveals the insincerity of his pledge to change politics as usual in Washington.
The charge is unfair. Twenty-one years ago, during the Bork nomination, I worked for Mr. Biden as an intern on the Senate Judiciary Committee. From that modest vantage point, I saw Mr. Biden struggle to focus the hearings on Judge Bork’s judicial philosophy rather than his private life, in the face of overwhelming political pressure from interest groups on the left. Mr. Biden’s efforts to protect Judge Bork’s and Judge Thomas’s privacy demonstrate that, although he was present at the creation of the post-Bork era, he did not cause it. On the contrary, he did everything in his power to resist the collapse of boundaries between nominees’ public and private lives.
When President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the court in 1987, some liberal senators and interest groups were eager to distort his record. Hours after the nomination was announced, for example, Senator Edward Kennedy charged that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions.”
Senator Biden, who had built a national reputation by attacking the excesses of liberal interest groups, made clear that he would not tolerate these ad hominem attacks. He promised to focus the questioning on Judge Bork’s substantive views about the right to privacy, rather than demonize him by conflating his personal and judicial views or trolling for private indiscretions.
When confronted with a request to subpoena Judge Bork’s video rental records in a search for possible pornography, Mr. Biden refused. (The records, which revealed that Judge Bork’s only weakness was for Cary Grant, were leaked anyway to The Washington City Paper.) At this same time, Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign collapsed in the face of plagiarism charges, but he won bipartisan praise for conducting the Bork hearings with fairness and restraint.
His performance during the Thomas hearings in 1991 was just as restrained. He focused his opposition on Judge Thomas’s radical views on property rights and limitations on federal power. When Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment began to circulate in private, Senator Biden angered liberal interest groups by insisting that the Judiciary Committee handle the accusations confidentially.
After the charges were leaked to the press, Mr. Biden insisted that they did not justify postponing the Senate vote on the nomination. Even after finally bowing to the public pressure to allow Ms. Hill to testify, Mr. Biden still refused to call three additional witnesses who were ready to corroborate her charges about his interest in pornography.
Although, in his recent memoir, Justice Thomas rages against Mr. Biden’s unfairness, the reality is that, by insisting that no further witnesses be called, Mr. Biden ensured his confirmation. Mr. Biden later observed that he could have “decimated” Judge Thomas by allowing more testimony about pornography, but “it would have been wrong.”
If he becomes vice president, Mr. Biden will be ideally suited to shepherding Supreme Court nominees through a polarized Senate. But the next nomination battle may make the Bork fight look tame. In every presidential election from 1988 to 2004, the court had a six-justice majority in favor of upholding Roe v. Wade; now the landmark ruling on abortion appears to hang by one vote. However much Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama may hope to transcend the partisanship of the post-Bork era, they may be thwarted by political forces that have grown too powerful to be overcome.
Jeffrey Rosen is the author, most recently, of “The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.”
MY Complaint, Senator’s Metzbaum, Kenedy AND
Biden promised Anita Hill that if She would
Make her Statyement that she would not have to go brfore the Senate Jutdishary COMMITIE
THOSE THREE SENATORS LIED to Professor HILL
ABD I think that WOMEN should know that BIDEN LIED to A Woman NO mater if it was 1991
Mariel – Have you heard of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Are you aware that it passed in the House with 223 Democrats and 2 Republicans voting in favor (193 Republicans and 6 Democrats opposed)? Are you aware that the Senate version of this bill came up for a vote on cloture in April and that Clinton and Obama both returned to Washington while in the midst of their primary campaigns to vote in favor of it? McCain, who really wasn’t campaigning much while Clinton and Obama duked it out, didn’t bother to vote but is on record as saying he would have voted against cloture because the bill would have led to “frivolous” lawsuits that “harmed” businesses. Biden, along with 47 other Democrats, 6 Republicans, and 2 Independents, also voted in favor (Reid was the only Democrat who voted nay, and he did that on procedural grounds so that the bill could be brought up again). 41 Republicans voted against it. Now, can you explain to me why you would reward the Republicans by withholding your vote from Obama to protest something that happened 17 years ago that you see as not sufficiently supportive of women in spite of McCain’s clearly stated anti-woman position of five months ago? Do you really believe that the sick, cynical gesture of making Sarah Palin the VP nominee merits the possibility of leaving the Republican party in charge of running Washington for another four years? If so, I do hope you’re happy with the results. But I doubt it. Democrats are so often their own worst enemies and look where it’s taking us.
I was riveted to the tube by Anita Hill’s testimony. While I was torn by the politics, I was appalled at Biden’s condescending, cruel treatment of this woman. The entire committee was vicious and sexist toward her, including my IL senator, Dixon, who ended up driving Carol Moseley Braun to challenge him in the primary and win–because of the sexism of the hearing. I can’t believe that the Obama team really vetted Biden. Choosing him over Hillary was like a slap in the face to me.
I think Biden was more than fair in those hearings. I remember studying it in school in a women’s class. i’d say it was concensus that he war fair.
i think Biden’s official record on women is pretty impressive. I’m most impressed by his support of rape victim’s, healthy families act, family medical leave act, he wrote the violenc against women act… etc etc. there are just too many to name. i feel like he’s done more on behalf of women than his female counterparts in government.
look, the guys wife died in a car accident along with his infant daughter. he was a single father to his two young boys that survived the crash. out of all the candidates, i think this gives him a unique understanding of the hardships faced by every day – ordinary families.
Is this a serious article? Have any of you heard about the Violence Against Women Act? The one that made it a domestic violence a crime on the same level as other violent crimes? Yeah, that one. Do you know who was the key author of that? Yes, Mr. Vice President of the United States Joe Biden. Vice President Biden is and always has been a supporter of women’s rights and will make a fine Vice President.