As he moves toward a presidential run, Joe Biden has been under fire from the Left for his treatment of Anita Hill, but in his 2007 memoir, Clarence Thomas offered a different perspective on Biden’s performance during his confirmation hearings.
In contrast to the portrait of Biden as a warm-hearted and genuine straight-shooter, in his book My Grandfather’s Son, Thomas offered a blistering account of the then Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who acted friendly in private, only to stab him in the back when the cameras were on. He wrote, “Senator Biden’s smooth, insincere promises that he would treat me fairly were nothing but talk.”
Before the contentious hearings, Thomas described an ominous interaction he had with Biden in early 1990, during the confirmation process for his appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Biden, Thomas wrote, “informed me that I would be confirmed for the Court of Appeals, but that I could expect things to be very different if I were to be nominated to the Supreme Court.” At the time, Thomas said Biden’s remark “jolted” him, because it was the first time he had ever thought of the prospect of a Supreme Court appointment.
Biden’s warning would prove accurate when, in the summer of 1991, Thomas was nominated to replace the retiring Thurgood Marshall, and hearings were scheduled for the fall, allowing opponents more time to mount their attacks.
“A few days before I faced the Judiciary Committee, Joseph Biden invited [wife] Virginia and me to tour the Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building, where the hearings would take place,” Thomas wrote. “Senator Biden was reassuring, stressing that the hearings weren’t meant to be an ordeal. He said that since I’d be nervous at first, he would start the questioning with a few ‘softballs’ that would help me relax and do my best, assuring me that he had no tricks up his sleeve.”
As chairman, Biden was able to get the first questions once the hearings kicked off. Thomas wrote that, “Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said.” (You can watch the clip here on the C-SPAN archive.)
Biden quoted a portion of the speech in which Thomas said, “I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would … strike down laws restricting property rights.” Thomas recounted being caught off guard, because he didn’t recall the context of his remarks, which Biden suggested showed Thomas was arguing in favor of judicial activism. It wasn’t until Thomas got a chance to reread the speech during the break that he noticed Biden had neglected to quote the following sentence in his remarks, which made clear that Thomas’s point was the opposite of what Biden had claimed. Thomas had said in the speech, “But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy.”
Thomas recalled, “Throughout my life I’ve often found truth embedded in the lyrics of my favorite records. At Yale, for example, I’d listened often to ‘Smiling Faces Sometimes,’ a song by the Undisputed Truth that warns of the dangers of trusting the hypocrites who ‘pretend to be your friend’ while secretly planning to do you wrong. Now I knew I’d met one of them: Senator Biden’s smooth, insincere promises that he would treat me fairly were nothing but talk.”
After his initial confirmation hearings, Thomas received a visit from the FBI asking him to respond to the Hill accusations, which he categorically denied. The one thing Thomas credits Biden for is that Hill had initially requested that her name be withheld from members of the Judiciary Committee when she submitted her statement, but Biden said he would only accept a signed statement.
Initially, the matter was supposed to be kept confidential. Ahead of the vote, Biden told Thomas on the phone that “he was torn over his decision and has brought two statements with him to the committee meeting that day, one for me and one against.” Ultimately, however, Biden said he’d have to vote against Thomas because he disagreed with his beliefs.
At the same time, however, Biden said he’d defend Thomas if the Hill story ever became public, along with another matter concerning a leaked draft opinion from the appellate court that had been drawing criticism.
“Judge, I know you don’t believe me,” Thomas recalled Biden telling him, “but if any of these last two matters come up, I will be your biggest defender.”
Thomas recounted, “He was right about one thing: I didn’t believe him. Neither did Virginia. As he reassured me of his goodwill, she grabbed a spoon from the silverware drawer, opened her mouth wide, stuck out her tongue as far as she could, and pretended to gag herself.”
Of course, Hill’s statement to the committee, which was supposed to be confidential, was leaked to the media (Nina Totenberg of NPR and Tim Phelps of Newsday), and became a national feeding frenzy.
The secondary hearings that followed ended up turning into a vicious attempt to destroy Thomas’ character. Or, as he famously put it, a “high-tech lynching.”
As Biden’s candidacy leads to a relitigation of the Thomas-Hill hearings, it’s worth keeping in mind this account of a key player.
