The Confirmation Ritual

What kind of turbulence will you be experiencing? First, there’s Mrs. Farnsworth. Don’t remember her? Well, nobody else does, either. But she’s out there and the FBI will find her. Sometime between now and the Judiciary Committee vote, she will get her 15 minutes of cable fame. Why? Because your falling maple tree once crushed her picket fence. Or because she swears she saw you take a third drink at the Christmas party. Or because you once had to fire her nephew the klepto. Or, who knows, because she never got over the fact that Mom liked you best.

Now I know that you have led a spotless life. You seem to have been in serious confirmation prep since you were about 15. (It seems probable that Mom did in fact like you best.) But you’re up against a wounded FBI bureaucracy here. They will leave no pebble unturned in their effort to build a comprehensive file.

That’s “comprehensive,” by the way, as in “unimaginably intrusive.” The old standby “Orwellian” doesn’t quite do the job. Remember the drill. The FBI tracks down everybody who ever rubbed up against you and tells them two things–that they are legally obliged to tell the truth and, better yet, that their identity will never be revealed. What most interviewees hear the agent saying is, “Take your best shot. There’s absolutely no chance of reprisal.” What comes back from these free-swinging interviews is what is called a raw file. Some of it is really raw. Some of it is actually true. Some of it is phoned in from the planet Zocar. What’s most important from a tactical perspective is that you have only a general idea what’s in the file. But Chuck Schumer knows it by heart. All of which is to say that it’s difficult for you to prepare for Mrs. Farnsworth, whose testimony will be presented by the media as deeply revealing of your inner judge.

You’ll hit the second air pocket when your opponents start talking about money. And they will. Senate staffers, who don’t make any money, are reliably curious about nominees who do. And, on the media side, there will always be money stories that only trained journalists are perfectly equipped to misunderstand. But there’s more to the money chase than personality twitch, and my own experience may be instructive.

When I was nominated as director of the Communications Satellite Corporation, there was some industry chatter that I might be a latent supporter of privatization. The bureaucracy wasn’t about to let that kind of risk go unmitigated, so they went after me. I was no John Roberts, to be sure, but I had left only slim pickings for the trash-sifters: My professional, sexual, and pharmacological habits were boringly conventional. And so it was that my Roberts-like financial holdings came under scrutiny, picked over with the diligence of a CSI unit looking for trace amounts of ricin. As the investigation intensified, my wife and I took to calling our modest, middle class stake the “vast Freeman fortune,” which, according to well-placed sources, was manipulated secretively from “stately Freeman manor,” as we took to calling our plain-vanilla suburban house.

When the staffers’ CSI unit returned emptyhanded, they conceded that there were no conflicts embedded in my portfolio. But they kept the investigative door ajar: Said they, repeatedly and portentously, “even the appearance of a conflict could be equally important.” It could not be nearly as important as an actual conflict of interest, of course, but one learns over the years not to fight rooted Beltway clichés. What I wanted was a hearing in open session and, grudgingly, they agreed to proceed.

I was scheduled to be the first witness of the day, to be followed by Sharon Percy Rockefeller, who as chance would have it had been named to my old seat on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board. As I took my place at the witness table, Sharon arrived with a small, fast-moving entourage and headed directly for the dais. As if cued by an offstage choreographer, each of the five senators present leaped to his feet, waving, grinning, singing out joyously. Sharon favored each with a vaguely aimed air kiss, and then, a bit pressed for time, agreed to take the first questions.

Of the desultory interrogation that followed, it could be said that only I appeared to be disappointed by its brevity. Deeply impressed as I was by now with the importance of financial conflicts, I was looking forward to a review of Rockefeller family finances and the revelation of any appearance problems that might possibly lurk within. Senatorial curiosity, alas, was left unexcited: There was not a single question for Mrs. Rockefeller on the subject of money. The Rockefeller family holdings, it seemed, posed none of the analytical challenges, none of the accounting complexities, that had so riddled the vast Freeman fortune.

Instead, the questions turned on the wonder of it all. How could the Republic ever hope to express its gratitude to Sharon for agreeing to serve? After five consecutive U.S. senators dwelled semi-puzzled on this point, I began to wonder myself. Perhaps it was all a bureaucratic snafu, perhaps the administration would have to improve its offer–a major ambassadorial appointment, maybe? Through the hearing room passed a warm civic frisson, and a few moments later it was all over. Amid a cascade of grateful thanks, Sharon waved to the committee members and was gone, the nation’s business swiftly and surely done.

There are two lessons for you here, John. The first one is that life is unfair. But you probably have heard about that one. The other lesson is that you can never prepare enough. You may have started at 15, but there are nominees like Sharon Percy Rockefeller, the daughter of a Republican senator and the wife of a Democratic senator, who started before she was born.

Not to worry, John. You’ll be arriving home safely and almost on schedule. Even Chuck Schumer will be hard-pressed to sell the story that you’re outside the mainstream. You will savor confirmation in your own way, but let me recommend one from my own experience. Using FOIA, and outlasting bureaucratic resistance, my wife once got me the ultimate Christmas present–a copy of my FBI file. (It was excerpted and redacted, of course, but not entirely. When the file noted that, “Blank Blank, a partner in a Boston engineering firm, reports that he did business with the subject between 1979 and 1983 . . . ” the Bureau’s anonymous source is fully protected from prying eyes. But as I had not been two-timing Boston engineers in those days, I had little problem figuring out who Blank Blank was.)

The file makes for fascinating reading–what do people say about you under oath, after receiving assurances that their words will never reach your ears? Yes, it’s true that memories fade at the edges and perspectives shift and spin happens. But when asked by the FBI to tell it straight, almost everybody does so. For our fragile democracy, it seems to me, that is big news. Our civil society relies for its survival on the honor system, and at least in this controlled mini-study our citizens passed with colors flying.

And, who knows, you may come upon a pleasant surprise. I did. In the standard FBI interview, after the agent has asked all of his precooked questions, he poses the omnium gatherum, “Is the subject likely to do anything to embarrass the administration”? Most interviewees content themselves with a declarative, “No.” One source, when asked if I would embarrass the administration, responded: “I should think that the reverse is much more likely.” The same goes for you, John.

Neal B. Freeman is chairman of the Blackwell Corporation.