Curator note: This article basically identifies how the Clarence Thomas scandal obscured the information gleaned from his first hearing, where his lack of qualifications, lack of candidness, lack of judicial sense were on display. Kavanaugh has also shown us in word and deed that he is not qualified for the Supreme Court and I hope that our country has the will to make sure he never fills that seat.
But this eerie parallel, separated by a generation of cultural change — or perhaps it will turn out to be only presumed change or wished-for change — is not the perspective from which I want to compare these two cases on the eve of the Kavanaugh hearing. Rather, I want to offer a note of warning about something else the two might turn out to share: that the questions raised about Judge Kavanaugh in his first hearing will be submerged by the onrushing tide of scandal, as they were for Justice Thomas.
I’ve observed that many people who followed the Thomas nomination closely, even including those who retain strong feelings about the dramatic second hearing, have forgotten what happened in the first round — the real hearing, as I have persisted in calling it for the past 27 years. I don’t mean to dismiss or diminish the significance of Ms. Hill’s allegations or of the outrageous way the men of the Judiciary Committee treated her. But I do think it’s unfortunate that the cynicism and racial politics that infused the nomination of the underqualified 43-year-old Judge Thomas to a lifetime position in the seat once held by Thurgood Marshall has been erased from public memory.
