A RIGHT AND A WRONG: LET'S PROMISE, NEVER AGAIN

Last fall, there was an interesting convergence, for me, of two issues that came to fruition at exactly the same time. Both of them required a lot of work. Both of them required building alliances with various people and various organizations.

The first was the Civil Rights Act of 1991. I thought it was an extraordinarily important piece of legislation for a couple of reasons. First, it seems to me that in our country we have to build a consensus on the subject of equality and the subject of equal opportunity for all Americans.

Second, I feel as a Republican that my party is the party of Abraham Lincoln. For somebody like a David Duke to attempt to embrace the Republican Party is something that I want to fight with every fiber of my being.

I think that we as a country have recognized in the last week that if there is anything really constructive we can do, it is to provide work opportunities for black Americans. This is very important for American cities and for the integrity of the black family. The Civil Rights Act said that businesses cannot set up non-job related conditions of employment which have the effect of screening out minorities. I thought that was very important. It was an accomplishment I was very proud of.

The other matter that took place at the same time was the Clarence Thomas nomination. One thing I learned was that a terrible wrong was done. An awful wrong was done.

What happened right from the time of the nomination, there was a concerted effort by interest groups to defeat the nomination by destroying the person Clarence Thomas. There was a whole series of attacks, totally unfounded. We were forever fielding attacks not on the ideology of Clarence Thomas, although that was turned into a caricature, also, but on Clarence Thomas the person.

The legacy of the Bork nomination was that judicial nominations have been turned into political campaigns. As is true with a modern political campaign, apparently anything goes. There are no rules. Anything goes in order to win the political point, including the destruction of the individual involved. And that was the effort, to destroy him, mercilessly and in a concerted fashion.

I have never seen anything worse in my life than what was done to this good, decent human being. Clarence Thomas, God bless him, and he was blessed by God, had the strength to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee and to say what was on his heart. It was Clarence Thomas the authentic person, speaking what was on his heart, in the most powerful performance I've ever seen in my life. I'm asked to say what I've learned from all this.

I've learned what happens to a human being when interest groups and Senate staffers and others turn a judicial nomination into a political campaign. I've learned what happens to a real live human being when he's destroyed. Ladies and gentlemen, never can we allow that to happen again. Never again in the history of this country.

Someday you may be tempted somebody, you, this Foundation may be tempted to participate in it. Someday, we may have another President, with another nominee whose political philosophy or judicial philosophy is the opposite of your own. You will harken back to the Bork nomination and the Thomas nomination and you will say, "Our day has come. Let us use the same tools they used." You cannot do that. If it is wrong for an ideology to drive the destruction of a human being, it is wrong for any ideology to drive the destruction of a human being.

You not only can't participate in it, but you have to speak out. Let us tonight promise ourselves that the next time we see it happening, the next time we see the interest groups marshaling their forces and see staffers in the Senate in their backroom meetings, we are going to stand up and scream about it. Like the prophets of old, when we see a wrong, we're going to scream about it. Let's promise ourselves that.

(John Danforth is a U.S. senator from Missouri. This was adapted from his remarks last month at the anniversary dinner of the Landmark Legal Foundation of Kansas City.)

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