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The 'Nastiest' Democrat: Sen. Patrick Leahy, Republican nightmare - overview of controversial senator's political career
National Review, July 9, 2001 by Jay Nordlinger
Leahy furthered distinguished himself in 1991 as the first senator to come out against Clarence Thomas (this was even before the allegations of Anita Hill). He hammered Thomas relentlessly. At one point, in a typical Leahy flourish, he said, "You describe yourself as a conservative. Well, most Vermonters are conservative, too"-but Thomas, in Leahy's eyes, wasn't the right kind of conservative. Later, in a floor statement, Leahy said, "I cannot promise the people of Vermont that I'm sure this nominee will protect their rights." And he avowed, most richly, "The last thing I seek in a Supreme Court justice is ideology."
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Leahy became a major player on the Judiciary Committee in 1987, when Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans. Biden was chairman, but Leahy was named head of a task force to scrutinize (or harass or delay or upend) Republican nominees. At last, he vowed, Democrats would "play hardball" (and this was years before Chris Matthews became a national celebrity). "No iffy nominees are going to get through now," Leahy crowed. The result was that nominees, many of them, were pecked at and left twisting in the wind. Interesting, in light of a later event, is that Leahy, back in '87, faulted the American Bar Association for its recommendations on judicial nominees. He said, "I have often found the ABA process to be perfunctory at best. I've often found it inadequate." According to the Washington Post, "Leahy said his task force would interview more lawyers, litigants, and local citizens instead of relying on the ABA." Leahy's entire approach in this period was: go slow, put the screws on, block.
Then when the Clinton administration came to power, and Republicans regained the Senate two years later, Leahy turned on a dime. Now the problem was "stalling tactics" (Republican), and the nation's courts suffered from a "vacancy crisis." Republicans were shirking their "constitutional duty," and mounting "nothing short of an attack on our independent judiciary." On CNN, Greta Van Susteren asked him, helpfully, "How can they get away with that? I mean, we've got all these vacancies." Answered Leahy, "Because the American public has not raised hell the way they should."
With the George W. Bush administration and the Jeffords flip, the pendulum has swung again: Leahy is back to go-slow. There is no more talk of a vacancy crisis or raising hell (at least the kind of hell Leahy intended for Senate Republicans). The ABA, whose role the current president has reduced, seems to be back in his good graces. Leahy is preparing new and intrusive questionnaires for Republican nominees, evidently designed to embarrass them and trip them up. He is promising hearings on the sins of the Rehnquist court and of conservative jurists generally. By every indication, he is gearing up for continual battle. During the Biden years, Leahy was only Number Two, and an enthusiastic player of "hardball." Now it may be all Borking, all the time.
No matter what the era, what the year, Leahy has been consistent on one thing: the ceaseless Republican war on "women and minorities." When Republicans have occupied the White House, they haven't appointed enough women and minorities (Reagan's record, for Leahy, was "shameful"-this despite Justice O'Connor, apparently; no word on whether Leahy counted Justice Thomas for the first George Bush). When Clinton was there, Republican senators worked diligently to thwart women and minorities. Leahy portrayed the Republicans' 1999 rejection of Judge Ronnie White as primarily a racial tragedy. The senator is utterly in keeping with his party in painting the GOP as the enemy of black Americans.
