Clarence Thomas - Confronting the Future: Selections from the Senate Confirmation Hearings and Prior Speeches

National Review, March 30, 1992 by Mark Cunningham

Clarence Thomas-confronting the Future: Selections from the Senate Confirmation Hearings and Prior Speeches (Regnery Gateway, 154 pp., $7.95)

ANITA HILL now has celebrity and the deep-pocket patronage of the many interest groups that set out to "Bork" Clarence Thomas. The Senate has refused to question its staff, so the leaker will not be punished. The greatest injustice of the Hill affair, however, is that it has masked the true Justice Thomas. In the television mini-series set off by the unprovable allegations against him, he was forced to play an essentially passive role-a man who had won against poverty and segregation, suddenly helpless again. This book allows us to rediscover the true Mr. Thomas, and to examine the Judiciary Committee's dog-and-pony show at our leisure. Gordon Crovitz's introduction places the controversy squarely in the (context of 1) the Left's attempts to keep a hold on the Supreme Court by violating every civil liberty and procedural nicety a liberal Court is said to protect and 2) the tremendous strain, on the nominee and his family, of confirmation by character assassination. The selection of text is unabashedly proThomas, leaving out Miss Hill's smears and the maunderings of Susan Hoerchner et al., but including speeches made on the Senate floor, Thomas's pre-lynching statement to the committee, and his inspirational 1985 Savannah State College commencement address. The testimony of the pro-Thomas witnesses looks even stronger in the light of such subsequent revelations as Miss Hill's profession of liberalism, and print corrects some first impressions: J. C. Alvarez, who on TV seemed to speak forever, is quite crisp in print. John Doggett, conversely, seems as self-interested as ever. -MARK CUNNINGHAM