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Just as war is freedoms cost, disagreement is...
10:46 PM, Monday, May 3, 2010
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Just as war is freedoms cost, disagreement is freedoms privilege, and we honor it here todayThe message of this memorial is quite simple: these men and women fought for freedom, brought honor to their communities, loved their country, and died for itTheres not a person in this crowd today who did not know someone on this wallFour of my high school classmates are thereLet us continue to disagree, if we must, about the warBut let us not let it divide us as a people any longer
The event started roughly, but ended wellRobert McNamaras prediction that my election had ended the Vietnam War wasnt quite accurate, but maybe we were getting there
June began with a disappointment that was both personal and political, as I withdrew my nomination of Lani Guinier, a University of Pennsylvania professor, a longtime lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and my law school classmate, to be the first career civil rights lawyer to head the Civil Rights DivisionAfter I named her in April, the conservatives went after Guinier with a vengeance, attacking her as a quota queen and accusing her of advocating the abandonment of the constitutional principle of one man, one vote because she had supported a system of cumulative voting, under which each voter would get as many votes as there are contested seats on a legislative body, and could cast all the votes for a single candidateIn theory, cumulative voting would dramatically increase the odds of minority candidates being elected
At first, I didnt pay too much attention to the rantings of the right, thinking that what they really disliked rock of love tiffany's necklace about Guinier was her long record of successful civil rights fights, and that, as she made the rounds of the Senate, she would win enough votes to be confirmed easilyMy friend Senator David Pryor came to see me and urged me to withdraw Lanis nomination, saying that her interviews with the senators were going poorly, and reminding me that we also had an economic program to pass and not a vote to spareMajority Leader George Mitchell, who had been a federal judge before he came to the Senate, strongly agreed with David; he said Lani couldnt be confirmed and we needed to end it as soon as possibleI was informed that Senators Ted Kennedy and Carol Moseley Braun, the Senates only African-American member, felt the same way
I decided I had better read Lanis articlesThey made a persuasive case for her position, but were in conflict with my support for affirmative action and opposition to quotas, and seemed to abandon one man, one vote in favor of one man, many votes: spread them out however you like
I asked her to come see me so that we could talk it throughAs we discussed the problem in the Oval Office, Lani was understandably offended by the battering she had taken, amazed that anyone would see the academic musings in her articles as a serious obstacle to her confirmation, and dismissive of the difficulties her nomination presented to the senators whose votes she needed, perhaps through several filibustersMy staff had told her we didnt have the votes to confirm her, but she declined to withdraw, feeling she had a right to be voted onFinally, I told her that I felt I had to withdraw mulberry style bags her nomination, that I hated to do it, but we were going to lose, and though it was cold comfort, her withdrawal would make her a heroine in the civil rights community
In the aftermath, I was heavily criticized for abandoning a friend in the face of political pressure, mostly by people who didnt know what was going on in the backgroundEventually, I nominated Deval Patrick, another brilliant African-American lawyer with a strong civil rights background, to lead the Civil Rights Division, and he did a fine jobI still admire Lani Guinier, and regret that I lost her friendship
I spent much of the first two weeks of June picking a Supreme Court justiceA few weeks earlier, Byron Whizzer White had announced his retirement after thirty-one years on the High CourtAs I said earlier, I first wanted to appoint Governor Mario Cuomo, but he wasnt interestedAfter reviewing more than forty candidates, I settled on three: my Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who had been attorney general of Arizona before becoming governor; Judge Stephen Breyer, chief judge of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, who had compiled an impressive record on the bench; and Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, a brilliant woman with a compelling life story whose record was interesting, independent, and progressiveI met with Babbitt and Breyer and was convinced they both would be good justices, but I hated to lose Babbitt at Interior, as did large numbers of environmentalists who called the White House to urge that I keep him there, and tiffany
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