Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas - Hardcover

A personal, insider's view of the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, from the justice's chief Senate sponsor. Missouri senator Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest, and religious metaphors inform both this book's title and its tale of Thomas's eventual confirmation. Given that other authors have explored the context and politics of the Thomas hearings in greater depth, Danforth's account of day-to-day strategizing offers only a few interesting nuggets. Lawyers handling Thomas initially discounted Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment; Danforth backed up his longtime friend and former employee from the start, while Thomas told him--somewhat dubiously--that Hill was ``very ideological.'' When the allegations hit the media, Thomas was besieged. His wife, Ginni, is quoted recounting his anxiety and humiliation, and Danforth describes Thomas sobbing. The author relates his disputes with Senate Judiciary Chair Joseph Biden on handling the hearings and reflects that a longer delay might have allowed Thomas to retain counsel and gain procedural safeguards. He also recalls advising Thomas, who absolutely denied Hill's allegations, to say he'd agree to a lie detector test when Senate staffers were similarly tested about news leaks. Danforth shifted from minister to ``street fighter'' in an attempt to suggest that Hill was fantasizing and destroy her credibility; his own staffers, in fact, argued against some of his efforts, and Danforth himself now regrets playing dirty. The author's contention that the hearing procedures were unfair is worthy, but his account is necessarily slanted. Danforth avoids engaging Thomas's ideas: ``I did not think his political philosophy should be relevant to his nomination,'' he declares--which seems glib, given Thomas's show of hard-line conservatism as a justice. Strictly for the converted. (First printing of 50,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Danforth is the Missouri senator who shepherded Clarence Thomas through Senate confirmation of his appointment to the Supreme Court. A minister as well as an attorney, Danforth reflects his and Thomas' Christian faith often in his account of the ordeal that confirmation became. When the going got really tough--i.e., after Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment came out--Thomas kept his spirits up with Christian music, by reading the Bible, but most of all through prayer, both alone and with those closest to him, who several times included Danforth. According to Danforth, Thomas was essentially broken, anyway, and his reputation actually killed, which is why Danforth refers to Thomas' eventual victory as the beginning of a virtual resurrection that, given how anti-conservative propagandists have kept Hill's accusations current, is not over. Two aspects of Danforth's report are most striking: that Thomas always stoutly maintained he never said or did anything Hill could have construed as harassment, and that Danforth feels he himself behaved wrongly in some of his efforts to help Thomas. A very convincing testimony on one of the most controversial and contentious public events of recent years. (For those who wish to compare Danforth's account with the record of the confirmation hearings, Academy Chicago Publishers has just issued The Complete Transcripts of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Hearings [$22.50; 0-89733-408-6].) Ray Olson