Judiciary Committee confirms its history of common ground
WASHINGTON -- Every decade or so, the Senate Judiciary Committee stages a confirmation hearing that gets etched into the history of the times as a record of American values as they existed at that moment.
There was the hearing on Robert H. Bork in the 1980s, which triggered a backlash against Reaganism. There was the hearing on Clarence Thomas in the early 1990s, which propelled scores of women into electoral politics.
The committee itself was so memorable from those past hearings that its more recent confirmation battles have been like reunions of a once-popular TV show; part of the interest is in finding out how the cast has aged and changed.
Since the Thomas hearings, the committee has lost a few of its colorful characters. South Carolina's GOP legend, Strom Thurmond, died at 100, and Democrats Howell Heflin of Alabama and Paul Simon of Illinois are gone as well. But the core of the committee has been remarkably intact for the past quarter of a century.
Democrats Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware have shared space on the dais with Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Orrin G. Hatch for so long that they can probably all change seats and finish one another's sentences. Each has had a stint as committee chairman.
This consistency through the decades has made the Judiciary Committee the Dorian Gray of American politics, aging in place and at the same time telling us something about the country and how it's evolved over the decades.
So while the new Supreme Court nominee, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was the focus of last week's confirmation hearing, the senators were also on center stage. And while Alito maintained a placid demeanor, the committee was a perfect illustration of the tensions that have come to define the Senate -- between the more collegial older generation and the more aggressive younger senators, and between razor-sharp partisans of both parties.
Despite their different voting records, the older senators had more in common with one another than with their younger colleagues. Hatch and Kennedy are famously close friends, and Specter and Leahy work closely as chairman and ranking member of the minority party.
Leahy voted in favor of the confirmation of John G. Roberts Jr., despite intense pressure from liberal activists, in part to maintain his credibility as a moderate broker on the committee.
Still, on Wednesday, when Specter and Kennedy got into a feisty, finger-pointing feud over whether to subpoena documents, there was a frisson of tension. But both senators are now well over 70, and their pique seemed more theatrical than real.
When the debate turned to whether Kennedy had said anything about the documents to Specter in the Senate gym, they seemed like two oldsters arguing over where they had left the car keys.
Likewise, Biden's long digressions, during which he discussed his children's college applications and what his ''Grandfather Finnegan" would have thought about things, sounded like an old man's exercising his prerogative to say anything that popped into his head.
If Biden had a purpose with those digressions, it must have been to create a warm, cracker-barrel atmosphere. But his newer colleagues would have none of it. Democrats Charles E. Schumer of New York, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin were all in prosecutorial mode, cross-examining Alito on abortion, presidential prerogatives, and civil rights.
But while the differences between the older and younger Democrats were primarily ones of style rather than substance, the Republicans seemed to be following two separate agendas.
The older generation -- Specter, Hatch, and Iowa's Charles E. Grassley -- sought to highlight Alito's belief in following Supreme Court precedents, to show that he would be a conservative judge of the old school: cautious and modest and respectful of those who came before him. They clearly hoped to reassure viewers that Alito would keep an open mind on the abortion decision of Roe v. Wade.
But newer Republicans wanted to establish the opposite point -- that Alito would indeed overrule Roe v. Wade.
Kansas' Sam Brownback and Oklahoma's Tom Coburn inveighed against the importance of following precedent, forcing Alito to acknowledge that abortion rights were hardly etched in stone.
The clearest message to emerge from the Alito hearings was that the next big Judiciary Committee showdown will be even more contentious.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.
