A judge, a professor, a sexual accusation and echoes of 1991

WASHINGTON >> She went public just days before a critical vote and took a polygraph test to bolster her credibility. He unequivocally denied her years-old charges of sexual misconduct. Calls mounted to delay the vote and investigate. It was late September, and a Supreme Court seat hung in the balance.

For those of a certain age in Washington, the past few days have felt like an eerie echo of the confirmation battle that consumed the capital in 1991 when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her. Now it is Judge Brett Kavanaugh who faces a hearing Monday to address explosive accusations by Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers.

While not a perfect parallel, the case has quickly polarized Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, once again drawing in all three branches of government for a showdown over sex, truth and politics. Thomas ultimately prevailed, and has been on the Supreme Court for more than a quarter of a century. But this time the battle takes place in a different era, at a moment when the #MeToo movement has brought down many powerful men over accusations of sexual misconduct that were once swept under the rug.

“I am stunned that this is happening again,” said Barbara Boxer, a former Democratic senator from California who, as a representative in 1991, was part of a group of female members of the House who marched across the Capitol plaza to demand that their own party give Hill a fair hearing. “But it is not surprising because our culture has not completely dealt with inequality between men and women.”

Washington now faces a test of what, if anything, was learned from the Thomas-Hill hearings that riveted a nation for a fall weekend almost exactly 27 years ago. Neither side emerged from that confirmation crucible happy about the process, and for some, the scar tissue remains deep.

Thomas and Hill both remain aggrieved a generation later, each feeling badly treated under the klieg lights. Republicans were excoriated for their cross-examination of Hill, and Democrats like Joe Biden, then the committee chairman, were blamed for not taking her seriously enough. Conservatives were embittered by what they considered a last-minute attack on their nominee.

Many of the same dynamics are playing out in the questions raised about Kavanaugh. “It’s déjà vu all over again,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan who led the confirmation fight for Thomas on behalf of President George Bush.

But one major difference is that this time race is not an issue as it was with Thomas, who angrily called the accusations against him “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”

Yet the proliferation of social media that did not exist in 1991 has added its own heightened effect.

“We’re seeing the same thing years later in a different modern era of communication,” said Tom Korologos, a longtime Washington lobbyist who helped Republican presidents during Supreme Court nominations, although not the battle over Thomas. “A lot is going to depend on how it plays. This is too close to the election for anybody to do anything wrong and take a chance.”

Ron Klain, who was the chief counsel for the Judiciary Committee Democrats at the time of the Thomas hearings, said that to avoid repeating mistakes, the panel should enlist a professional outside lawyer to question Kavanaugh and Blasey at a public hearing rather than have senators grill them.

There are a few players still involved from 1991. Senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah, both Republicans, were on the Judiciary Committee then as now. Back then, Hatch said Hill’s account struck him as “too contrived, too slick.” Today, he said Blasey might be “mixed up” and confused Kavanaugh with someone else.

There are some significant differences between the two situations. Thomas was accused of sexually harassing Hill in the workplace but not physically assaulting her. He was a senior official at two government agencies at the time of the alleged behavior, and she was his subordinate. Kavanaugh is accused of pinning Blasey to a bed, groping her, trying to remove her clothes and covering her mouth with his hand to muffle her screams while drunk at a party during high school. He was about 17 at the time, and she was about 15.

Neither Hill nor Blasey reported the episodes to the authorities at the time, but what has changed since 1991 is the default setting. Whether fairly or not, the burden of proof often seemed to lie with Hill in 1991, which outraged many who believed her account. Today, in the #MeToo moment, there is more of a presumption that women who come forward with accusations should be given the benefit of the doubt, which worries Kavanaugh’s friends who say he may be smeared unfairly.

Boxer said she thoroughly believes Blasey’s account. “The fact is that we know this woman is telling the truth in a case where the woman had everything to lose, tries to remain anonymous, didn’t want the publicity attached to her,” she said.

“Why can’t people step up after all these years?” Boxer asked. “If we do the same thing and rush to judgment when a credible woman is putting everything on the line for truth, shame on this country. There will be reverberations.”

Rep. Nita Lowey of New York was another of the Democratic women who stormed the Senate and demanded entrance to an ongoing meeting of Democratic senators to push the cause of Hill.

“Once again, you have a woman who is very credible and very serious allegations of sexual misconduct,” she said. “I would hope that men or women would listen to Dr. Ford’s accusations under oath and listen to Judge Kavanaugh under oath.”

President Donald Trump defended Kavanaugh today as “one of the finest people that I’ve ever known” who was investigated repeatedly by the FBI over the years for various government positions and “never had even a little blemish on his record.”

Former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., who was one of Thomas’ most prominent defenders, said that he sees a tragic repeat. “I just feel so terribly sorry for Kavanaugh and what he’s going through,” he said. “Here’s a man who’s had just a marvelous reputation as a human being and now it’s just being trashed. I felt the same way about Clarence.”

He added that the presumption of guilt has only grown since 1991. “With the #MeToo movement, it makes it even harder for him,” Danforth said. “It was bad enough for Clarence, but this is really going to be difficult.”

In one way, Trump and other Republicans approached this situation differently than in 1991 — careful, at least for now, not to directly challenge Blasey’s credibility and risk looking like they were attacking a victim of assault. Indeed, the message from Trump and congressional Republican leaders was that they wanted to hear from her, and they even agreed to a televised hearing.

Instead, Republicans focused on assailing Democrats for not bringing up the issue earlier and instead injecting it into the process only days before the Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote Thursday. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the majority leader, complained that Democrats did not raise the matter either in closed session or public hearings.

“But now — at the 11th hour, with committee votes on the schedule, after Democrats have spent weeks and weeks searching for any possible reason that the nomination should be delayed — now, they choose to introduce this allegation,” McConnell said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who was secretly contacted by Blasey in July, said she did not tell the rest of the panel at first because Blasey insisted on maintaining confidentiality. After word of her accusations surfaced last week, Blasey agreed to be identified in an interview published in The Washington Post and now says she would testify if asked.

One aspect of this fight that is strikingly different is the makeup of the Senate. During the Thomas hearings, there were only two female senators — Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., — and neither of them belonged to the all-male Judiciary Committee. Today, the Senate has 23 women — 17 Democrats and six Republicans — and four Democratic women serve on the Judiciary Committee.

The handling of the Thomas hearing, in fact, was instrumental in inspiring the so-called Year of the Woman with then record numbers of female candidates in 1992 — including Feinstein. Female voters angered by the treatment of Hill helped defeat some Democratic senators who voted for Thomas.

The California seat of Boxer, who did not run for re-election in 2016, has been taken over by Kamala Harris, a Democrat and the junior member of the Judiciary Committee who challenged multiple elements of Kavanaugh’s testimony during hearings at the beginning of September.

Democrats controlled the Senate in 1991 when Hill’s accusations became public only two days before the floor vote, but many Southern Democrats were leery of voting against Thomas, who would be only the second African-American justice to serve on the Supreme Court and had a compelling up-from-poverty life story.

Nonetheless, the White House counted 77 potential votes for Thomas before Hill’s accusations surfaced. He ultimately was confirmed with 52 votes.

Today’s Republicans do not enjoy nearly such a margin for error, holding just 51 seats and unable to count on Democrats to join them. Several Republicans are alienated from Trump and, unlike in 1991, the hearing will come only 43 days before an election.

“Senators are nervous already,” Korologos said. “We’re too dadgum close to an election.”