| Photo by L. Carper |
Alan Simpson Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by L. Carper |
Page 5 of 7
What I want to move into, having defined this environment where the press plays an important role, is two turning points in your career, which are the nominations of Bork and then the Clarence Thomas nomination. Where it wasn't just the press, but the way those nominations were handled, the quality of the public dialog about whether Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas should be raised to the Supreme Court. Tell us a little about that -- your role and your views of what happened.
Well the Bork thing was something I will never ever see again and I don't think the American public will. Now, whether you liked Bork or not, or whether you liked his beard or whether you felt whatever you felt about him, forget that if you can (and the American people can't). Robert Bork was on the federal court for five and a half years, and during that five and a half years he did 106 opinions that he scribbled the results. And not one of those was ever overturned by the Supreme Court. Six of his dissenting opinions in cases became the majority opinions of the United States Supreme Court. Now I call that one hell of a jurist. And before my eyes, they turned him into a gargoyle, a racist, a poll taxer, an invader of the bedroom, a sterilizer of women. The things from a Law Review article and from a distortion of a chemical case where the women were told that if they worked for that plant they might become sterile, and he upheld the decision that if a woman knew that she would lose, perhaps, a pregnancy by working, that she had that choice. He said that that's what America's about, even though that is repugnant to me. Things like that. And then he was gone. His wife was a former nun and she was just stunned. Mary Ellen was appalled, she was sick to her stomach. How could they do this? And I said, if I were you I'd go to the floor of the Senate and let at least forty people tell what a remarkable person you are, which he did, and he lost by sixty to forty.
Then along came Thomas. George Bush called me and said, "I'd like you to help get this man confirmed." And the woman head of NOW organization said, "We're going to 'Bork' him, too." And I said, "Over my dead body, lady." And then I got deeply into it, deeply. And that was the toughest part of anything in my public life. But you want to remember something and it's always something that gets a gasp: Anita Hill never charged Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment. Now people will look at you and say, "What do you mean you big fool?" No. She wanted us to be aware of his behavior, which was that apparently at Yale Law School on Saturday mornings they watched porn movies. We missed that in Laramie. I wish we could go back and reclaim our youth. And then he apparently would talk to her and others about bestiality and endowed silver men in the Coke cans, and all that stuff. And never once was she alleging "sexual harassment." And then Susan Horshner was the one pushing her because Susan realized that if he got on the bench that would be the end of Roe v. Wade. And I happen to be pro-choice so that wasn't an issue. I've always been pro-choice. But the committee couldn't do anything. We should have gone into executive session and if we'd done that they would have pulled the temple down around our ears.
And you really got into hot water for some of the things that you said which, at one level, is just sort of your Western frankness.
Well, yeah it got me in trouble because I'd practiced law and they kept talking and finally I said, "Wait a minute. I've had a person in my office for two years to handle sexual harassment cases. I don't have to get this lecture and I'm tired of this sexual harassment crap because that's not what's being alleged." Well I was cutting it thin but that's exactly the truth. And then, I had letters saying that she was an incompetent teacher and a b----. And there they were, they were signed and they said, "You can use this as an affidavit." And the media would not accept it. And I said, "Well I'm just going to go put it in the Congressional Record. I don't have to take all this crap." So I did. And the woman lawyer called and said, "Oh, I hoped you wouldn't do that." And I said, "Lady, with the crap I've been taking ..." And then an affidavit from a law firm which said they'd passed her over the second time simply because she was incompetent. I put that in the record, along with a bunch of other junk.
But it's interesting stuff: when you lose your sense of humor you can get hammered pretty hard. I did. I decked Peter Arnett.* I couldn't figure how a guy can be put to bed at night by the enemy government and then be on television the next day.
Let's talk about that incident. From what your book says, you decided later that you had made a mistake. What was the mistake, and what did you learn from that experience?
I could have spared the word and not called him a "sympathizer." I should have called him a "dupe." And that was my mistake. Because when you take on one of theirs like Peter Arnett, who's very popular with his peers, boy, they ate my lunch. I'd been the toast of the town, but the same guys really laid me low. Like "Simpson is McCarthy" and savage and evil and toadying. It's all in there [in the book]. But I'd just grown up in the war as a kid and watched Edward R. Murrow and Ernie Pyle and those people and figured you didn't report on a war from the enemy country and then go on television after you'd been bedded down with them for the night. You were up in the hills with your binoculars or something like that. It would have been much more heroic.
One of your endearing qualities is this frankness/humor. I'm curious -- the platform, the studio of Washington, so to speak, must pose a particular problem for somebody like you in the sense that the media often can't pick up on the irony or the humor that's implicit in what you're saying. Has that been a problem?
No. I was always who I was, (except when I wasn't), and the one that could be puzzling was when I really did get tired and I got savage. That was reacting to Peter Arnett particularly. I didn't have to do that one, that was all self-induced. But the reason it kept coming back to me was that I think, in my 18 years, I bet I didn't have six press conferences where I called them. And the ones I called were about immigration. The journalists get awfully tired of a politician who's calling a press conference a week to put a picture on how they're beating up a Sony television with a sledge hammer or drawing a pie on the ground to show who's getting what, or marching somewhere, and the media thinks, "Who is this jerk who doesn't legislate? He doesn't do anything, just looking for some kind of coverage." And so I never did that. And yet I was in demand and did every show that ever played. And as I say, MacNeill-Lehrer I must have done 40 times if I did once. You had to bring your own brains and you've got 20 minutes to explain yourself. I loved that. I did Nightline with Ted Koppel, delightful man. I did Meet the Press and all the rest of them. And it was fun. And it's ego, good you know. But I never tried to sandbag them and I think they appreciated that, because there's so many politicians that just love to get the media in the room and then the guys in the media look at each other and think, "Holy smokes, why did we have to even show up for this jerk? This is impossible." And then trying to trick them, get them to report something the other way. I didn't spend much time. I often had to do press conferences as assistant leader, but I didn't call those. Bob would say, "You handle that, Al," or "You take that one today." So I think they trusted me and knew that I wasn't trying to manipulate them. And I didn't.
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