What Clarence Thomas thinks of Joe Biden

A couple of days back I quoted from Ted Sorensen's memoirs, citing his opinion that in a town full of hypocrites there was no one in Washington quite like Joe Biden.

A few readers advised me that Clarence Thomas had exactly the same experience. And they were right. Here is the story from Justice Thomas:

Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech that I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said: “ ‘I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would . . . strike down laws restricting property right.’ ”

That caught me off guard, and I had no recollection of making so atypical a statement, which shook me up even more. “Now, it would seem to me what you were talking about,” Senator Biden went on to say, “is you find attractive the fact that they are activists and they would like to strike down existing laws that impact on restricting the use of property rights, because you know, that is what they write about.”

Since I didn’t remember making the statement in the first place, I didn’t know how to respond to it. All I could say in reply was that “it has been quite some time since I have read Professor Macedo. . . . But I don’t believe that in my writings I have indicated that we should have an activist Supreme Court or that we should have any form of activism on the Supreme Court.”

It was, I knew, a weak answer. Fortunately, though, the young lawyers who had helped prepare me for the hearings had loaded all of my speeches into a computer, and at the first break in the proceedings they looked this one up.

The senator, they found, had wrenched my words out of context. I looked at the text of my speech and saw that the passage he’d read out loud had been immediately followed by two other sentences: “But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy.”

The point I’d been making was the opposite of the one that Senator Biden claimed I had made.

Throughout my life I’ve often found truth embedded in the lyrics of my favorite records. At Yale, for example, I’d listened often to “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” a song by the Undisputed Truth that warns of the dangers of trusting the hypocrites who “pretend to be your friend” while secretly planning to do you wrong.

Now I knew I’d met one of them: Senator Biden’s smooth, insincere promises that he would treat me fairly were nothing but talk. Instead of relaxing, I’d have to keep my guard up.

I am enjoying these. Anybody else got any Biden stories?

Comments

[JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO]

If there is anyone in Washington with poorer taste and abilities than Biden, it is Thomas.

Why would you quote this pathetic man?

His ridiculous speech about "a high-tech lynching" surely set an all-time record for self-indulgent crap.

Had he really felt that way, he would have withdrawn, but he did not, and he has quietly continued one of the most undistinguished careers in the Court's modern history.

[Beau]

I have watched Biden in action over the years on c-span and other cable outlets. I have always had the impression that he is a partisan, pompous, arrogant jackass. In the interest of disclosure, I am a conservative. However, there are some liberals I can respect as simply having a different point of view. Biden is not among them. As a politician he is often incendiary. Geez even political commentators paid to be controversial are not always as incendiary as he is. I think he was picked by Obama to be an attack dog as much as anything. Otherwise Obama could have picked someone with similar experience to Biden but not so overtly partisan.

[Paul Miller]

Clarence Thomas. This is a man who got to go to Yale BECAUSE he was black but who is opposed to Affirmative Action. His explanation? That he is bitter about having been admitted to Yale on a minority quota basis because he'll never be able to say he did it purely on merit. That sounds like an honest statement. It also makes him a cad. So who cares what he thinks about Biden?

[Adam]

Lawyer upset about being asked aggressive, misleading and out-of-context question.

How my heart bleeds.

[FRabelais]

You have totally missed the point of what Thomas was saying, though to be fair Thomas probably missed the point as well. Biden was tough. He was not going to give the candidate a free ride. As it was, he discovered that Thomas did not even remember his own remarks and rulings. Thomas has in the end been an embarassment to everyone involved in the Supreme Court -- he is not very smart or honest with even himfself -- and his memoirs show why.