The Thomas episode is worth recalling, heading into the Ashcroft hearings, because Ashcroft, like Thomas, uses a story of heartland integrity to disguise troubling questions both about his idiosyncratic conservative extremism and his ethical shortcomings. Indeed, the Thomas hearings in some respect are a model for the Ashcroft confirmation fight already underway.

Republicans had already been savaged by the Supreme Court confirmation process, when the Democrats defeated Judge Robert Bork in 1987. The fight over Bork linked Washington civil-liberties lobbyists with extensive grass-roots constituencies outside the Beltway -- labor, civil rights groups and reproductive-rights activists. And the prospect of future "Borkings" of nominees with extensive far-right track records led to a series of "stealth" nominations by Reagan and Bush. Indeed, one John Ashcroft, then governor of Missouri, was rejected by President Bush for a midterm vacancy in the attorney general post because he was thought to be too polarizing a figure.

So when Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in the summer of 1991, it seemed a singularly shrewd political move -- replacing outgoing Justice Thurgood Marshall with a conservative African-American. Yet despite Thomas' race, there was much about his record that could have provided fodder for shrewd senators -- alliances and writings nearly as provocative as Ashcroft's Southern Partisan interview or Bob Jones speech.

Thomas was on the editorial board of a fiercely anti-civil-rights journal. His close friends included paid lobbyists for South Africa's apartheid government. He praised anti-abortion articles. He'd written in opposition to the minimum wage. He also came to those hearings -- well before Hill's allegations surfaced -- with a long and documented history of dissembling, on everything from his troubles as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to his own sister, whom he falsely described as foundering on welfare.

Had Democrats pursued those questions, Anita Hill's allegations might have seemed less crucial. Yet among the Judiciary Committee's Democrats, only Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois and Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio -- both regarded as left-wing cranks by the media -- bothered to press Thomas on such keys to his character. Instead, before Anita Hill surfaced, committee chair Joseph Biden led Thomas down long, meandering walks through the doctrine of "natural law" that Thomas was said to subscribe to -- arguments that went nowhere and failed to captivate either senators or the public.

And after Hill's charge of sexual harassment went public, the situation went from bad to worse. Judiciary Republicans Orrin Hatch and Arlen Specter went on the attack against Hill. Democrats, meanwhile, mounted no comparable line of inquiry against Thomas or defense of Hill. As Sen. Simon later recalled, "One side had advocates, the others did not ... [Democrats] did not sit back and ask ourselves what was happening, in terms of public perception, and how we might deal with that."

In the end, the Senate confirmed Thomas by a 52-48 margin. Two Republicans opposed him, and 11 Democrats voted for him. Weeks later, he was sworn in as the 106th justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

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