Passion for Specter

by Michael Sklaroff

In four consecutive terms as United States Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter has accommodated himself — time and again — to the ambiguities of being a liberal Democrat-turned-Republican perennially running for survival in a state that (between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh) is largely conservative and rural. He has never been a convincing Republican and much of his funding base is largely urban and suburban, liberal and Democratic. The result is a public Arlen rushing about the stage in relentless pursuit of the moving spotlight, and a private Arlen that occasionally dares peek out from behind the curtains.

His autobiography, Passion for Truth, exposes Arlen Specter — who recently announced plans to run again — as kin to those larger-than-life Shakespearian characters who are conscious of their own playacting: peel away the layers of performance, and little remains. The private Arlen Specter speaks with warmth of his life as a boy in Russell, KS (home of another national figure, Bob Dole) and with deep affection for his parents, brother and sister. Specter’s quoting of family conversations in Yiddish adds a warmth to the remembrances of family life, and will come as a pleasant surprise to those who do not know him. But the mameloshen (i.e., the mother tongue) is difficult to harmonize with the lilting Midwestern twang, stylized syntax and formal body language of the public Arlen.

So who is the real Arlen? As Specter himself would say, "Let’s look at the record." In his early years as assistant district attorney and district attorney in Philadelphia beginning in 1966, Arlen Specter was brilliant and fearless. He helped reform a legal and political system that badly needed it. His deputies and assistants were the best and brightest. Specter laid waste the rogue’s gallery of Damon Runyan characters that populated the now-defunct Philadelphia magistrate system. He helped overturn Pennsylvania’s Muncy Act, which imposed indeterminate sentences on women convicted of crimes. His effective prosecution of the leaders of Teamsters Local 107 brought him to the attention of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was waging a national fight against labor racketeering. No star rose higher than Specter’s.

Appointment to the Warren Commission investigation staff must have been heady wine for the young prosecutor. In the book Specter revels in the controversy surrounding the inquiry and his own role in pressing for more extensive investigation. He marshals facts and recounts anecdotes, and defends the single bullet "conclusion," albeit unconvincingly. One cannot help but conclude that the tidy (and highly political) denouement of the investigation, intended to assuage the apprehension of America, was a total failure: the "single-bullet theory" became a national joke and rendered Arlen Specter the subject of ridicule.

In his drive for public office he has displayed extraordinary capacity for rejection (defeated by Jim Tate in a close mayoral race and by Emmett Fitzpatrick in his bid for re-election as district attorney) and willingness to make political capital of whatever came his way. What else would explain his relentless pursuit of prominent Philadelphia businessmen on hypertechnical white collar criminal charges ultimately thrown out by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court or his chairing of the Pennsylvania chapter of Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President in 1972? When finally elected to the Senate in l980 in a narrow victory in the Reagan landslide (he concedes no coattail effect), Arlen Specter finally entered upon a stage worthy of his ambition. He quickly adapted to senatorial courtesies, but found himself torn between the demands of his party and the requisites of electability. As he wistfully quotes Jack Kennedy: "sometimes party asks too much."

Specter has played a leading role in the Judiciary Committee. He was clever enough to entangle the hapless (and arrogant) Robert Bork, Reagan’s nominee to the Supreme Court to replace retiring justice Lewis Powell, in a web of apparent contradictions on Supreme Court decisions, including the seminal Marbury v. Madison, which established the very doctrine of judicial review. Specter proclaimed on the Senate floor that he was voting against Judge Bork because of "substantial doubt as to how he would apply fundamental principles of constitutional law." This seems a principled conclusion, except when examined in the light of Specter’s later support of Judge Clarence Thomas. While Specter acknowledged Thomas’ disdain for Congress, judicial activism bordering on the radical and loose adherence to stare decisis, he was willing to accept Thomas’ statement under oath that he would follow congressional intent. He made no similar allowance for Robert Bork.

The nomination of an anti-affirmative-action African-American judge of little experience to the Supreme Court (and one who had personally benefitted from affirmative action) was a travesty to civil rights leaders such as the distinguished Senior Judge A. Leon Higgenbotham. Cast by Judiciary Committee Republicans in the role of Grand Inquisitor of Anita Hill, Arlen Specter willingly accepted. While Senator Ted Kennedy, constrained by his own personal history, remained largely in the wings, and Chairman Joseph Biden cast himself as even-handed statesman above the fray, Specter took center stage. His very opening lines (not cited in the book) rang false: "Thank you, Mr Chairman. Professor Hill, I have been asked to question you by Senator Thurmond, the ranking Republican, but I do not regard this as an adversary proceeding."

Thomas, former head of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, believed the employee should bear the burden of proof in employment discrimination cases. Specter disagreed with Thomas on this issue. Yet, when it came to Anita Hill, where Thomas was employer and Hill subordinate, Specter disregarded the dynamics of the workplace and attacked her credibility because she hadn’t cut off a personal relationship with Judge Thomas, her mentor. "Why maintain that kind of a cordial association in the face of this kind of conduct [sexual harassment]?" The answer to this question was obvious to anyone who understood the realities of employment and the need for mentors, especially for minority women (including the millions of viewers, men as well as women, who watched his cross-examination of Anita Hill).

It got worse. Specter almost paid the supreme political price when challenged in 1992 by Lynn Yeakel in her first campaign outing. The Anita Hill backlash proved so great that Yeakel came within 3 percent of unseating Specter. Among the negatives thrown at Yeakel by the Specter campaign was a charge of anti-Semitism, based solely upon her refusal to repudiate past remarks by the pastor of her church.

In order to repair self-inflicted damage suffered in his examination of Anita Hill, Specter seized the opportunity in early 1998 to champion an African-American woman nominated by President Clinton for appointment to the federal district court in Philadelphia. Judge Frederica Massiah-Jackson (now President Judge, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court) was a city trial judge known in the law enforcement community for leniency in criminal cases and unpredictable demeanor on the bench. Specter deftly stoked the flames of controversy, and used what was to become a racial issue to his political advantage. While citing the Philadelphia Bar Association’s conclusion that the criticisms of the judge were unfair, he curiously pulls up shy of expressing his own views. And he fails to mention that at least one of his former deputies had advised him months before of problems with the nomination.

Specter has enjoyed the international stage. Truth be told, Arlen Specter’s recurrent junkets to Arab capitals do not seem to have been productive. Some of these capers seem to send up those madcap Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "road" movies: his bonding with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on the eve of the Gulf War; inviting Hafez al-Assad to visit a Philadelphia-area shopping mall (and insisting on a "photo op" with Assad in Damascus for Specter’s domestic constituents); and, in a 1999 meeting in Cairo with Egyptian President Mubarak, calling an "impeachable offense" Bill Clinton’s "bad taste" in his relationship with Monica Lewinsky (Why say it? Why print it?). The chapter devoted to these episodes could better have been titled "Kibitzing in Araby." The Framers of the Constitution were wise to place responsibility for foreign policy in the Executive Branch.

The Clinton impeachment — he terms it "the greatest trial in the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence" — gave Arlen Specter yet another chance to step into the limelight. Ninety-nine other senators understood what was proven; ninety-nine senators knew the consequences; and 99 senators had information sufficient to make up their minds. Yet Specter alone voted "not proven" (a verdict he plucked from the Scottish legal system). Specter’s quarrel was that over his objections the Senate rejected a full-blown hearing with live witnesses. Instead of the artful dodge "not proven," however, Specter should have joined his colleagues and squarely addressed the merits.

Specter has often proved willing — even eager — to play the zealot in unjust causes (and is this not his tragic flaw?) in order to survive in the political theater (and is this not his gift?). By the time of his flame-out in the 1996 presidential primary, however, he proved himself but a shooting star in the firmament of national Republican politics. One wonders whether our history — and his — would have been different if, instead of concluding that a single bullet killed President Kennedy, the youthful Arlen Specter had decided ("on this record," as he likes to say) that neither one bullet nor two bullets had been "proven." Notwithstanding a measure of good works and extraordinary skills, his theatrics have left even his admirers wondering whether, in the words of one of his former deputy district attorneys, there is any "there" there.

Michael Sklaroff is a Philadelphia lawyer, and an Arlen Specter watcher since the early 1970s. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (650 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper news editor, 123 Chestnut St., Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.