Remember Lani Guinier? In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton nominated her for assistant attorney general for civil rights. She was born to the post, a brilliant, eloquent law scholar, the daughter of a Jewish mother and Jamaican father, then a University of Pennsylvania law professor. Guinier was then, as she is now, elegantly adept at explaining complicated political conundrums -- like how to fairly represent minorities in a majority-ruled culture. (We could use her right now in Iraq, as a matter of fact.)
But instead of enduring confirmation hearings and serving her country, Lani Guinier was subjected to a barrage of right-wing distortions of her law review articles in various frothing editorials. She was, subsequently, labeled a "quota queen." Bill Clinton, already securely in office, might have done well to stand firmly in her corner. He might have at least have allowed Guinier to defend herself. Instead, Guinier watched in shock as Clinton withdrew her nomination on television -- before her told her.
Guinier writes about this with astonishing generosity in her memoir, Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice. I read the book a decade ago, but I was moved and outraged by it, and satisfied that I had never cast a vote for Bill Clinton, despite the alternatives. And it suddenly struck me watching tonight's debate, listening to Hillary Clinton's sanctimonious pandering about how she'd march right out of Reverend Wright's church, heavily pancaked chin held high, that this is what the Clinton's do: They stay with people as long as they're politically convenient. The minute they cause trouble, they're gone.
Examples of this Clintonite phenomenon, from Kimba Wood to Zoe Baird to Jocelyn Elders and beyond, abound.
Obama, on the other hand, is a coalition-builder. He sometimes allies himself with people who disagree with him, on both sides of the lines, sometimes passionately. He knows that building coalitions, as he has done since his 20s, means listening to, tolerating, and joining forces with people who in other contexts you may find odious. This is how social change happens, folks; this is how revolution happens: You form a united front. And sometimes your allies have views you despise. (For instance, I worked for INFACT in the 1980s, and was horrified that they opposed reproductive choice. But it was more important that they opposed the arms buildup.)
Anyway, Guinier wasn't even so bad. As she herself pointed out, George Will agreed with her ideas in theory, as she later wrote:
George Will wrote: "The Framers also understood that stable, tyrannical majorities can best be prevented by the multiplication of minority interests, so the majority at any moment will be just a transitory coalition of minorities." In my law review articles I had expressed exactly the same reservations about unfettered majority rule, about the need sometimes to disaggregate the majority to ensure fair and effective representation for minority interests.
She wasn't so bad, but she wasn't politically convenient. So he dumped her. She later became the first African-American woman to achieve a tenured position at Harvard Law School.
Yeah, I'm sure Hillary Clinton -- her eyes darting this way and that, her deep inhales and long gazes about the room -- would have repudiated anyone like Reverend Wright long ago. But I'm not sure that makes her the kind of person that can put this democracy right.
As for the debate tonight: I was so proud of Obama for invoking that "baking cookies" line. It reminded me that I used to love Hillary Clinton. I can't imagine that anymore. When she said tonight that she had built an impressive coalition (or something like that) in her campaign, I laughed out loud.