In my new Confirmation Tales post, I take a closer look at George W. Bush’s terrible renomination of Clinton recess-appointee Roger Gregory—and especially at the role that freshman conservative Republican senator George Allen played in pressing Bush to renominate Gregory. An excerpt:
The deeper blame for the Gregory nomination lies not with Bush but with the newly elected conservative Republican senator from Virginia, George Allen. Allen defeated the Democratic incumbent Chuck Robb in November 2000. Upon taking his Senate seat, Allen immediately embraced the cause of getting Gregory confirmed to a lifetime position on the Fourth Circuit. On January 25, 2001, he devoted his maiden speech in the Senate to Gregory’s confirmation….
Why was Allen pushing for Gregory?
The most obvious answer is that Allen was already thinking about his re-election campaign six years later and that he wanted to defuse criticism of his record on race as governor of Virginia in the mid-1990s. Gregory was not only African American; he was also the longtime friend and law partner of Douglas Wilder, the first African American governor of Virginia and Allen’s immediate predecessor. Wilder and Gregory co-founded the law firm of Wilder & Gregory in 1982.
If you’ve forgotten, or are too young ever to have known of, the “Macaca moment” that destroyed Allen’s very promising political career, you might find this post of special interest.
Roger Gregory’s judicial career should have ended when his recess appointment expired in 2001. More than two decades later, we’re still paying a steep price for Allen’s blunder.
Among the lessons to draw from this episode:
Home-state senators will often have their own self-serving reasons for supporting bad judicial nominees. Especially when they are of the same party as the president, they can put the president in a difficult box.
No naive deed goes unpunished.
No Republican will ever win the goodwill of the liberal media.
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