Word: bairds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...BAIRD DID NOT NEED President Clinton or anyone else to tell her that her career as the nation's chief law officer was over before it ever got started. When her grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee ended last Thursday at 9:30 p.m., she retired to the Washington law office of her friend and mentor, Lloyd Cutler, at 24th and M streets. Over coffee and sandwiches, an exhausted but clear-headed Baird rehashed her day with a group that would include her husband Paul Gewirtz, Cutler, fellow fortysomething lawyer Terrence Adamson and Secretary of State Warren Christopher...
...decision climaxed a 29-day ordeal that secured Baird's place in the history books as the Clinton Administration's first major setback. As hard a comedown as it was for the talented Connecticut lawyer who stood to become America's first female Attorney General, it was a greater embarrassment for Clinton. The episode showed Clinton and his aides acting hastily, naively and cavalierly in brushing aside Baird's early warning that she had employed two undocumented Peruvians in her home. When the pieces of the shattered nomination are fitted together, Baird's civil infraction appears less careless than...
...some ways, the Baird nomination was troubled from the start. The first indications from Bill and Hillary Clinton were that they wanted to appoint Vernon Jordan to the Attorney General's post. A flurry of press articles questioning Jordan's ties to a tobacco company, capped by a searing editorial in the New York Times, persuaded Jordan to remove his name from consideration. Aides then leaked word that Clinton sought a female appointee -- a move that in effect devalued the post to affirmative-action status...
...that followed. Clinton's first choice, Federal Appeals Court Judge Patricia Wald, declined the nomination, citing her age and reluctance to lose her pension benefits. The name of former Federal Judge Shirley Hufstedler was floated next. National Public Radio then reported that Washington lawyer Brooksley Born had been tapped. Baird and her husband first met the Clintons at an annual New Year's Renaissance Week at Hilton Head, South Carolina, some years earlier. But it wasn't until she was summoned late last year to Little Rock, initially to be vetted for the post of White House counsel, that...
...easy explanation: her strong probusiness credentials. And if they could push through her nomination, the conservatives would have a large chit to call in from the new Administration. The Democrats on the committee, however, were caught in a painful bind. After the Anita Hill debacle, they desperately wanted the Baird confirmation to go smoothly. They also did not want to embarrass the new President. But after so many tainted Attorneys General, they were determined to confirm someone with an unblemished record...