Word: guiniers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Americans want their president to stand for something and be willing to fight for it--qualities Clinton has not yet demonstrated adequately (witness Lani Guinier, Bosnia, Haiti and the unsatisfactorily-resolved issue of gays in the military). But it will suffice if Clinton stands for health security and affordability; he need not stand for anything as specific as health alliances, insurance pools or price ceilings...
...case of Lani Guinier is slightly different. Her writings, far from being overly vivid, were downright obtuse. But in them she presented some novel ideas for minority representation in a democracy. When Clinton killed her nomination for head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, Guinier warned against "a new intellectual orthodoxy, in which thoughtful people can no longer debate provocative ideas without denying the country their talents as public servants...
This echoes Robert Bork's complaint in 1987 that his rejection by the Senate would cause potential Supreme Court nominees to avoid leaving a paper trail. But there is a key difference. President Reagan chose Bork precisely because of his paper trail of radical views. President Clinton chose Guinier as an experienced civil rights litigator. There was no danger the tentative academic / musings in Guinier's writings would become locked into policy, even if she had wanted them to. Guinier was doomed for her thinking, not for anything she might actually have done in the job -- a classic p.c. exercise...
...appointments also signifies a lack or organization. Why, after such problems sprang from the nominations of Zoe Baird and Judge Kimba Wood for Attorney General, didn't the Clinton team scrutinize its next choices more? If the press could find Stephen Breyer's "Zoe Baird Problem" and Lani Guinier's inflammatory writings within a week of the release of their names, why couldn't Clinton & Co.? The public's disillusionment with the president could come from his snatch-and-grab appointments as much as his programs...
From the first, White House aides have made it known to Reno's aides that they consider it important that top Justice appointees should be loyal to the President, not to the Attorney General. Of 13 principal aides, including Guinier, only four so far can be clearly identified as Reno's picks. Many were in the pipeline before Reno was selected. Webb Hubbell, the Associate Attorney General, is Hillary Clinton's former law partner and President Clinton's frequent golf partner. But Hubbell swears loyalty to Reno, and they have become fast friends in a very short time. Hubbell says...