Word: guiniers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that soul baring was not enough, Clinton continued the confessional at a White House dinner. "It was the hardest decision I've had to make since I became President," he reportedly told guests. "I love her," he said of Guinier, a 20-year friend of the Clintons. "If she called me and told me she needed $5,000, I'd take it from my account and send it to her, no questions asked...
...dust himself off and get started again, he finds a new hole in the floor to fall through. With an approval rating of just 36%, a record low for a postwar President four months into his first term, Clinton could not afford the spectacle of last week's Lani Guinier mess. He has begun to stumble with a certain farcical rhythm, this being the third time (after Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood) he has dropped an esteemed female lawyer he had nominated or considered for a Justice Department post. This time the Administration's relative inaction in the face...
Worst of all, the episode lent a cartoonish, surreal quality to Clinton's desperate scramble to reposition himself as a man of the middle rather than the tax-and-spend liberal that a majority of Americans now suspect him to be. While Clinton might have felt compelled to dump Guinier under any circumstances, the move, coming at a time of presidential image overhaul, looked like some kind of Faustian political bargain. Clinton not only dumped an old friend but in doing so also dismissed the views of his folk-hero Attorney General, Janet Reno, and in the same stroke managed...
...postmortem assessment of the Guinier episode, many wondered how the Administration could have failed to learn from the Baird and Wood experiences. In the search for someone to blame, some pointed fingers at White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who cleared Guinier as well as the two previous failed candidates. A senior aide said there might have been an assumption that the Clintons were familiar with Guinier's record because she had been a friend of theirs since they had attended Yale Law School together...
...right-wing opposition to her nomination gathered force, the Administration tended to dismiss the criticism as no serious threat to confirmation. At that point, however, the White House would have needed to mount a concerted campaign to get Senate support for Guinier or cut her loose quickly. But the White House, distracted by troubles with its budget package, dithered. The Administration failed even to introduce Guinier to Senators, a job black lawyer and former Transportation Secretary William Coleman took upon himself to do. Such neglect hardened Guinier's resolve and sense of independence. By the time Clinton realized Guinier...