Booknotes

PAUL SIMON, AUTHOR, "ADVICE AND CONSENT": There was a book by Allen Drury, "Advise and Consent," not quite the same, and we have a subtitle on ours. I felt too uncomfortable. It was too close to the other title. But as you know, authors don't choose the titles to their books. The other thing I found out that I did not know is that book titles are not copyrighted, so that I could write a book and call it "Gone With the Wind," and it is perfectly legal to do so. I don't think it should be, but that's the reality today.

SIMON: One letter and, of course, the Constitution says advice and consent. Strictly speaking, this is the phrase from the Constitution, though the Senate advises. We advise, even though that's not the word in the Constitution.

SIMON: This is my 13th.

SIMON: The first one was written in 1964.

SIMON: I was elected to the state legislature and went to the state historical library and said I'd like to get a book about Lincoln's years in the state legislature. They said there is no such book. I didn't believe them. I went through all the Lincoln books. There was nothing. I wrote to Carl Sandburg and Allan Nevins, who were then the big Lincoln historians, and said, "You ought to write a book about Lincoln's years in the state legislature." They wrote back to me and said, "You ought to write a book about it," and I did, so I've been writing books ever since.

SIMON: On an old Royal typewriter. That's correct.

SIMON: I wrote every word in that book. Well, obviously I have quotes in there, but that is my product. It is not ghost-written.

SIMON: The purpose is to give some perspective, so that we can learn from what has happened in our history. I think that your viewers would agree, whichever side they were on, that the Clarence Thomas hearing did not go as well as it should have. The Robert Bork hearing did not. How can we in the Senate do better? What does history show us? How can the president do better? What does history show us?

SIMON: Well, I was thinking about it as I was going through, preparing myself for the two hearings -- and more than these two hearings. I had asked about having a book that does basically what this does, and then frankly, the publisher, Joel Joseph of National Press Books, came to me and suggested it. The combination of his suggestion and a low-level interest in doing this combined, and I went ahead and did it.

SIMON: That's correct.

SIMON: Trying to see what had happened and also to illustrate that the fights that we have had, while they're different because they're on national television and national radio, but we've gone through these fights over and over again. When Ulysses Grant nominated George Williams to be chief justice, there were financial scandals involved. We didn't have televised hearings, obviously, in Ulysses Grant's day, but we have through our history rejected one out of five Supreme Court nominees -- one out of four in the last century -- and as you look at it, we should have rejected more. But by and large, the process has worked. The Senate has done a pretty good job in screening candidates. We've let some through that shouldn't have gone through, but those who wrote our Constitution in 1787 really knew what they were doing when they set up the process.

SIMON: It was just a half a century ago. When you say the Senate watched it, that's literally what it means. On the floor of the Senate we did not permit reporters or the public to see the debate on a Supreme Court nominee because the feeling was that we would speak more candidly. Well, obviously what happened was the reports leaked out, and so finally that was opened. Then the Judiciary Committee hearings were opened. We just gradually turned around, and the process now in terms of being open is a good one with one exception that I mention in the book, and that is when there is a serious charge like sexual harassment. Then I think we should have a closed-door session where the senators are not playing to the television cameras, where we seek the truth and then report to the Senate. I use this example in the book, and that is, let's say that we have a nominee for the court, and someone says, "This person 10 years ago embezzled $100,000." Do we immediately go on national television with that, or do we have a closed-door hearing and get the FBI to investigate and then make a judgment there and report to the Senate? I think in that kind of a situation, where there is a serious charge, that ought to be closed until at some point we open it and report to the Senate. But everything else -- what their beliefs are on church-state relations, on the abortion issue, on capital punishment, you name it -- those ought to be opened to the public.

SIMON: I was on the floor of the Senate. I think this was two days before our vote in committee. I say I "think" because in retrospect all of these things became much more significant than they seemed at the time. Senator [Ted] Kennedy mentioned to me just as I was leaving the Senate floor -- he said, "There is a woman who has made a charge of sexual harassment." And then, I think it was the next morning, Senator [Joseph] Biden cornered Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama and Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and myself and said he had received this charge -- an affidavit -- from a woman, he had asked the FBI to check it out, but that the woman wanted to keep it confidential. All three of us agreed that he had handled it properly.

SIMON: Well, getting the three of us in a clump might be a little unusual, but we will occasionally have charges made against someone because it is not uncommon that we'll have a nominee for a federal judicial spot up and he was a lawyer on another side for someone, or whatever the charge is, someone comes up with a charge probably two-thirds of the time, or maybe higher, without any substance due. But we learn about it, we keep these things confidential, and when an investigation shows there is no substance to it, we forget about it and the public doesn't know about it.

SIMON: In the committee.

SIMON: We had the hearings on Clarence Thomas. We divided the Clarence Thomas thing. We didn't know we were dividing it at the time, but it was divided into the pre-Anita Hill portion, and we had the vote at the end of that, and then about 10 days later, then we had the Anita Hill portion of the hearing.

SIMON: Yes. I think as individual members of the Senate we should not rush to judgment whether we're for or against a nominee until all the evidence comes in. It's a very easy thing. Clarence Thomas came in with Senator Danforth into my office and into a majority of offices in the Senate. He's a very likable person and we have a high regard for Jack Danforth, and so it's an easy thing to say, "I'll be with you," or to get on the floor and make a statement saying, "I'm for Clarence Thomas," because public opinion polls were clearly in support of him, as they were throughout the whole thing.

SIMON: That is correct. I voted against him when he was up for renomination for chairmanship of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. It was clear to me that he had not tried to live up to what the law required, and so I voted against his renomination. Then he was up for the appellate court, and I felt he had the basic ability to be a good judge, though there was some talk at the time that he might become a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. I said at the time I was not at all sure I would vote for him for the United States Supreme Court if he should be nominated.

SIMON: I was pretty sure at that point. When he first came in, I was not sure. I had concerns on the basis of what he had done at the EEOC. But I chair the subcommittee on Africa, and on the way back from Africa -- I had plenty of time flying from South Africa to Washington, D.C. -- I read some 800 pages of his opinions and speeches he had written and some other things, and I was pretty well set, while I didn't make any announcement, on voting against him at that point.

SIMON: I did nothing other than I told two key members of my staff, Susan Kaplan and John Krisvenia, and I said, "This has to be treated in confidence." They're the two on my Judiciary Committee staff. I said, "This has to be treated in confidence. There is a woman who has made a sexual harassment charge, and you should be aware of it in case you pick up other things." Then Susan came in and said, "The woman who is making this charge wants to talk to you on the phone," and she told me that Anita Hill wanted to talk to me. I don't even know if at that point I'd heard her name before. I called her, even though obviously as a member of the Senate you cannot return most phone calls. I called her really to find out, is she a person of substance or is she kind of off the wall?

I came away first with the feeling that she was a person of substance who was really struggling with this thing. She asked me whether I had read the affidavit, and I said no, I had not. She wanted me to do so. She also asked me if I would distribute it to all the members of the Senate and keep her name and the information confidential. I said there is no way you can distribute that to 100 senators and keep it confidential. I said, "You have to make a very difficult decision whether to go public on this or not, and it will so change your life that I don't want to advise you one way or another on whether or not you should go public." But clearly she was struggling. She felt the committee and the senators ought to know the information. She did not want to surface publicly on the matter.

SIMON: I do not know, and that's a question if you get Anita Hill on the program sometime, you'll have to ask her.

SIMON: Yes, and I'm more specific on it. Boyden Gray, the counsel to the president, is very clear because he told several reporters this, that I was the person who leaked the information. I first knew of the charge -- John McLaughlin has his show, and in the middle of his show he said, "I've learned from the White House that they believe Paul Simon is the person who leaked the story." I called John immediately after I heard it.

SIMON: Yes, only John was the one who said it. When I heard about it -- I didn't happen to watch that show -- I called him and I said, "I'm not the person who leaked it. I don't know who did, but I just don't operate that way." And then, of course, we had a Senate investigation where the person hired worked for the FBI and made a report to the Senate. I'm making it fairly clear that I was not the person, and some people have hinted at who the person -- some magazines have printed the name, as a matter of fact. But the report itself did not name the person.

SIMON: That is correct.

SIMON: You mean that it was going public or that I first heard the information?

SIMON: I first heard the information about 10 days or 12 days prior to that, because we voted, as I recall, on a Friday, and that would have been a Friday 10 days before that Sunday, and the previous Wednesday or so I first heard about the charge.

SIMON: Yes.

SIMON: That is correct. I might add, and this was one of the reasons that the White House pointed to me. I think another was I'm a journalist by background, and they thought, well, this is kind of a natural. But in the committee we voted 7 to 7 on the motion to send his name out favorably. Then the vote was to report him out without recommendation, and the vote on that was 13 to l. I was the one who voted against sending him out without recommendation. I always vote against that motion, whether it's on a bill or it's on a nominee. I think the committees ought to function, and if the majority of the committee doesn't believe a bill or a person is meritorious, then the name shouldn't go to the floor of the Senate.

SIMON: I was at a Board of Regents meeting and a college homecoming combination at a small, liberal arts college in Nebraska that I attended, Dana College in Nebraska. When my wife was with me, we checked into the motel, and there was a message, "Nina Totenberg is trying to reach you." This is on the Friday before the Sunday. I called her, and it was very clear from her questions that she had the affidavit. I think here you have to distinguish between the affidavit and the FBI report. To my knowledge, no reporters ever had the FBI report.

SIMON: An affidavit is simply a sworn statement by someone to certain facts, to whatever they may be. But the affidavit is not a crime, in terms of the law -- to leak the affidavit. I think it is unethical, but it is not a crime.

SIMON: Yes, and it's not so much how she feels about it, but what had happened to her.

SIMON: That is correct.

SIMON: And then after Joe Biden received that affidavit from Anita Hill, then he asked the FBI to check into it. The FBI did a very -- and I'm not critical of the FBI here because all these things are happening very rapidly -- they did a very cursory -- they had, I assume, about a one-hour chat with her and checked with one other person, and they gave us that report. I knew that Nina Totenberg, on the basis of her conversation with me, had the affidavit.

SIMON: No.

SIMON: First of all, everything was done in secret. For example, in the book I go into what the Judiciary Committee did on George Williams, who was then the attorney general who was nominated by Grant to be the chief justice. When I requested of the archives the Judiciary Committee notes on that, as far as we know I'm the first person to ever request those Judiciary Committee notes. No one at that point, more than a century ago, knew what the Judiciary Committee was doing.

SIMON: Yes.

SIMON: They're kept in the archives now.

SIMON: The United States Archives on Seventh and Pennsylvania here.

SIMON: Well, there are certain things that are sealed with time. There will be public officials who will say, "My records are available until after my death, " or "20 years after my death," or whatever. But over a period of time, you gradually release certain documents. For example, the Watergate papers gradually are becoming public more and more.

SIMON: I wish I could remember the exact date, but it would be the late 1860s or early 1870s.

SIMON: Okay.

SIMON: I learned that they went through the same kind of difficulty -- that George Williams was involved in some improprieties in terms of financial management, that he had mixed public funds and his personal funds, and that the Judiciary Committee was very much concerned about this. Ultimately, they requested President Grant to withdraw the nomination.

SIMON: Well, he asked someone else in his cabinet to go to George Williams and ask that his name be withdrawn. But for all practical purposes, the president really forced his hand on that.

SIMON: Well, John Tyler, probably, in terms of numbers of nominees.

SIMON: He had five nominees. I think it's five rejected, but it may be four rejected and one approved, or five rejected and one approved.

SIMON: That is correct, with the possible exception of George Washington, who appointed the first court. But William Howard Taft dominated the court, first of all. He not only dominated the court, but as a former president he talked to Warren Harding, he talked to Calvin Coolidge, he would submit lists of possible nominees and talk to them. There's no question that in terms of the numbers of people on the court, William Howard Taft had more influence than anyone else has had, with the possible exception of George Washington.

SIMON: It just strikes me as unlikely, though maybe if Bill Clinton is elected he will appoint George Bush, but I doubt it; or that George Bush would appoint Ronald Reagan. It's a very unlikely scenario that someone who is a former president would want to become Chief Justice. Now, we have had people in history who, besides Taft, probably would have taken it, but it takes a very unusual set of circumstances.

SIMON: He would be, but I would be surprised. Bill Clinton is very much an activist kind of a person. I think there are a lot of other things that he would probably be interested in doing more than Chief Justice, but I don't want to speak for Bill Clinton on that.

SIMON: Well, the pressure groups, and that gets to be one of these phrases we use that shows disrespect. But pressure groups are the PTA -- they're good people -- they're good guys and bad guys. But pressure groups, because they didn't know about it, there was not this instantaneous knowledge. Right now if Clarence Thomas or Robert Bork speaks to me in the Judiciary Committee hearing, people in Seattle, Washington, and Miami, Florida, as well as in Paris, France, know about it the same time I know about it, while in a previous period it took a long time for people to get the information, and you didn't have groups that were organized to take a great influence in this.

SIMON: One hundred years ago there was a Judiciary Committee, but nominees did not testify. Now, in the case of George Williams, for example, he was asked to testify, but declined to testify. Then we gradually moved to the point -- Harlan Stone was the first to testify. He was nominated by Calvin Coolidge. It's interesting, incidentally, when I mention this that we have had some liberal nominees from conservative presidents and the other way around -- conservative presidents who have nominated liberal justices. But Harlan Stone, who would have to be classified as a liberal on the court, was picked by Calvin Coolidge. Harlan Stone as attorney general had been following through on an investigation of Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana, and that did not please the members of the Senate, particularly the Senate Judiciary Committee, and so he was brought up. But he handled himself very, very well. That really started the precedent, though we have not had the days of hearings in those days that we have today.

SIMON: Well, if I can shift your question just a little bit: who were the great justices? There were some very colorful people that would be interesting.

SIMON: All right. The great justice is clearly John Marshall. He really established the primacy of the court. When our Constitution was written, it was very unlikely that they thought the Supreme Court would ever say a bill passed by a Congress and signed by the president would be unconstitutional. That evolved, and that's where the Marbury v. Madison decision really established that. He was clearly a dominant person. Chief Justice [Roger] Taney, who was appointed by Andrew Jackson, was a great justice except -- and it's a major exception -- the Dred Scott decision of 1857. That decision really precipitated and caused the Civil War.

SIMON: He was the first Catholic, also, on the court.

SIMON: Yes. He was appointed by Andrew Jackson.

SIMON: Yes. Each of these is a barrier. There are those who oppose, but usually not publicly oppose, for that reason. But there's no question that was a barrier. [Louis] Brandeis, when Woodrow Wilson was president, was the first Jewish member of the court. But Brandeis wrote that his opposition primarily centered in the fact that he was considered a radical by some. He thought it was his political views rather than his religion and ethnic background that was the main cause of the opposition.

SIMON: I would put Brandeis there. I think Oliver Wendell Holmes.

SIMON: That's right. Justice [Benjamin] Cardozo, appointed by Herbert Hoover.

SIMON: He was.

SIMON: Yes.

SIMON: It was raised. As a matter of fact, one of the worst appointments that was ever made was done by Woodrow Wilson. He also made one of the greatest appointments. Justice [James] McReynolds, who was prejudiced against Jews and blacks and women and Catholics -- he had a whole series of prejudices -- actually went to Herbert Hoover and said, "You shouldn't have two Jews on the court." So there was opposition.

SIMON: I don't think he would be impeached, but it would cause a great controversy. These are obviously not public statements that he made, but his prejudice was widely known.

SIMON: Yes. He also believed that if a woman wore fingernail polish or lipstick it showed that she was a woman of loose morals. He was an incredible figure on the court.

SIMON: Digging through the records. I enjoy digging through records and going through biographies and finding these little gems that do make history colorful.

SIMON: I got a hold of everything that I could find in this field, and the Library of Congress was very helpful. Libraries are a great source of information. I have found over the years that librarians love to work with authors, and Bob Gee particularly, at the Library of Congress here, who was very, very helpful to me.

SIMON: What I do, and my wife will tell you, is that I socially isolate myself. What you have to do when you're writing a book and you also have to serve in the Senate, you have to say that every spare moment when you're writing a book just has to be devoted to this. And then I occasionally pick a weekend where I do nothing but write. We went off for a week to the coast in January when it was cold and there weren't very many people out there, and Jeanne, my wife, whom you know, went over the Judiciary Committee notes, which of course in those days were all written by hand. She did that while I pounded away on the manuscript.

SIMON: About her campaign experience. She said she didn't realize how difficult it was to write a book. She said, "I'll never write one again." She may be persuaded at some point.

SIMON: Yes.

SIMON: I'm not.

SIMON: I don't think it's a problem any more than being on the floor of the Senate. I deal with the law all the time. I write laws all the time. It's never been a problem for me.

SIMON: I don't know. At one point, when Senator Byrd called me -- I had requested after my election, or really prior to my election, to serve on the Labor and Human Resources Committee which deals with education, and then Senator Byrd called me and said, "Would you like to serve on the Judiciary Committee?" I had not requested it. I told him I was not a lawyer, and he said, "I don't think that makes any difference, but let me check." He came back and said that's not a requirement, and so I've been on the Judiciary Committee and enjoyed it.

SIMON: Oh, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

SIMON: Justice Cardozo. I think Earl Warren belongs at that table.

SIMON: I had met him a couple of times. He wouldn't have known me if I walked down the street and met him. Two other recent figures on the court that I think stand up well, and that's Justice [William] Brennan and Justice [Harry] Blackmun.

SIMON: I just think what they have done. Justice [John Paul] Stevens maybe should be. You know, I keep adding names of people I'd like to have around that table. I think what they have shown, and one of the things that I think is important on the court, they have shown a sensitivity to those who are the least powerful in our society. It becomes very easy in government, whether you're in the United States Senate or you're in the White House or you're on the Supreme Court, to be influenced by the powerful and the wealthy. When you go to a Washington cocktail party, you're not meeting any unemployed people. It is important for those who sit on the court to be sensitive to those who have struggled in life. Justice Brennan, Justice Blackmun and Justice Stevens have had that sensitivity.

SIMON: McReynolds, clearly. He was very colorful. I don't know that I would like his company very often, but he was very colorful -- no question about it.

SIMON: Oh, we had a number of very colorful characters. I think that John Rutledge who didn't make it -- well, he made it at one point, and then resigned to become chief justice for the South Carolina Supreme Court, and then was nominated by George Washington to be Chief Justice. He was also, obviously, a very colorful character.

SIMON: Yes. He tried to commit suicide after the Senate rejected him.

SIMON: Yes. We've had 16 recess appointments.

SIMON: Yes, and this has not happened in recent history. The most recent was Justice [Felix] Frankfurter. What happens is, if there is a vacancy -- let's say that we go out on Oct. 2. That's the tentative schedule, but I don't believe it's going to happen. But we go out on Oct. 2. Let's say that on Oct. 10 that Justice Blackmun or Justice Stevens or any one of the members of the court would resign, the president of the United States has the authority to make a recess -- an interim -- appointment until we get back into session. So Rutledge served on the court as a recess appointment as Chief Justice, in addition to his earlier service on the court, and then the Senate rejected him. It was the only rejection that George Washington had. George Washington generally did a very good job. He was careful about it. It's one of the lessons that you can learn from history -- do this thing carefully, not quickly. Do it thoughtfully. George Bush nominated Clarence Thomas five days after the vacancy occurred, and said, "This is the best person in the nation for the job." You compare that to Gerald Ford, for example. Gerald Ford followed the Constitution by consulting with Senators. George Bush did not. Gerald Ford contacted people around the nation and said, "Who would be the best possible person to put on the court?" and then he submitted 20 names to the American Bar Association for their evaluation. George Bush submitted one. But I'm departing from George Washington. George Washington generally did things very, very carefully. This was true of all of his appointments, not just to the court. On the court he took special pains, with two exceptions: one was John Rutledge, whom he appointed quickly, and the other was Justice [Samuel] Chase who ended up being the only member of the court tried for impeachment.

SIMON: Well, he was a character. If you're looking for entertainment, I guess he would fit around that table.

SIMON: Frequently this was the case. Calvin Coolidge, for example, is not regarded generally as a strong president, but his appointment of Harlan Stone is regarded as clearly a superior appointment. Woodrow Wilson is regarded as one our stronger presidents. His appointment of McReynolds, we were talking about, was probably the worst appointment ever made by any president to the court.

SIMON: He was there 29 years -- 29 terrible years for the other justices. They had a hard time getting along with him.

SIMON: He voted for Thomas.

SIMON: Yes. He would not have had primary opposition but for that vote, and so I don't think that there is any question that vote defeated him.

SIMON: We talked about it some, and his defeat surprised me. His vote did not surprise me. I endorsed him. I've had a good working relationship with Alan Dixon, though I hasten to add that Carol Mosley Braun, who defeated him, was a co-chair of my campaign for reelection in 1990, and I'm doing everything I can to be of assistance to her now.

SIMON: I thought we were headed for a storm, and I immediately said -- I was asked by both Nina Totenberg and Tim Phelps whether we should delay the vote that was then scheduled for Tuesday, just a few days later, and I said we should delay the vote. At this point I was the only person, and for about a 24-hour period, saying that we should delay the vote. But I sensed that we were heading toward something that was going to have a major impact on the nation. I had no idea how much of an impact, I have to add.

SIMON: I can't tell you precisely, but after we were in the hearing for a while, it became apparent that we had something huge on our hands in terms of public attention. That played a role in the Thomas nomination, because on Friday Anita Hill testified. Friday is a limited television audience. Saturday Clarence Thomas testified -- a much larger audience. People who saw only one of the two believed the one they saw, whichever one that was. I think that was a factor in public opinion being on his side -- only one of the factors -- and the public opinion being on his side I think was clearly a factor in some of the votes in the Senate.

SIMON: Yes. He made clear that he had studied this thing, and he and Senator [Harry] Reid and Senator [Joseph] Lieberman from Connecticut -- Reid and Bryan are both from Nevada -- and it is to their credit; it is not an easy thing to take a public stand one way and then reverse yourself, and yet all three were willing to do that. It showed great courage.

SIMON: Oh, yes, we talked about it because this thing gradually escalated in our minds. We were aware of what was going on and that the public was paying attention.

SIMON: I can't say it ever seemed like it was out of control. I think we were in control of the situation, but it was unplanned. If we had charted this thing and had any idea of the visual impact of all of this, we would have, for example, balanced Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas more in terms of when they were to appear and that sort of thing.

SIMON: Obviously, as you may guess from reading the book, I had some sources that I don't acknowledge in the book, so that there are people in the White House who talked to me about how things happened.

SIMON: Well, polls were being taken. I don't know if the White House was taking any polls, but they were aiding the candidate. The White House always does this. I don't criticize them for that. We met, but there was no clear plan. The one thing, though, a lot of people didn't understand -- I got letters from people, obviously, on both sides, criticizing me for defending her too much and others for not defending her enough. Each of us had five minutes during the Anita Hill portion of this, except for our designated questioners. On the Democratic side that was Senator Heflin and Senator [Patrick] Leahy plus the chairman. On the Republican side it was Senator [Orrin] Hatch and Senator [Arlen] Specter.

SIMON: On one day.

SIMON: That is correct.

SIMON: I think people felt they understood it. They could put themselves into her position or his position, and they saw this. For example, we had a great many people who contacted us who said, "If she were telling the truth, she would have been more emotional." They've seen enough soap opera, and they know these are the reactions. And if I were a TV producer-director developing the scenario, I would have had her emoting more. But that wasn't her nature, and I don't think it reflects at all in terms of whether or not she was telling the truth. I have a chapter in there on who told the truth, and I think while public opinion is still that Clarence Thomas told the truth, I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that Anita Hill told the truth.

SIMON: Well, I think it was in part the emotion of it. I think it was in part that many more people saw him on television. I think those were factors, though it is interesting that a poll done by the National Law Review of trial judges, while the public was 2-1 that he was telling the truth, trial judges, who have been through a great many witnesses over their years, 2-1 believed her story.

SIMON: He is a professor of the Harvard Law School and is a scholar in Supreme Court history and in the actions of the court. I have frankly been very much impressed by Larry Tribe over the years and was pleased that he was willing to do the introduction.

SIMON: Yes.

SIMON: Well, I would love to see him on the court. That one, obviously, is up to Bill Clinton, but I have to add, I don't think his writing an introduction to my book aids that cause.

SIMON: Yes. I can't remember whether he specifically names Justice [David] Souter there, but Justice Souter was a person who was almost as blank a slate as you could get in terms of his views. He had written very few opinions and only wrote one article in his whole life, a tribute to a New Hampshire Supreme Court justice who had died. Larry Tribe is concerned -- and Judge Bork has expressed this, too -- that we move toward getting people who simply are devoid of any real ability and any real background. I think if we look just for people who are neutral on everything, then there is a danger that we move in that direction. I would add, I think that's one of the mistakes. I think that's one of the areas that caused great concern for me on Clarence Thomas before the Anita Hill matter, and that was that he simply wasn't candid with us on his views on things. He was trying to become a little more the stealth nominee.

SIMON: I think the criticism is a justified one. I think as you look back over the history, we should have rejected more nominees than we have.

SIMON: I agree with that also, and I think it is unfortunate. I think you should try to get balance. When people say, "When you have a conservative Republican president you're going to have conservative Republican nominees," the reality is that, for example, on the current court, Justice [Byron] White is one of the conservatives, nominated by John F. Kennedy. The two liberals on the court are Justice Blackmun and Justice Stevens, nominated by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. You can go back through history and find case after case. In general, presidents have tried to get some balance on the court, picked more in their own philosophical mood, but they have not tried to shape the court as much as has happened in recent years.

SIMON: My first political job was state representative in the Illinois General Assembly.

SIMON: In 1954 I was elected and took office in 1955.

SIMON: Publishing a newspaper.

SIMON: In the little town of Troy, Ill., about 20 miles from St. Louis.

SIMON: Well, the bank and I owned the newspaper, yes.

SIMON: Well, I kept it until 1966, and I gradually acquired other newspapers. Then in 1966 I knew I was going to run for statewide office. I had determined in my own mind I was going to do that, and so I sold my newspapers to make myself free to do that.

SIMON: I became the lieutenant governor of Illinois then.

SIMON: For four years.

SIMON: Then I ran for governor unsuccessfully in 1972; then in 1974 I was elected to the House and I've been here on the Washington scene ever since.

SIMON: I was five terms in the House, 10 years in the House, and then I ran against Senator [Charles] Percy and defeated him. That was eight years ago.

SIMON: I pretty much knew what the Senate was going to be. I enjoy the Senate. It's a place where you can get things done; where sometimes, like on this, we didn't do as good a job as we should have done. And there are frustrations. I see things that really need to be done. I see people who contribute to campaigns having much more influence than they should in terms of what public policy should be. I think one of the fundamental reforms we need is campaign finance reform.

SIMON: That is correct. Justice [Hugo] Black said that we ought to have at least one non-lawyer on the court. Interesting. He's the only person I think who has ever made that observation.

SIMON: First of all, I think it's very unlikely that he would do that. I would have to at this point say no. Maybe this shows my excessive partisanship, but the governor of Illinois is a Republican governor, and I don't think I would want to turn one vote over to the Republicans in the Senate. I'm not one who is, I think, generally excessively partisan, but I think I owe the people in my party and my state that that seat should stay in the Democratic hands.

SIMON: Brian, it's always good to be with you.