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 iberal
Democrats in the Senate have wanted an excuse to vote against Gerald
Reynolds ever since President Bush nominated him to become assistant
secretary of education for civil rights last September. At Reynolds's
confirmation hearing yesterday, however, they came up with nothing.
What they saw was a man from a working-class background who had
become a respected regulatory lawyer saying he would uphold the
law and carry out the Bush administration's agenda on education.
In a room packed with Reynolds's relatives but lacking a single
TV camera, only Ted Kennedy made an aggressive effort to go after
the nominee.
"Don't
pander to me!" barked the Massachusetts Democrat at one point,
when Reynolds was trying to explain that he supported existing civil-rights
laws and intended to enforce them. Kennedy apparently wanted Reynolds
to say something different — perhaps something that would provide
committee chair Jim Jeffords with a reason to vote against confirmation.
In the end, though, it wasn't Reynolds who was embarrassment, but
Kennedy, who played the role of a pancake-faced schoolyard bully.
When it became
clear last summer that Bush intended to pick Reynolds for the civil-rights
post, liberal interest groups started picking through his resume,
which includes stints at the Center for New Black Leadership and
the Center for Equal Opportunity. At first, they thought Reynolds
would prove vulnerable on Title IX, and publicly suggested that
Reynolds opposed the law itself. But as NRO
reported, Reynolds in fact had never written or spoken a word
about Title IX; the whole issue was a red herring.
A couple of
Democrats nevertheless questioned Reynolds on Title IX yesterday,
including Patty Murray of Washington state, who made the ridiculous
suggestion that American women earned about a dozen medals at the
Winter Olympics because of a federal civil-rights law. This probably
comes as a big surprise to figure skating champ Sarah Hughes, assuming
she even knows what Title IX is.
Reynolds held
his ground throughout the afternoon, and laid out a vision on civil
rights that focuses more on educational opportunity than the traditional
concerns of racism and discrimination. "To limit an individual's
education is to limit his freedom," said Reynolds, who also
pointed out that urban public schools are some of the worst in the
country. "I came to the conclusion that we need to expand the
concept of civil rights so that it includes improving the quality
of education for America's disadvantaged children."
It took the
Senate five months to give Reynolds a hearing. Now that it finally
has given him a forum, and Kennedy has given him a grilling. There's
no reason why it shouldn't vote to confirm the eminently qualified
candidate for an important job immediately.
EDITOR'S
NOTE: The author, John J. Miller, is a former colleague
of Jerry Reynolds's at the Center for Equal Opportunity.
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