Reynolds Gets a Hearing
Where Ted Kennedy swings and misses.

By John J. Miller
February 27, 2002 9:30 a.m.

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.