1/03/01 4:55 p.m.
The Dems Race Deck
A Clinton legacy.

Kate O’Beirne is NR’s Washington editor.

ust how many race cards are in the Democrats’ trusty deck? Another one was played when President Clinton made a recess appointment of Richmond lawyer Roger Gregory to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appointment is now intended to reinforce the attack on John Ashcroft’s opposition to Judge Ronnie White, another black candidate for the federal bench, defeated in 1998. Senate Republicans will again be accused of “racism” if they fail to confirm Mr. Gregory when his appointment expires at the end of this year, despite evidence that Mr. Gregory may be as poorly qualified for a lifetime judicial post as Ronnie White clearly was.

With Democrats feigning concern over whether the conservative Ashcroft will politicize the Justice Department, it should be noted that last year’s nomination of Mr. Gregory, who has never served as a judge, was a cheap political favor to now-former Sen. Chuck Robb (he was nominated in the spring, but the Senate didn’t act on it). Robb wanted to patch things up during an election year with long-time nemesis Doug Wilder. Mr. Gregory is a law partner of former Gov. Wilder, who had refused to endorse fellow Democrat Robb in his 1994 reelection race.

In announcing the recess appointment, President Clinton claimed his trashing of tradition, including tapping a Virginian for a vacant North Carolina seat, was justified because integrating the bench was such a high priority. Not important enough to do during his first two years in office, when he enjoyed a Democratic Senate, but critical now that he saw a chance to fuel racial tensions at George Bush’s expense.

The rules of racial politics dictate that Democrats can attack black conservatives, like Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly, in the most vicious personal terms, but Republicans can’t oppose liberal black nominees on their merits.

In the case of the newest judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, on February 21, 1994, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on an unflattering episode of “role reversal in race relations” that saw Mr. Gregory doing his best “WASP impression” to lampoon white attitudes toward black Americans. Mr. Gregory declared (in white face?), “I will not support some healthy young woman who all she wants to do is lie around all day and have babies, with a man who all he wants to do is put himself out to stud, and roam the streets and be a menace to society.” His (un)judicial temperament was on full display when Mr. Gregory later called a state proposal to limit welfare payments to women who have a third child, “a reverse form of genocide.”

Finally, Bill Clinton’s appointment of Mr. Gregory violates his pledge not to make recess appointments without consultation with the Senate. The junior senator from New York might have to put up with this president’s broken promises, but Senate Republicans should recognize that they don’t have to, and resolve that Mr. Gregory will not remain in a lifetime post he landed in because Bill Clinton was playing politics with the federal bench.