That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post, which looks back at the pledge that Ronald Reagan made during his 1980 presidential campaign. Here’s my opener:
When Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in July 1981, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the Baptist televangelist who founded the Christian activist organization the Moral Majority, condemned the pick: “Either the president did not have sufficient information about Judge O’Connor’s background in social issues or he chose to ignore that information.”
After a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House with President Reagan, O’Connor went to meet with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her first meeting was with Charles Mathias, a liberal Republican from Maryland. When Mathias asked O’Connor how all of the attention she was getting was affecting her, O’Connor puckishly addressed the controversy with Falwell:
“Well, my husband John thinks it is very exciting to be sleeping with someone opposed by the Moral Majority.”