As he rode last week in a helicopter to a housing construction site in Frederick, Maryland, President Clinton pored over a marked-up, highlighted and dog-eared copy of the legal writings of Lani Guinier. It was far too late for him to emerge undamaged from her nomination to be Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, but he hoped to find that the views of his nominee had been misread. Gradually and reluctantly, he came to the conclusion that even if some of them had been, his beliefs and Guinier's could not be reconciled. When he huddled in late afternoon with top advisers,...
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