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Bush was inclined from the start to choose an African American. Right after the 1988 election, the Bush team speculated that he might get to fill as many as three or four openings on the court. They latched onto the idea of enhancing the diversity of the court, appointing the first Hispanic and Asian American, naming more women and filling Marshall's seat with a black -- a curious approach for an Administration so vocally opposed to quotas. Emilio Garza, a federal judge from Texas, was brought to the Justice Department on Saturday for an interview, but he was quickly dismissed.
On Sunday afternoon, Thomas was invited to fly to Kennebunkport next day to meet Bush. When he arrived there, the house was so full of aides and family members gathered to celebrate Bush's mother's 90th birthday that Bush had to pull Thomas into the master bedroom behind the horseshoe pit so they could talk privately. Aides do not know if Bush posed the Eagleton-inspired question, "Is there anything I should know," but he did extract a promise that Thomas would stick out the confirmation process no matter how tough it got. When they emerged from the room for a lunch of crabmeat salad, Thomas was the nominee.
Thomas may agree with Republican conservatives on racial issues, but he arrived at those conclusions by a different route. His rejection of affirmative action is largely based on his feeling that whites will never be fair to blacks, a view long espoused by black nationalists like Marcus Garvey. Thomas is skeptical about integration as a goal because he doubts that it is attainable. Racial preferences, he says, sap the determination of African Americans and lead whites to believe that blacks advance mainly as a result of reverse discrimination. He would much rather see blacks pour their energies into building their own schools, but he sent his son Jamal to a racially mixed private school.
Thomas argues that no other group has been pulled into the mainstream economy by government programs. He resents the government's "experimentation on our race," which he says puts blacks in the position of having to account for every break they get. When Thomas was sworn in for a second term as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights William Bradford Reynolds delivered the toast, "It's a proud moment for me to stand here, because Clarence Thomas is the epitome of the right kind of affirmative action working the right way." Thomas flinched. He is determined that there be no doubt that his appointment to the bench came about because of his own intelligence and hard work.
As Supreme Court nominees go, Thomas has little judicial experience. He is not a brilliant legal scholar, a weighty thinker or even the author of numerous opinions. As a lawyer in Missouri Attorney General John Danforth's office in 1974, he worked on corporate issues, intentionally avoiding areas like civil rights and abortion. As a lawyer at the Monsanto Co. from 1977 to 1979, Thomas shepherded pesticides through government registration. He returned to Danforth's staff as a legislative assistant in 1979, and in 1981 served briefly and quietly at the Department of Education's civil rights division.