European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 10, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Tuesday september 10, 1991 the stars and stripes Page 13 commentary William f. Buckley  of the sleaze shaping up Over Thomas a what they re doing is engaging in the most disgusting kind of politics in America. These ads Are and Homine character assassinations of the most vicious and reprehensible kind. If this Isnit sleaze in politics 1 done to know what  a Ron Brown chairman of the democratic party about the Kennedy Biden Cranston and. I done to suppose this has a Chance of getting through to Brown but say not the struggle naught Avail eth. We have almost immediately ahead of us an examination of the qualifications of Clarence Thomas to serve As an associate Justice of the supreme court. We know from a very recent experience that of Robert Bork that technical credentials Arentt going to be the primary objects of senatorial focus. If Clarence Thomas were being nominated to act As a concert pianist you could draw a curtain As is done in Many of the contests designed to judge a contestant s skills and simply listen to the music. It wont take Long to conclude that yes he can or no he can t handle the flight of the Bumblebee on the piano. Nobody in the whole wide world doubted the technical qualifications of Bork a former professor at the Yale Law school. What the senators did no to particularly like were some of the conclusions he Drew. But of course Bork was an appointee of president Reagan and democratic senators Arentt supposed to like All the conclusions drawn by a Republican nominating a conservative Jurist. What to do what was done was a huge National Campaign. It was substantially spearheaded by people for the american Way. Its design was absolutely Clear from the very beginning. And indeed the originator of the Campaign against Bork was sen. Edward m. Kennedy a mass. Before Bork even reached the committee room Kennedy let Loose with the most irresponsible speech since Joe Mccarthy concluded that George Marshall was a communist. Better a communist than what Teddy suggested Bork was. The famous sentence a Robert Bork Samerica is a land in which women would be forced into Back Alley abortions Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters rogue police could break Down citizens doors in Midnight raids schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is a and is often the Only a protector of the individual rights that Are the heart of our  the next thing America was exposed to was the voice of Gregory Peck in a paid television and urging the defeat of Bork in which he sounded like Winston Churchill describing what life in great Britain would be like if the nazis succeeded in their invasion. That and plus its Constellation of denunciations of Bork had a political effect. When sen. Howell Heflin d-ala., said he was going to vote against Bork that Sig naked the collapse of the nomination. Because Heflin had himself been a judge and was the Leader of the Southern senatorial contingent. What was it about Bork that disillusioned Heflin nothing that had to do with Bork s intellectual moral or judicial fitness. Heflin was simply overcome by the political Success of a a to borrow from the vocabulary of Ron Brown a Sleazy Campaign. Heflin was afraid he would lose the Black vote next time around. It was the Public Campaign not the internal examination within the Walls of the Senate that determined the outcome of the Bork nomination. What Brent Bozell it Al. Have done is Tough stuff but there is this important distinction Between its material and that of the people for the american Way. It May be entirely irrelevant to the credentials of Kennedy a acting As evaluator of Clarence Thomas Jurist that he was kicked out of College for cheating or of sen. Joseph r. Biden jr., d-del., that he plagiarized a speech or of sen. Alan Cranston d-calif., that he did paid favors for an a amp a con Man but it is True that this Misbe Havior is a part of the Public record. What Bozell and company Are saying is that any attempt to impute to Clarence Thomas such vices As were systematically imputed to Robert Bork would throw the question of his confirmation into the political Arena and that the conservative group is prepared to fight in the political Arena. If a senatorial critic of Bork with the influence of Kennedy can charge that Bork s nomination threatened re segregated eating facilities then the other Side is going to threaten that the failure to confirm Bork Means that american Justice will drown at Chappaquiddick. Rough stuff i repeat though not exactly in american if we remind ourselves of the kind of things that were said about George Washington yes George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But what the Bozell group is saying is this if the future of Thomas is catapulted by the liberals into Gutter warfare we shall need to mobilize our forces accordingly. C Universal press Syndicate Anthony Lewis soviets can learn from . System of states As we watch the disintegration of the soviet Union and the attempt to cobble together a new system based on the separate republics we wonder whether such a hybrid can work. How can a mosaic of states have an effective National Economy a foreign or defense policy one answer is that it has been tried before with some Success Here in the United states. Our circumstances in 1787 were of course entirely different the joining of Independent states in a federation rather than an attempt to Rescue some Central Power from the explosion of a centralized tyranny. But american history does provide some lessons in the workability of federalism a of state governments functioning within a National system. In the abstract it must seem rather mad to have 50 different Legislatures inside the United states 50 state bureaucracies 50 quite distinct Legal and judicial systems. American federalism has indeed led to complexity and helped to produce the most legalized society on Earth. But it has also had great benefits. Justice Louis Brandeis made the classic statement of one advantage of american federalism. In a dissenting opinion in 1932 he wrote a it is one of the Happy incidents of the Federal system that a single courageous state May if its citizens choose serve As a Laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the  there is Good reason to believe that Brandeis had Wisconsin in mind when he praised state experimentation. This state the Home of the progressive movement led the Way on such legislation As unemployment compensation a a plan drafted by Brandeis daughter and son in Law. Elizabeth and Paul Raushenbush who both taught economics at the a University of Wisconsin. Central to Brandeis Quot thinking was his belief that huge institutions a corporations or governments a were difficult to manage. He thought that aggregations of economic and political Power were not Only inherently dangerous but inefficient stifling fresh ideas. With the new Deal and after liberals mostly fell away from the Brandeis View. They looked to the Center to Washington to solve americans problems. But painful recent experience has made us see again that it is unwise to try to run everything from the Center in a Continental country. In it is better to allow constituent parts of the United states to go their of n Way on some issues How much More is that Likely to be True of the vast soviet Union with its relatively primitive transportation and communications. Those realities coincide with popular revulsion against Central direction after the soviet record of material and moral disaster. It hardly needs to be said that the Effort to create some form of soviet federalism will be daunting under the current conditions of political and economic disarray. It there is one Clear lesson from our history. I think it is the importance of a National Market. States and regions May a should a go their own Way in economic development depending on their resources and talents. But they do need to be Able to Trade in a larger Market without Tariff barriers. The question is whether Mikhail s. Gorbachev and Boris n. Yeltsin will be Able to preserve even that much of an economic Union As they and leaders of the other republics try to write a new Constitution. Gorbachev s leading role in the Enterprise is a testament to his astonishing political resilience. Western conservatives who regularly denounce Gorbachev will no doubt cry  so be it. We can agree that Gorbachev is not a madisonian believer in federalism. But to leave it at that is grotesquely unfair. Gorbachev by his opening of that closed society Over the last six years made real change possible a made resistance to the coup possible. To fail to give him credit Tor that historic achievement is indecent whether or not he can Lead his people now into a federalist promised land. I the now York Timon