A night of firsts on the CBS Evening News. After Dan Rather acknowledged a concern that Gray Davis is “too far to the left,” Bob Schieffer picked up on a “swipe” from White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and informed viewers that Democratic Senator Robert Byrd once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.
In a March 6 story on how Bush appeared in the Oval Office with Charles Pickering to push Pickering’s nomination for a federal appeals court judgeship, a nomination opposed by the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Schieffer played a clip of Bush insisting the opposition is political. Schieffer agreed: “In fact, some insiders say Democrats are opposing Pickering to send the President a message, that if he ever tries to nominate someone they consider too conservative to the Supreme Court, they want him to know they have the strength and will to block it.”
Following soundbites of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle denouncing Pickering’s civil rights record and from the brother of the slain Medgar Evers, who insisted what Pickering thought in 1959 about inter-racial marriage is no longer relevant, Schieffer quoted Fleischer: “If actions taken 40 years ago were the criteria, there would be some Senators voting on this whose very history would come into play.”
Schieffer explained: “That was an obvious swipe at 84-year-old Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan as a young man. But for all the tough talk, and whatever the motives, when the Judiciary Committee meets tomorrow it’s expected to bury the nomination of Charles Pickering.”
That “swipe” could also have been an accurate reference to how Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings used his power as Governor of South Carolina in the early 1960s to block integration of that state’s public university system.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
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