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Joe Biden Declines to Directly Apologize to Anita Hill for His Handling of 1991 Hearing Joe Biden Declines to Directly Apologize to Anita Hill for His Handling of 1991 Hearing
(about 5 hours later)
In his first sit-down interview of his presidential campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday repeatedly declined to directly apologize to Anita Hill for his handling of the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, instead delivering a broad statement of remorse for how she was treated during the combative questioning she faced from an all-male Senate committee that he led. WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday repeatedly declined to directly apologize to Anita Hill for his handling of the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, using his first interview as a presidential candidate to offer a broad statement of remorse for how she was treated but refusing to demonstrate contrition about a controversy that has shadowed the start of his campaign.
Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” which is heavily watched by women, Mr. Biden was asked by one of its hosts, Joy Behar, about his reluctance in recent months to offer a straightforward apology to Ms. Hill for his own judgment and leadership during the hearings. Ms. Behar suggested that Mr. Biden should say, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you, not for the way you were treated.” Several leading Democrats said on Friday that they had urged Mr. Biden in recent months to talk to Ms. Hill and try to address her concerns about the hearings. When he eventually called her this month, Ms. Hill left the conversation dissatisfied, she told The New York Times, while aides to Mr. Biden began preparing for criticism from women and liberals who they felt were unlikely to support him anyway.
“I’m sorry for the way she got treated,” Mr. Biden responded. “If you go back to what I said, and didn’t say, I don’t think I treated her badly.” Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” a show hosted and heavily watched by women, one day after he disclosed his call to Ms. Hill, Mr. Biden was nudged to go further and deliver a straightforward apology to her for his judgment and leadership as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman during the hearings.
[Read our analysis of Mr. Biden’s appearance on “The View”] Joy Behar, one of the hosts, suggested that Mr. Biden say to Ms. Hill, “‘I’m sorry for the way I treated you’ — not for the way you were treated.”
The former vice president also declined to pledge that he would serve only one term if elected president, spoke about his relationship with former President Barack Obama, and addressed his past treatment of women who have said his touching and his conduct made them uncomfortable. “I’m sorry for the way she got treated,” Mr. Biden responded, haltingly. “If you go back to what I said, and didn’t say, I don’t think I treated her badly.”
The appearance on “The View” came after a Biden spokeswoman said the former vice president had called Ms. Hill a few weeks ago and expressed “his regret for what she endured” 28 years ago. At that time Mr. Biden, who was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over confirmation hearings in which Ms. Hill accused Justice Thomas, President George Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, of sexual harassment and faced aggressive and misogynistic questioning. Ms. Hill has said she was deeply unsatisfied by the phone call. Mr. Biden sought to be proactive in reaching out to Ms. Hill, aides said, and they disclosed the phone call because they were convinced that in the Trump and #MeToo eras, the treatment of Ms. Hill and the explosive Senate hearings were bound to come up early in the campaign.
On Friday, Mr. Biden spoke largely in passive voice about how Ms. Hill was treated, despite the fact that he led the Senate committee when she testified before it. But as he indicated on television Friday, Mr. Biden does not believe he personally mistreated Ms. Hill. He has also privately indicated reluctance to apologize for behavior that he did not feel responsible for. And Ms. Hill’s continued criticism of Mr. Biden since his call with her has only affirmed the view of some in his orbit that he is in a no-win situation — that no measure of regret will ever be sufficient for her and other critics.
Describing their phone call, he said, “I said privately what I’ve said publicly. I’m sorry she was treated the way she was treated. I wish we could have figured out a better way to get this done. I did everything in my power to do what I thought was within the rules to be able to stop things.” Mr. Biden’s advisers also expressed deep skepticism that liberals and others lashing him for not apologizing to Ms. Hill were ever going to back him in the most demographically diverse field in party history.
“Those who are attacking him about this are not going to change their minds about him,” said Anita Dunn, an adviser to Mr. Biden.
His surprising fund-raising success on Friday — he announced that he raised $6.3 million in the first 24 hours of his campaign, the most yet of any Democratic candidate this year — may shift attention away from Ms. Hill and his broader vulnerabilities in the short term. But even some of his allies have little explanation for why he did not move more swiftly to attempt a rapprochement with Ms. Hill, who is now a Brandeis professor.
Mr. Biden’s awkward and at times grudging responses to questions about the hearings illustrate a larger dilemma for his campaign: He and his advisers have wrestled for months with the question of how to address Democratic concerns about his record without transforming his candidacy into a protracted apology tour.
More than any individual issue, they have feared that he could be drawn into a weekslong, self-flagellating retrospective, pushed to renounce one aspect of his record after another, on subjects ranging from school busing in the 1970s to credit card regulations and the Iraq war earlier this century.
Yet the matter of Ms. Hill may be a singular challenge for Mr. Biden and his campaign — a long-ago moment not only emblazoned in the liberal consciousness as a grave historical trauma, but also represented with immediacy in the present by a living person capable of rebuking Mr. Biden in forceful language, as Ms. Hill did this week.
“I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you,’” she told The Times in a lengthy interview. “I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.”
Mr. Biden was asked about Ms. Hill as part of his “murder board” preparations with aides, but in the weeks leading up to his announcement Thursday there was no broader strategic discussion with his inner circle about whether to call her and what to say, according to Biden advisers.
A few weeks ago, though, one of his longtime colleagues finally took matters into her own hands.
Former Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who was elected to her seat in the aftermath of the Thomas hearings, said she telephoned Steve Ricchetti, a Biden adviser, and urged him to take the Hill matter seriously. Shortly after, around the same time Mr. Biden telephoned Ms. Hill, the former vice president called Ms. Boxer to thank her for the nudge.
“I told him that it’s important to resolve this,” Ms. Boxer recalled in an interview Friday, adding that she pushed him and his campaign because, “I love Joe and I want Joe to step up on this.” Recalling his crafting the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and his effort to get her and another female senator seated on the Judiciary Committee, Ms. Boxer said Mr. Biden should be viewed by women for the totality of his record.
And she praised him for “stepping up” and addressing Ms. Hill.
But Mr. Biden might have mitigated his difficulties had he moved earlier and in a more full-throated fashion to demonstrate his regret, other Democrats said.
The Rev. Al Sharpton said Mr. Biden had acknowledged in a conversation this year that the Hill-Thomas hearings would be an issue for him if he entered the 2020 race. Mr. Sharpton said he had raised the subject with Mr. Biden after a January gathering of his group, the National Action Network, where Mr. Biden expressed regret for having backed certain hard-line anti-crime policies in the 1980s and 1990s.
“I told him after his speech at NAN that it was good he dealt with criminal justice, the crime bill, but you know Anita Hill and other stuff is going to come up if you run,” Mr. Sharpton said, recalling that Mr. Biden had replied, “Yeah, you’re right,” without hinting as to how he might address it.
Mr. Sharpton said Mr. Biden had room to make the case that he had “evolved” on his understanding of that moment in his career, but that Mr. Biden had to be unsparing in a critique of his own role.
“I don’t think you gain anything by trying to, in any way, lessen what was offensive to many of us,” Mr. Sharpton said. “What he’s got to say is, ‘Yes, I and the nation have evolved,’ but he can’t sugarcoat it.”
He had ample opportunity to act sooner.
Advisers to Mr. Biden fielded suggestions last fall that Mr. Biden contact Ms. Hill during the confirmation hearings of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, to explain that he better understood her experience after watching last year’s Supreme Court process as a private citizen. After making a private acknowledgment of error, the reasoning went, Mr. Biden could later say the same thing publicly.
Mr. Biden and his team did not take up the idea. At a campaign event in Rhode Island last year, he praised Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Justice Kavanaugh of sexual assault, for giving “courageous, credible testimony” and suggested the process might have been handled more carefully in the days when he helmed the Judiciary Committee. But he made no reference to Ms. Hill or Justice Thomas.
Mr. Biden has been keenly aware of the looming issue, even if he was slow to address it, according to people who spoke with him over the last year. He has been both reflective and defensive in private, recognizing that the hearings were disastrous but also arguing that he had done his best at the time.
His demeanor was similar on television Friday.
Mr. Biden’s decision to make “The View” his first sit-down interview after his presidential announcement all but ensured he would be pressed about Ms. Hill.
[Read our analysis of Mr. Biden’s appearance on “The View.”]
He spoke largely in the passive voice about how Ms. Hill was treated, despite the fact that he led the Senate committee when she testified before it.
Describing their phone call, he said: “I said privately what I’ve said publicly. I’m sorry she was treated the way she was treated. I wish we could have figured out a better way to get this done. I did everything in my power to do what I thought was within the rules to be able to stop things.”
“I don’t know why it took you so long to call her,” Ana Navarro, another host, said. “I wish it had happened earlier.”“I don’t know why it took you so long to call her,” Ana Navarro, another host, said. “I wish it had happened earlier.”
“Since I had publicly apologized for the way she was treated,” Mr. Biden said, “I didn’t want to, quote, invade her space,” by calling her privately.“Since I had publicly apologized for the way she was treated,” Mr. Biden said, “I didn’t want to, quote, invade her space,” by calling her privately.
Mr. Biden largely sidestepped a question about how a Biden presidency would differ from the Obama administration, only saying that the two men disagreed on the “implementation” and “timing of some things.” He said that he had asked Mr. Obama not to endorse him in the 2020 race because “I didn’t want it to look like he was putting his thumb on the scale here.”
Asked if he would apologize to the women who have complained that he touched them inappropriately over the years, Mr. Biden responded, “Here’s the deal: I have to be much more aware of the private space of men and women — it’s not just women, but primarily women.”Asked if he would apologize to the women who have complained that he touched them inappropriately over the years, Mr. Biden responded, “Here’s the deal: I have to be much more aware of the private space of men and women — it’s not just women, but primarily women.”
Pressed further by the hosts, he said: “I’m really sorry if what I did in talking to them, trying to console, that in fact they took it a different way.” He then addressed the women directly, saying, “Sorry I invaded your space,” though he said he did not do anything to make anyone uncomfortable intentionally. Pressed further by the hosts, he said, “I’m really sorry if what I did in talking to them, trying to console, that in fact they took it a different way.” He then addressed the women directly, saying, “Sorry I invaded your space,” though he said he did not do anything to make anyone uncomfortable intentionally.
In a lengthy telephone interview earlier this week, Ms. Hill told The Times that the call from Mr. Biden had left her feeling deeply unsatisfied. She declined to characterize Mr. Biden’s words to her as an apology and said she was not convinced that he has taken full responsibility for his conduct at the hearings. The interview was the first of only a handful of appearances and events that the Biden campaign has announced. He is set to deliver remarks to union members on Monday in Pittsburgh about “an inclusive middle class.” Then, for the third time, he will make his debut in first-in-the-nation Iowa as a presidential candidate.
“I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you,’” said Ms. Hill, now a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University. “I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.” At one point Friday, Mr. Biden wiped away a tear when he was asked whether he was running because of his son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015 at 46. “He’s not why I’m running, but I hope as I’ve — this sounds stupid,” Mr. Biden said, pausing to collect himself. “When I get up in the morning, I think about — I hope he’s proud of me. I hope he’s proud.”
“The focus on apology, to me, is one thing,” Ms. Hill added. “But he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw.” Mr. Biden, whose first wife and infant daughter died in a car crash in 1972, also spoke about how grief had shaped his life. “It’s given me an incredible sense — I wish I didn’t possess it — of empathy, understanding,” he said.
The Biden campaign said Thursday that it would have no comment beyond its initial statement about the call.
Mr. Biden and Ms. Hill “had a private discussion where he shared with her directly his regret for what she endured and his admiration for everything she has done to change the culture around sexual harassment in this country,” said the deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield.
“The View” is the first of only a handful of appearances and events that the Biden campaign has announced. He is set to deliver remarks on Monday in Pittsburgh about “an inclusive middle class” and then campaign Tuesday and Wednesday in Iowa.
At one point during the interview, Mr. Biden wiped away a tear when he was asked whether he was running because of his son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015 at 46. “He’s not why I’m running, but I hope as I’ve — this sounds stupid,” Mr. Biden said, pausing to collect himself. “When I get up in the morning, I think about — I hope he’s proud of me. I hope he’s proud.”
Mr. Biden, whose first wife and young daughter died in a car crash in 1972, also spoke about how grief had shaped his life. “It’s given me an incredible sense — I wish I didn’t possess it — of empathy, understanding,” he said.
“How many of you have lost someone to cancer? Raise your hand,” he said. He spoke to the members of the audience, saying that while many well-wishers don’t know what someone has endured, it was deeply meaningful for a person to say, “I’ve been through what you’ve been through.”