When young, Specter was assistant counsel to the Warren Commission and gave us the single bullet theory. A Democrat, he was offered the GOP nomination for district attorney of Philadelphia. He accepted it, campaigned hard, got elected. That was in '65. In '67 he ran for mayor and nearly ousted a mediocre incumbent as a Repub in a Dem city.
In office he was aggressive and efficient. But he showed an excessive inclination to expediency that we were to see again when he cozied up to a later mayor, Frank Rizzo, a nominal Democrat who reform city councilman David Cohen aptly summed up as "a corrupt, bloody Tarzan."
Specter was popular. After a bit he got into the Repub race for governor, losing but running very well. Two years after that he won a contested nomination for the Senate and took an open seat. He would serve five terms.
He was a moderate, probably as progressive as he thought he could afford to be and stay in good with his party; his voting record was about 23% liberal according to one measure. It was always surmised that he was a Dem at heart.
Specter was not an exceptional senator and had no great achievements, but he worked hard, looked out for his constituents' interests, and could beat anyone in a race to a camera.
In 1991 President Bush 41 put up a black reactionary named Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. There was a story around that Thomas had sexually harassed a black lawyer named Anita Hill. Hill reluctantly confirmed that before the Senate judiciary committee and was grilled and defamed by the Republicans, including Snarlin' Arlen. There was no evident reason for her to lie. I think I am a fair judge of character and I found her entirely credible, while Thomas seemed to me a bad actor in both senses of the term.
During the hearings Specter took the lead in doing the overzealous prosecutor bit and tried his worst to discredit Hill. He was smart enough to know better, even if some of the other Repubs weren't. This was a performance some have never forgiven him for.
His savaging of the young but calm and dignified Anita Hill was hard to stomach. Worse, if he knowingly helped give the title of Justice to a perjuror, he did this country a great disservice.
Why did he do it? I think it was plainly because he felt he would be vulnerable in the '92 primary if challenged, as was expected, by a very conservative state legislator named Stephen Freind. He was protecting his right flank. Freind backed off, but then Specter faced a tough re-election race against Democrat Lynn Yeakel, who made his treatment of Hill an issue. It was "The Year of The Woman" in national politics, but not quite in Pennsylvania.
Staving off the righties became harder and harder. Last time out, Specter was almost overturned by way-way-right Congressman Patrick Toomey. He tried to cover himself again more recently, voting against confirmation of Elena Kagan for solicitor general. But his time was up, and a party switch encouraged by Governor Rendell and President Obama couldn't save him.
I had some amount of admiration for Specter because he never caved so far as to go all the way right; he was mostly reasonable and pragmatic, the kind of Republican that Pennsylvania has usually sent to the Senate. The Anita Hill villainy, however, remains on his record. It will be a blot on it for as long as anyone remembers him.
What is the lesson of this career? Maybe just that if you belong to an evil party you do evil or get forced out - or both.
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