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Looking at video clips of Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearings in 1986, his face is fresher, his hair darker, his Wilcox County accent thicker and he comes across as slightly naive about the rough and tumble ways of Washington politics.

His tumultuous four days at the witness table, as President Ronald Reagan'slatest conservative pick for a federal judgeship, is especially instructive 23 years later as Sessions, now a U.S. senator, prepares for the ultimate role reversal.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee gavels into session later this summer and President Barack Obama's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court takes his seat at the microphone, Sessions will be the one on the elevated dais asking the probing, skeptical questions about the nominee's fitness for the lifetime appointment.

  

As ranking Republican on the committee, the GOP is looking to Sessions to scour the nominee's record for flaws, quiz him on his knowledge of constitutional law, and confront him with the party's general concern that, whoever is picked, the nominee may be too willing to make new law from the bench.

And how Sessions was treated in 1986 -- where his personal sensitivity on racial issues was hotly disputed -- is still a fresh and frustrating memory that is already influencing his approach today. For starters, Sessions has pledged publicly, and to Obama himself, to create an atmosphere of fairness and respect.

After months of investigation and more than 20 grueling hours of testimony, Sessions' nomination was killed in a 10-8 vote, and in a second, 9-9 vote, the committee refused to forward his name to the full Senate. He was the first of Reagan's nominees to be rejected.

"I really didn't feel like that was a fair process and that I had the kind of opportunity to get my message out effectively. And sometimes it's a gotcha thing. It has been for others, not just me, in which the explanation is sort of buried," Sessions said in a recent interview. "We shouldn't do that."

Sessions' nomination, ushered most prominently by then-Sen. Jeremiah Denton, R-Ala., was instantly controversial. After Reagan announced Sessions as a nominee in the fall of 1985 while he was U.S. Attorney in Mobile, Democrats immediately questioned his commitment to civil rights issues because of his office's recent prosecution of black voting rights activists in Perry County. Although they were acquitted after a high-profile trial, Sessions defended the decision to bring charges on behalf of black citizens whose votes had been tampered with.

The dramatic case prompted Democrats to ask for more time to inspect Sessions' record, including interviews of people who dealt with Sessions back in Alabama. It was those interviews that brought out the most damaging testimony: that Sessions called a black attorney in his office "boy"; that he had said the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out some of its members smoked pot; that he agreed with someone else's statement that a white civil rights lawyer in Alabama was a "disgrace to his race;" and that he described some prominent civil rights organizations as "un-American."

The composite picture painted Sessions as a racist, intent on turning back the advancement of civil rights; Sessions would later call it a distorted caricature. In his final day of testimony, Sessions fought back: "I deny as strongly as I can express it that I am insensitive to the concerns of blacks."

But it was already too late. Here is what Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said about Sessions before the first witness was even called: "Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past. It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. Attorney, let alone a U.S. federal judge. He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position."

Sessions, not yet 40 years old at the time, amended his opening statement in response: "That is the most painful thing I have ever had said to me."

Over the course of the hearings, Sessions would deny some of the statements and explain others as misunderstood jokes. But the image stuck. Not even Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala., would support his nomination. The man who would become vice president, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, also said Sessions should withdraw his nomination.

Back in Alabama, voters moved on. Eight years later he would be elected statewide as Alabama attorney general, and three times after that to the U.S. Senate. In his last re-election, he handily defeated the sister-in-law to one of the most prominent witnesses against him, Thomas Figures, but she never campaigned on it.

Sessions' appointment to the judiciary committee, where Kennedy still serves, was an oft-noted irony.

"It was an extremely important event and it could have made him very vengeful against subsequent nominees, but I don't think it has," said William Stewart, former chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama. "He'll make sure they're scrutinized as much as he was, but he's the type of person who would be more understanding of those who are on the hot seat, so to speak."

While Sessions was the focal point in 1986, he was also caught in broader struggle over the future of the federal judiciary. A popular Reagan was loading the federal bench and liberals feared a tide of conservative jurists would reshape case law accordingly, so his nomination became the battleground.

It is a scenario that could evolve in 2009, in reverse, as Republicans foresee Obama having three or more picks for the U.S. Supreme Court, depending on retirements, and hundreds of federal judgeships over four or eight years, including one in Birmingham. Both sides are gearing up for battle. But a strong Democratic majority in the Senate is likely to win the day, so Sessions describes the job as more about providing the loyal opposition.

"There's a tendency for Democrats to be loyal and supportive of the president's nominees and the public rightly expects somebody to ask questions, and that's the Republicans in this case, just like they expected the Democrats to raise questions when President Bush was submitting nominations," Sessions said.

morndorff@bhamnews.com