INQUIRER: Outgoing Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter didn’t spill his guts – he has to keep some good material in reserve for the memoir he is writing, after all – but he discussed his political legacy Thursday in the first wide-ranging interview since his defeat in the Democratic primary.
Specter suggested that he played a critical part in advancing President Obama’s agenda, said history would vindicate his much-ridiculed vote of “not proven” in the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, and drily said he “aided and abetted” Anita Hill’s advancement of women’s rights with his aggressive cross-examination of her at the 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
A fixture in U.S. politics for more than a generation, Specter, 80, was a leading Republican moderate who often went his own way, confounding both parties. He will be out of office when the new Congress convenes Jan. 5, having found that becoming a Democrat (as he was as a young man) could not save him in an anti-incumbent election year. .. (more)
