As the Senate prepares to conduct hearings on the nomination of Senator John Ashcroft to the position of Attorney General in the Bush administration, politicians and news analysts have drawn comparisons between the Ashcroft nomination and previous nominations to Cabinet positions that have failed to gain Senate approval. This week's TIME Capsule recalls the nomination, ultimately withdrawn, of Zoe Baird as Attorney General in early 1993, when Bill Clinton was preparing to take office.

HOW IT HAPPENED

The Baird debacle grew out of a selection process in which Clinton aides acted hastily and cavalierly in brushing aside an early warning

BY JILL SMOLOWE

In the end, Zoe Baird did not need President Clinton or anyone else to tell her that her career as the nation's chief law officer was over before it ever got started. When her grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee ended last Thursday at 9:30 p.m., she retired to the Washington law office of her friend and mentor, Lloyd Cutler, at 24th and M streets. Over coffee and sandwiches, an exhausted but clear-headed Baird rehashed her day with a group that would include her husband Paul Gewirtz, Cutler, fellow fortysomething lawyer Terrence Adamson and Secretary of State Warren Christopher. By 10:45, Baird concluded that she must withdraw her nomination. ''She said, 'Look, this is so controversial it would be crippling for the President and the department even if we won,' '' said Adamson. Soon after, Christopher phoned White House chief of staff Thomas (''Mack'') McLarty and pulled her name.

Her decision climaxed a 29-day ordeal that secured Baird's place in the history books as the Clinton Administration's first major setback. As hard a comedown as it was for the talented Connecticut lawyer who stood to become America's first female Attorney General, it was a greater embarrassment for Clinton. The episode showed Clinton and his aides acting hastily, naively and cavalierly in brushing aside Baird's early warning that she had employed two undocumented Peruvians in her home. When the pieces of the shattered nomination are fitted together, Baird's civil infraction appears less careless than her handling by a transition team that seemed more bent on completing its headhunting mission than applying its standards.

In some ways, the Baird nomination was troubled from the start. The first indications from Bill and Hillary Clinton were that they wanted to appoint Vernon Jordan to the Attorney General's post. A flurry of press articles questioning Jordan's ties to a tobacco company, capped by a searing editorial in the New York Times, persuaded Jordan to remove his name from consideration. Aides then leaked word that Clinton sought a female appointee --a move that in effect devalued the post to affirmative-action status.

That may help explain the series of rejections that followed. Clinton's first choice, Federal Appeals Court Judge Patricia Wald, declined the nomination, citing her age and reluctance to lose her pension benefits. The name of former Federal Judge Shirley Hufstedler was floated next. National Public Radio then reported that Washington lawyer Brooksley Born had been tapped. Baird and her husband first met the Clintons at an annual New Year's Renaissance Week at Hilton Head, South Carolina, some years earlier. But it wasn't until she was summoned late last year to Little Rock, initially to be vetted for the post of White House counsel, that she struck a fast rapport with the President-elect. ''Clinton likes people who he likes,'' explains a presidential aide. Baird also boasted an impressive connection to the Clintons' alma mater, Yale Law School: her husband is a constitutional scholar on the school's faculty.

While in Little Rock, Baird told Warren Christopher, who was then co-chief of the transition team and later became Secretary of State, that she employed illegal immigrants as a driver for herself and a nanny from 1990 through 1992. Christopher, a long-standing mentor of Baird's, passed the information on to Clinton. Last week, after much confusion about what Clinton knew and when he knew it, the President set the record straight. ''Just before she was announced but after I had discussed the appointment with her, I was told that this matter had come up,'' he said. Clinton added that he had been told ''in a very cursory way'' about the hirings. He said he felt confident because Baird had consulted an attorney ''who was an expert in this area.''

Back in Little Rock, however, Clinton and his aides had perceived no danger. A transition aide recalls that the attitude about Baird's legal infraction was ''Everybody does it.'' As for Baird, ''she deferred to a political judgment that it was not something that should deter them from nominating her,'' says a lawyer who was involved in the process. The nomination went forward, and Clinton introduced Baird to the world, hailing her as a ''dynamic, talented and innovative lawyer.''

The press treated the unknown Baird gently, with adjectives like brilliant, hard-working and ambitious sprinkled throughout the stories. Her resume -- short stints in the Carter Justice Department and White House, private practice, head of General Electric's legal department, chief counsel of Aetna Life and Casualty -- was trotted out as the very model of the modern manager. It was noted that the woman now destined to restore order and morale to the 90,000-strong Justice Department had spearheaded a restructuring of Aetna's 120-member legal department.

In the wings, however, public-interest advocates quietly voiced their reservations. Critics complained about Baird's big-company orientation and her lack of experience in civil rights and criminal matters. ''A lot of people in the public-interest community were saying, 'Zoe who?' '' says a Washington lawyer involved with Clinton's transition team. Broadly, they worried about Baird's stance on tort reform; specifically, they questioned her role in Aetna's campaign to restrict the number of civil suits brought against corporations. Critics also pointed to Baird's work at GE that led to implementation of a program aimed at dodging federal prosecution and blunting whistle blowing on waste and contract fraud.

With the notable exception of consumer watchdog Ralph Nader, most of the carping was done anonymously. A public-interest activist explained the general reluctance to openly criticize Clinton's nominee: ''The Washington civil rights lobby groups have a symbiotic relationship with the Democratic Party and are unwilling to rock the boat. They are desperate to preserve their access.''

None of these issues, however, threatened to derail the Baird nomination. For that, a far more potent explosive was required. It came, in classic Washington fashion, in the form of a leak, one that Baird supporters think dripped from the FBI, though they can't prove it. On Jan. 14, the public awoke to a Page One New York Times headline: CLINTON'S CHOICE FOR JUSTICE DEPT. HIRED ILLEGAL ALIENS FOR HOUSEHOLD. By this time, Baird and Gewirtz had remedied their delinquent-tax situation by paying nearly $16,000 in taxes, penalties and interest. It was made known that they had hired the Peruvians only after failing to find an American baby-sitter and that they had relied on the advice of an immigration lawyer, Thomas Belote of Ridgefield, Connecticut. The Clinton camp released a letter from Belote, dated Jan. 5, 1993, and written at Gewirtz's request, confirming that he had provided counsel and had advised that the Peruvians' lack of Social Security numbers would complicate tax payments.

Immediately, questions arose about the propriety of Baird's presiding over a department that oversees the enforcement of immigration laws. Yet the Clinton camp remained unfazed, dismissing Baird's transgression as a ''technical violation.'' By the weekend, with editorials denouncing Baird's nomination, the Clinton people had shifted to a ''Baird deeply regrets'' mode. But they still did not grasp that a recession-pressed public would have little sympathy for the nanny problems of a couple who jointly earned more than $600,000 annually and evaded taxes.

The confirmation hearing opened last Tuesday with not a single member of the committee on record against Baird. But the illegal-alien issue was front and center -- and growing fast. ''There were phone calls to offices, local editorials,'' says a top Senate official. ''The people were just way ahead of us.'' Biden more than hinted at the ground swell with his pointed, if rambling, questions. ''Do you understand that the vast majority of the American people have similar needs?'' he lectured.

Baird allowed that she had made a ''mistake,'' but stressed that she had been open about the infraction from the start. She blamed her husband for having failed to file Labor Department papers in a timely fashion, saying, ''I would have pushed to make it more expeditious.'' She assumed responsibility for the lapse in judgment but blamed it on the pressures of motherhood.

It was an appeal designed to tug heartstrings. But Baird's apologia did not play well in Peoria -- or the rest of America. Irate callers jammed the phone lines of radio and cable stations across the country, denouncing her tax dodging and calling on her to withdraw. The switchboard on Capitol Hill lit up as constituents weighed in with their representatives. In a single day, Senator Paul Simon's Washington office logged 1,000 calls. ''In 18 years in the Senate,'' said Senator Patrick Leahy, ''I had never seen so many telephone calls, spontaneously, in such a short period.'' Senator Nancy Kassebaum and Representative Marge Roukema lobbied Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee to quash the nomination.

As the second round of hearings opened Thursday, it was plain that Baird was a woman without a constituency. She had no track record with women's groups, Washington insiders or public-interest groups. Not even professional women with children rushed to her defense.


Questions
1. What credentials and experience led President Clinton to nominate Zoe Baird for Attorney General?

2. Why was her nomination withdrawn?

3. What role did public opinion play in her withdrawal? What role did politics play?

4. How is the 1993 controversy over the nomination of an Attorney General similar to and different from the controversial nomination of John Ashcroft in 2001? Where else have echoes of the Zoe Baird nomination been heard in recent weeks?