Mouths Wide Shut

That takes a lot of preparation, a lot of coaching, a lot of practice. "In the end, it's a little bit like a lawyer and a trial. When you ask a question, you do not want to be surprised."

Not being surprised means keeping your mouth shut as much as possible.

"It's a difficult period, particularly for someone who hasn't been . . . exposed to political attacks on a regular basis," Panetta says. "Some of them will say, 'I can't allow this attack to go unanswered.' . . . Then the White House guy says, relax, let us figure out how to respond to that attack, but in no way should you directly respond. . . . You would basically fall into the trap that the opponents have set."

John Danforth knows about trying to offer comfort in a crisis. He was a Republican senator from Missouri escorting his friend Clarence Thomas through what he says at first seemed like a smooth Supreme Court confirmation process. Then came that unexpected standoff between Thomas and Anita Hill over her charges of sexual harassment.

"It was just dreadful," Danforth says from his law offices in St. Louis. "My Senate office during the weekend of the second hearings was virtually a campground of people who had known Clarence for a long time, including many women who had worked with him.

"I had known him for quite a while. I think I was more of his longtime friend than simply somebody taking him around the Senate," says Danforth, who'd employed Thomas several times in his career. "It wasn't very hard until the end . . . when the disaster hit."

Thomas, he says, was distraught.

"He was sobbing. He was in the fetal position. He couldn't eat, he couldn't sleep. . . . He couldn't understand how this could happen to him. . . . At that point, instead of discouraging him from speaking, I encouraged him."

* * *

There was actually a time when the Senate and the public didn't hear from nominees at all, says Donald Ritchie of the Senate Historical Office.

The reasons, he says, were rooted in etiquette and practicality.

"In the 19th century, the office was supposed to seek the man, not the man seek the office. Their records and their friends were supposed to speak for them. That wasn't just true for judicial nominees but executive branch nominees as well."