Danforth, John C. 1936- (Jack Danforth, John Claggett Danforth)

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Danforth, John C. 1936- (Jack Danforth, John Claggett Danforth)

PERSONAL:

Born September 5, 1936, in St. Louis, MO; son of Donald (president of Ralston Purina) and Dorothy Danforth; married Sally B. Dobson, September 7, 1957; children: Eleanor, Mary, Dorothy, Johanna, Thomas John. Education: Princeton University, A.B. (with honors), 1958; Yale University, B.D., LL.B, 1963. Politics: Republican. Religion: Episcopalian. Hobbies and other interests: Fly fishing, horseback riding, reading history, listening to country-western music.

ADDRESSES:

Home—St. Louis, MO. Office—Bryan Cave LLP, 1 Metropolitan Sq., 211 N. Broadway, Ste. 3600, St. Louis, MO 63102.

CAREER:

Writer, attorney, U.S. senator, government official, diplomat, and Episcopal priest. Admitted to the bar of New York State, 1963; Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Sunderland and Kiendl (law firm), New York, NY, tax lawyer, 1964-66; Bryan, Cave, McPheeters and McRoberts (law firm), St. Louis, MO, in private law practice, 1966-68; attorney general of Missouri, 1969-76; United States senator from Missouri, 1976-95; Bryan Cave (law firm), St. Louis, lawyer, 1995—. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, 2004-05. Former ranking member of Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. Ordained Episcopal deacon, 1963, and priest, 1964; assistant rector, New York, 1963-66; associate rector, Clayton, MO, 1966-68, and Grace Church, Jefferson City, MO, 1969; St. Alban's, Washington, DC, associate rector, 1977-94; Church of the Holy Communion, St. Louis, associate priest, 1995—. Chair of Missouri Law Enforcement Assistance Council, 1973-74. Guest on television programs, including Meet the Press. Assistant chaplain, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York; assistant rector, Church of Epiphany, New York, and Church of St. Michael and St. George, Clayton. Founder and president of Interfaith Action for Children Today (InterACT) St. Louis youth organization.

MEMBER:

American Bar Association, Missouri Bar Association, District of Columbia Bar Association, Missouri Academy of Squires, Alpha Sigma Nu (honorary).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Named Outstanding Young Man by Missouri Jaycees, 1968; St. Louis Jaycees distinguished service award, 1969; honorary degrees from Lindenwood College, Central Indiana University, Culver-Stockton College, St. Louis University, Lewis and Clark College, William Jewell College, and Southwest Baptist College; Presidential End Hunger Award, 1985; distinguished lecturer award from Avila College; St. Louis Award, 1993; Right Arm of St. Louis Award, 1994; St. Louis Man of the Year, 1994; University of Missouri, Kansas City, Chancellor's Medal, 1995. Yale University alumni fellow, 1973-79.

WRITINGS:

Government Regulation: Where Do We Go from Here?, The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (Washington, DC), 1977.

Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas, Viking (New York, NY), 1994.

Budgeting: Ourselves or Our Children, University of Tulsa (Tulsa, OK), 1996.

Faith and Politics: How the "Moral Values" Debate Divides America and How to Move forward Together, Viking (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Missourian John C. Danforth, author of the 1994 volume, Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas, was elected to the United States Senate in 1976, a remarkable accomplishment for a Republican in a state that traditionally elects Democrats to its top offices. The grandson of the founder of Ralston Purina, Danforth was among the wealthiest Senate members during his tenure, and was the Senate's only ordained minister as well. During his three Senate terms, Danforth was a champion of conservative causes, opposing the death penalty and urging an overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion. He also sought to protect American interests abroad, calling for tariffs or quotas to be imposed against countries that limit the importation of American products. In addition, the senator ardently supported the passage of the 1991 civil rights bill, although Republican president George Bush opposed it.

During his third term, Danforth gained national attention for his sponsorship of United States Supreme Court nominee Judge Clarence Thomas, who would replace the seat left by Justice Thurgood Marshall. Thomas, only the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court, was passing easily through the confirmation proceedings until his former colleague and employee Anita Hill claimed he had sexually harassed her during their association. Hill's allegations prompted a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thomas denied Hill's allegations and, after enduring ten days of embarrassing testimony that he dubbed a "high-tech lynching," Thomas was ultimately confirmed.

As told in Resurrection, Danforth was Thomas's primary supporter during the investigation into Hill's charges. The senator writes that Thomas was nearly destroyed by Hill's accusations and the negative publicity generated by her claims, and he shares in detail the turmoil that Thomas suffered during that time, describing Thomas on the floor, wailing, rubbing his head and eyes repeatedly, and proclaiming that this episode was destroying his life, his family, and everything he had accomplished since his beginnings as a poor youth in a small Georgia town.

Some critics have suggested that Danforth further humiliated his friend by revealing his distress. Among such critics was New Republic reviewer Jeffrey Rosen, who commented that "Thomas has been stripped of all dignity and reduced to a quivering fetal crouch." On the other hand, Washington Post Book World contributor Suzanne Garment approved of Danforth's account, writing: "Danforth's description of Thomas's pain is so searing that a reader keeps wanting to turn away from it. But such agony is not unique; anyone who has known an individual struck by scandal has seen it, and anyone who helps form national political opinion should know about it as well. For this reason alone, Resurrection should be required reading."

Danforth explained his inclusion of Thomas's wrenching experience to Laurel Shaper Walters in the Christian Science Monitor: "I wanted to portray as clearly and as graphically as I could what the consequences are of an effort to destroy a human being—to dig up the dirt on a person and to humiliate a person." Danforth, however, apologetically admits that he, too, engaged in some dirt-digging during the proceedings, urging his staff to find anything it could that would damage Hill's credibility. "I was attempting to do to Anita Hill what other people were attempting to do to Clarence Thomas," Danforth told Walters. "Namely, put things into the public record that had not been tested."

The title of Danforth's book, Resurrection, refers to Thomas's victorious outcome, which the author likens to the emergence of Christ from the tomb. On the day he began his testimony, Thomas and Danforth joined hands with their wives in the senator's private bathroom to pray for God's guidance and for God's will to be done. With "Onward, Christian Soldiers" playing on a tape recorder in the background, Danforth recalls in his book, he laid hands on the judge and admonished him to "Go forth in the name of Christ, trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit." Thomas then went out to face his accuser and tell his story, which the investigating committee accepted. "Clarence had risen," Danforth proclaims.

Resurrection has been comparatively reviewed with Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, an account from Hill's perspective by authors Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. Nina Totenberg, reviewing both books for the Los Angeles Times Book Review, deemed Resurrection "fascinating and well worth reading, for Danforth's relative clarity about his own conduct and the conduct of the Senate…. Of the two books, Strange Justice is, of course, far more comprehensive, objective, and probing, and it is a compelling narrative that will keep you awake at night. But Resurrection will keep you up too, and with both of these books, whether you believed Anita Hill or Clarence Thomas, you may find yourself, once again, in a towering rage."

In Faith and Politics: How the "Moral Values" Debate Divides America and How to Move forward Together, Danforth provides a careful examination of the political alliance that has evolved between the Republican party and the conservative Christian Right. He looks at how Republicans have used "wedge issues," such as gay marriage, the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case, abortion, stem cell research, and other controversial subjects, to divide the American people. In the book, Danforth "takes his own beloved party to task for allowing itself to be hijacked by the Christian right," remarked Lisa Miller in Newsweek. The three-term Republican senator combines his "status as an elder statesman with his lesser-known role as an Episcopal priest to raise uncomfortable questions about what he sees as the hefty costs paid for using religious rhetoric to fuel a political agenda," commented G. Jeffrey MacDonald in the Christian Century.

Danforth notes, for example, how Jerry Falwell exhorts his followers to "vote Christian," instead of according to the merits of an issue. James Dobson, head of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, likens stem-cell research to Nazi medical experimentation. Bitter political battles have been fought over issues such as the display of Christian religious documents on government property; the concept of marriage and family, particularly as it applies to gay couples; and the scope of authority of patients, spouses, and parents in right-to-die cases. "Right there in the midst of all the partisanship, in the midst of all the nastiness, right there with their wedge issues and litmus tests and extreme rhetoric, right there as the most divisive force in American life, are my fellow Christians," Danforth commented in the Christian Century. Danforth's questioning of the collaboration between conservative Christians and Republicans has drawn criticism, but his goal, he notes, is to stir national-level discussion on an important political issue. He stresses that "Real faith is about searching for answers, not presuming to know them," Miller related in her Newsweek article.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Christian Century, November 1, 2005, G. Jeffrey MacDonald, "Ex-Senator Danforth Slams Harsh Rhetoric," profile of John C. Danforth, p. 15; October 3, 2006, "Confession without Repentance," review of Faith and Politics: How the "Moral Values" Debate Divides America and How to Move forward Together, p. 6.

Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 1994, Laura Shaper Walters, review of Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas, p. 12.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 13, 1994, Nina Totenberg, review of Resurrection, p. 2.

National Review, December 27, 2004, William F. Buckley, Jr., "Exit Danforth—Enter Danforthism?," p. 59.

New Republic, December 19, 1994, Jeffrey Rosen, review of Resurrection, p. 27.

Newsweek, September 18, 2006, Lisa Miller, "Public Life: ‘St. Jack’ Examines His Conscience—And Party," profile of John C. Danforth.

New York Times Book Review, November 20, 1994, Martin Walker, review of Resurrection, p. 15.

Washington Post Book World, November 20, 1994, Suzanne Garment, review of Resurrection, p. 1.