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Coburn had forcibly sterilized a female patient. Despite a brief, unexplained break from the campaign, Schwartz moved up to the Senate after Coburn defeated his Democratic opponent, Brad Carson, with the help of Christian-right grassroots muscle and a last-minute, race-baiting ad blitz.
Schwartz may have salvaged his job, but he hasn't kept in Coburn's good graces. His comments about "impaling" judges, which I reported for this magazine, and which were subsequently carried by Newsweek and on Oklahoma Public Television, landed him back in the doghouse. According to filmmaker John Buchanan, who told me he interviewed Schwartz in May for a documentary, Schwartz said he was nearly fired by Coburn for his impolitic statements at the "Judicial War on Faith" conference, which he attended without his boss's permission. "I hurt Senator Coburn by what I did," Schwartz told Buchanan.
Yet with the sudden arrival of the first confirmation hearings in nineteen years for a new Supreme Court Chief Justice, it appears Schwartz has become indispensable to a Senator distinguished mainly by his lack of political accomplishments and his personal eccentricity. Indeed, during nearly a decade of public life, Coburn has distinguished himself with posturing ranging from the weird (in 1997 he denounced NBC's showing of Schindler's List as "an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity"; seven years later, he invoked the specter of "rampant" lesbianism in Oklahoma public high school bathrooms) to the seemingly pointless (at the risk of censure, he has rebuked a Senate Ethics Committee demand to quit practicing medicine). Most recently, Coburn hosted a "Revenge of the STDs" slideshow in the Capitol basement this May depicting "the ravaging effects" of sexually transmitted diseases.
"A free pizza lunch will be served but attendees should be advised that some slides contain graphic images," Coburn's press release warned.
Usually, when a senator's chief of staff speaks in public, he or she does so on behalf of that senator. With Schwartz, however, it's hard to know what his dissonant dynamic with his boss will produce. Which Tom Coburn will show up at John Roberts's confirmation hearing and those to follow for the next nominee?
Will it be the freshman senator weaned on a steady diet of memos by a veteran right-wing operative who wants to "impale" judges? Or the clueless physician-cum-political hobbyist described by his underling as someone who "doesn't know anything"?
In his opening statement, Coburn struggled to hold back tears as he exclaimed in a trembling voice, "My heart aches for less divisiveness, less polarization, less finger-pointing, less bitterness, less partisanship." On this day, at least, the kindly Dr. Coburn was in. But his other self may turn up at any moment.
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