Oh Joe, don't blow it this time.

Remarkably, history has put Sen. Joseph Biden right in the ring with two of the most galvanizing women of our time. Professor Anita Hill is still seared on our national psyche, and now so is Gov. Sarah Palin.

Hill and Palin showed up by surprise and like lightning, polarized the populace. Americans who look back in anger to 1991 remember well the riveting tale Hill told about Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas during his Senate confirmation hearing. Now the conversational civil war is centered on Palin.

The loquacious Democratic vice-presidential nominee presided over the Thomas hearing as the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. There, Biden bungled his first date with history.

A second chance comes as he faces the formidable Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, in tonight's debate.

Biden's long-winded ways and old-school manners may manifest as awkward chivalry toward the 44-year-old Palin. At 65, the seasoned senator plays on the world stage, but he can't stand on seniority or knowledge of Kosovo and Georgia. That will only encourage an aggressive newcomer attacking the "Washington elite."

Biden needs to get in the ring with the four-eyed Palin. He had better not pull his punches, for her steely confidence will not blink in the face of genteel expertise. If he defers to her, she'll have him for dinner served cold with caribou and baked Alaska.

It's worth revisiting Biden's shabby treatment of Hill when she came forward to tell her story of sexual harassment by her former boss, Thomas. As chairman, his flaws were not only what he did, but what he didn't do.

Biden kept insisting in the national limelight, "You get the benefit of the doubt, judge." He gave a Supreme Court nominee the same standard of "justice," so to speak, that applies in a criminal trial. The country deserved the benefit of the doubt, as Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-West Va.) said at the time.

Biden was in the vortex of a huge outpouring of support for both Thomas and Hill. Every word he said carried weight, and he should have chosen them more carefully.

Thomas bitterly denied Hill's testimony, which was supported by other sources. In a grim roll call vote, he was confirmed 52-48 by the Senate, then a sea of ties and suits.

That set the stage for the 1992 election in the "Year of the Woman." Yeah, baby. Waves rolled into Washington and the tide brought more women lawmakers to town.

Certain things linger. Biden let three Senate Republicans on the panel --Alan Simpson, Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch -- get away with a coordinated character assault.

The accusation that Hill was a "scorned woman" made headlines, but even so, some media opinion-makers, such as the late Tim Russert, found her compelling and "credible."

Biden was praised recently by the legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen (who once interned for him) for "restraint" in that sorry chapter. That's puzzling, but Rosen may be blinded by the light Biden emanates.

Rosen thought it proper that Biden squelched evidence of Thomas' penchant for pornography. If that finding had surfaced, it would have fit with the portrait Hill painted of a crude and lewd individual.

The Delaware Democrat is a hale fellow in the Capitol's marble halls. He championed the Violence Against Women Act, so I'm not saying he's no friend to women.

I am saying he bears blame for a blight on our system of checks and balances. Taking the place that had belonged before to Thurgood Marshall, Thomas was arguably the "one man, one vote" that gave us George W. Bush in 2000.

Even today, Thomas at 60 is a rather young justice with years left to rule over our collective destiny.

If he beats Palin fair and square, Biden will heal a scar on millions of Democratic women and men who believed Anita Hill told the truth -- 17 short years ago.

Stiehm, a writer and journalist in Washington, D.C., lived in Madison as a girl.