Truth Hurts

It's easy to conceive of any approach that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh could have taken before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday afternoon in response to the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that morning detailing her memory of an incident in 1983 of sexual assault against her by the nominee, that would have improved upon his performance in defending himself.  The challenge would be thinking of a worse way.  As it stands, Kavanaugh's major accomplishment was utterly destroying any appearance of impartiality and integrity of purpose on the part of those who persist in supporting his nomination to the Supreme Court -- a tenure during which he could well be expected to rule on cases involving the legal rights of women.  At the same time, it's not impossible to imagine some responses that might have sufficed as a way of addressing the allegations.  The catch is that they require some integrity and self-awareness.  That's a pretty big catch based on meticulous examination of Kavanaugh's testimony versus the evidence (for which I gratefully acknowledge Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs).

Not knowing the truth, and given Ford's testimony, three possibilities exist, not of equal probability.  Least probable-- and in the moment, unprovable-- is that Ford is an incredibly convincing deceiver with malicious intent.  If so, Kavanaugh is innocent and knows it.  Secondly (as the theory Republicans are pushing goes), Ford is sincere, and telling the truth but mistaken about who assaulted her.  This is effectively the same from Kavanaugh's standpoint and would therefore merit a very similar response.  In both cases, it would be reasonable for a person interviewing for a judgeship for life, who knows himself to be innocent, to assume his accuser's sincerity and her pain, and decent of him to express both empathetic regret for it and support for the cause of seeking justice for it along with acknowledgement of the public need for a well-formed, persuasive case for his own innocence.

The third possibility is that Ford's memory comports with the truth.  If this is so, Kavanaugh either does not remember his own bad behavior or he does.  If he does not remember, he can still either disbelieve it, believe it or find it undecidable.  Disbelieving would merit the same response as knowing himself to be innocent.  Only when it comes to undecidability and belief that it might be true does Kavanaugh enter into a realm in which personal remorse becomes not only an optional response,  but the essential and only one.  A case could be made for forgiveness for a crime committed when one was a minor and under the influence of alcohol provided one has shown remorse and has made or credibly intends to make amends, but Kavanaugh did not make it.

Elegant and true expression of regret is a test of character.  Bill Barbot, a fellow alumnus of Georgetown Prep from shortly after Kavanaugh's days there said it well in an article with the New York Times quoted on the Intercept

"A lot of us didn’t really have a proper education in how to manage yourself in situations that were complicated to manage as a teenager, but in­cred­ibly complicated to manage as an inebriated teenager,” he told the Post, making clear that this was "in no way an excuse."

It's too late now if he knows Ford's memory to be correct to make his response confession and contrition and proof of rehabilitation and of growth as a human being.   Kavanaugh's actual response-- take malicious intent as a given and play the self-defense-at-any-cost card-- does not adequately address the question of whether the charge is true.  His testimony avoided the truth of Ford's allegation, and threw irrelevancies and obstacles in the path of it all along the way. Kavanaugh's "case" for himself went no deeper than changing the subject at every opportunity to exaggerations of his honor, piety and achievements as though privilege precludes criminality.  His approach seemed to say, "Whether it's true or not, it's malicious."  This is one notch up the integrity knob from saying, "Those who oppose me are taking advantage of the ugly truth about me by wielding it maliciously." 

All of this is skirting the fact that sexual assault aside, Brett Kavanaugh's history of political hackery and his own extremely partisan words under oath Thursday afternoon should alone disqualify him for the job.  If Kavanaugh is voted to the Court, at least Ford's heroic testimony will linger over his record forever, but there are signs that the writing is on the wall - that Senator Flake's stand to delay the committee vote for FBI investigation of the incident is an orchestration for show, intended only to make the nasty job of pushing Kavanaugh's nomination to a floor vote more palatable for the masses.  If the FBI actually does its job and happens to hit a vein of uncontestable confirmation of Ford's testimony, or if seven days of post mortem on Kavanaugh's performance cause the reality of it to sink in in the national discourse as it should and undermine him exactly as he fears and probably deserves, this could be the end of his nomination.

But why wait!  Tip to Trump and his enablers in case Senators are plagued by conscience (or more likely, fear of optics, but we'll take what we can get) at the last minute and reject the Kavanaugh nomination:  Have you noticed in all of this how white,  male and privileged the court is?  If you don't know it already, take it from me, you're picking from a poisoned pool.  For your next trick, why not find the most abjectly regressive and partisan African American woman (a lesbian if possible ) who is more importantly fundamentalist christian, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant and pro-corporation?  Make sure she is clean as a whistle to ease her way through committee and floor vote.  Get on with it and twist your knife in the heart of the left as you intended from the start.

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Notes:

Non-disclosed PAC Judicial Crisis Network takes the Don Draper approach to Kavanaugh's predicament.

At Jacobin, Meaghan Day reminds us of the mediocrity at the center of the storm.