On a human level, today’s hearings were miserable. Politics can be great spectacle, but only when the attackers and the attacked are politicians, creatures that have usually elbowed aside many others, stepped on many heads, and sacrificed part of their human brain for a collection of pre-programmed chips. They’re used to seeing the floor covered with their own blood, or whatever it is—maybe polarized silicon. Judges, though, are not politicians, at least not in the way of governors and senators, and neither are obscure California psychologists. Nothing about the pain on display today was funny. The usual gang of rogues on the committee triggered nausea more than eye rolling.
Twitter of course was miserable, too. If, like me, you follow both conservatives and liberals, the effect was like cutting between Super Bowl parties. You could practically see the Solo cups and the Ford and Kavanaugh jerseys. Far preferable were the live chats on YouTube, where at least there was no pretense of profundity. One Robert Shafer could say, “I for ford you go girl,” while a Marc Johnson could say “she is lying,” leaving Jim Johnson to introduce a different angle with, “jews did do 911, srry.”
Which senator was most awful? It’s impossible to single out just one. On the basis of party overall, though, Democrats probably won the prize, at least for today, mainly because Republicans effectively sat out part one, leaving the questioning to prosecutor Rachel Mitchell. That left one side to express boundless empathy for Christine Blasey Ford before switching over to frosty sir-answer-the-question-sir-please-style questioning with Brett Kavanaugh, as if there were no chance he could be suffering a wrong. That said, with the allegiances of the nominee reversed, Republicans would have behaved the same way.
But I digress before I even start. The main question is this: did Kavanaugh’s chances today improve or not? Everyone, except perhaps Mitch McConnell, is just guessing, but I’ll make the case that his odds went way up and down on the dial before resting where they were 24 hours ago. It was, in short, a wash.
Christine Blasey Ford proved to be an outstanding witness. She came across as sincere, cooperative, and non-malicious. She was emotional without being self-pitying. The fact that she attempted to prevent the nomination of Kavanaugh while he was still on the short list adds immensely to her credibility and blunts accusations of partisanship. As far as I can tell, the consensus (which I share) is that she was sincere in her statements, regardless of what happened.
At the same time, there were some odd moments. How could Ford not know that Chuck Grassley had offered to go to California and have her testify where she lives? The rest of us all knew. It also did little to resolve the questions about the release of Ford’s letter. It’s an important question. If the timing was due just to bad luck and carelessness, then far more of a delay (with plenty of extra time for investigations) would be warranted than if the timing were due to a deliberate eleventh-hour maneuver. Figuring out the chain of custody of Ford’s letter would say a lot about who was operating in good faith and who wasn’t. It’s to the discredit of journalists on the story that, over the past week, so few have seemed interested in raising the matter.
Brett Kavanaugh, on the other hand, proved to be a far more inconsistent witness, showing some serious lapses in judgment. That he expressed anger was non-ideal but understandable. That he lost his cool with Senator Amy Klobuchar and asked her about her drinking habits as payback for being asked about his own looked terrible but could be patched up, partially, with an apology, which he delivered. But that he accused Democrats on the committee of engaging in “revenge on behalf of the Clintons,” in a prepared statement no less, was a blow to his legitimacy in the present and future.
People will say that it shows Kavanaugh lacks a judicial temperament. That’s not quite fair. Judges don’t have to sit around for weeks getting called enablers of gang rape, and no one under coordinated political attack escapes feelings of paranoia and persecution. But feeling it and saying it are different things. When it comes to judicial partisanship, we live by plausible deniability. Everyone knows that Antonin Scalia was a hardline Republican, but we needed him to claim disinterest officially. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg joked about moving to New Zealand if Trump won, the trouble, again, wasn’t that she thought it but that she said it. The same goes for Kavanaugh, who seems to have followed her example without the benefit of being on the court already.
On the other hand, Kavanaugh seems to have struck people as sincere, and indeed he very well might be. It’s entirely possible that neither Kavanaugh nor Ford is lying, even as it’s impossible that neither is mistaken. When Kavanaugh wept, those who hate him mocked his tears or said it demonstrated double standards when it comes to the treatment of women. But others just saw someone in agony. Those others include Republicans who are hemming and hawing about which way to vote, and, if people like Susan Collins didn’t like Kavanaugh’s lapses today, they also hate the precedent that would be set if he is destroyed. Democrats handled this well, in terms of demanding political capital of Republicans, but they also managed to unite the opposition. This is why, if I were betting, I’d say Kavanaugh gets confirmed.
We’ll have to ask sometime what crucibles like this do to people. Robert Bork, after getting shot down in 1987, became professionally bitter. Clarence Thomas seems to have come out of his hearings far more partisan than when he went in, with desire for revenge. Kavanaugh might prove to have the same evolution, and it will of course hurt everyone. When Brett Kavanaugh was born, Supreme Court confirmations were painless enough that it was common to make do with a voice vote. We’ve all come a long way.
