If the American people will only keep their temper,
on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end,
and the question which now distracts the country will be settled
just as surely as all other difficulties of like character
which have originated in this government have been adjusted.
- President(-Elect) Abraham Lincoln
What did you see this past week during the hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee? No doubt, your interpretation will reflect your politics, at least to a meaningful degree. In the spirit of full disclosure, so do my observations … but, truth be told, there was far more than we anticipated on display. It involuntarily occasioned in me the resort to two questions that I have asked myself a lot during the past two years or so: who are we and what have we become?
Yes, I believe her. No, I don't believe him. Is it possible that Dr. Ford is an exceptionally practiced liar and that Judge Kavanaugh is an exceptionally undisciplined man of integrity? Yes, that's possible, but far from likely....
Frankly, I don't feel the need to wade into an evaluation of the substance of their respective testimonies because I'm pretty sure that everyone's already formed their opinions, but I do think it worthwhile to reflect on what we witnessed, especially to discern what it tells us about what we've come to accept from our legislative 'leaders.'
The first thing that I'll note is that I doubt very seriously that any testimony would have changed the outcome of the Committee's ultimate vote. Seriously, how much better could it have gone for the witness alleging misconduct and how much worse could it have gone for the nominee?
Though clearly nervous and dealing with very painful memories, Dr. Ford was more composed and illuminating than we had a right to expect: I don't think that anyone doubts that she suffered trauma whether or not you agree that it was due to the nominee's indiscretion. Judge Kavanaugh, by contrast, was frantic, arrogant, hostile and uncooperative to say the least. Hardly the picture of a neutral, self-possessed professional capable of incisive discernment in situations of great import.
That Dr. Ford was vilified by so many who've never met or can in no way claim to know her reveals something of long-standing about us that's also quite ugly: simply put, we have a problem accepting and believing women who allege abuse and tend to default to defending the men who've been accused.
Given the prevalence of sexual assault in our society, this is as repugnant a habit as it is self-harming: more than half of us are female and an egregious number of our female fellow citizens have experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault. Let's amplify and clarify this horrific reality: recent studies have indicated that as many as 81% of our mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, nieces, etc., have been sexually harassed and that one in six (17%+) of them have been sexually assaulted. Let that sink in: four in five of them have been harassed and one in six of them have been violated. This is who we really are.…
[Don't believe me? See for yourself (among many, many, many such possible citations): https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/21/587671849/a-new-survey-finds-eighty-percent-of-women-have-experienced-sexual-harassment and https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence]
That we reflexively tend to blame the victim is the clearest possible indication that we need to change virtually completely. I suspect that as women become better represented in the leadership ranks of our society, especially relative to their proportion as more than half of us, this will change, but we shouldn't have to wait until that significant amount of progress is made. This. Must. End. Now.
Now let's take a closer look at the behavior that the SCOTUS nominee exhibited: he exhibited righteous anger, which would be expected from someone whose very character had been questioned completely; but more than this he exhibited an inability to manage his emotions in a way that conveyed his qualification to be the supreme arbiter that he has been recommended to be.
According to Rule 1.2 of the American Bar Association's (ABA's) "Model Code of Judicial Conduct":
A judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence
in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall
avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.
Does blaming your need to address the allegations against you on political opponents suggest that Judge Kavanaugh meets this standard? Or being snarkily oppositional when being questioned by a female senator? Or choosing not to answer many if not most of the direct questions - especially about matters of case law - posed to you?
Leaving aside this clear failure from a professional standpoint, I pose this question for us to consider in evaluating a person seeking a lifetime appointment to the most influential judicial body in our country: if a female nominee were to have displayed such a range of powerful emotion and seeming inability to maintain her composure, would her performance garner the plaudits that the Judge's has from many quarters? Pardon my French, but NFW.
I could go on, but what's the point? You may not like the last-minute nature of Dr. Ford's appearance before the committee, but you can't deny her courage and patriotism in doing so. By contrast, you may like Judge Kavanaugh's case record, but you can't deny that you learned a little if anything about his judicial perspective during this process but did witness him melt down and often appear to be, at a minimum, lacking in composure (if not undisciplined and a good bit unhinged).
That a one-week FBI investigation has been agreed to now that the Judge's nomination has been approved along partisan lines and sent to the full Senate for a vote is of little solace given the seeming depths to be plumbed in understanding more about his actual conduct, especially as it contrasts with his testimony. If we truly wanted to get to the bottom of the multiple swirling allegations now attached to Judge Kavanaugh, why would we choose such an abbreviated period within which to accomplish it? The answer, I suspect, is that virtually regardless of the findings, most minds on both sides of the aisle are already made up, so what remains is just flawed spectacle as political theater: I don't care what your politics are, but you have to agree that this is no way to govern our society.…
No, I don't think Judge Kavanaugh should be approved for a seat on the United States Supreme Court: I didn't like his judicial record before and I am completely mortified by the display of his character to which we've all been treated in the past week. But more important than this, two things absolutely must change as a result of this latest quite avoidable fiasco:
First, and most importantly, we have to take women's assertions of sexual assault seriously and respond to them compassionately, both from a social and legal perspective. Second, we have to require full FBI background check investigations of all SCOTUS (and/or Appellate Court) nominees. Were we to have observed these two commonsense behaviors, in all likelihood, this abomination of a nomination process would likely not have occurred, both because we would have known about the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh long before he was presented to the Judiciary Committee and they also would've had a fact-based record to evaluate them by and then to make the decision about whether his candidacy was appropriate. In the absence of this reasonable approach, we've managed to maim a brave woman, discount the experiences of millions of other sexual harassment and assault victims, expose the arrogance and naked will-to-power of a scion of East Coast bastions of power and privilege and reveal once again that our politics is irredeemably partisan, at least under a Republican hegemony.
This. Must. End. Or America will.…
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character,
give him power.
- Attributed to President Abraham Lincoln
(but more likely said by Robert G. Ingersoll)
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