America descends to new depths in rancor and resentment. Confronted by that abyss, I wish to use a Q-and-A format to attempt a reasonable dissection of this embittering Brett Kavanaugh affair.
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Q: Did the FBI report vindicate Kavanaugh?
A: I don't know. I haven't read it. I'm not entitled to read it. There is but one copy. The White House has read it. Then that copy got sent over to the Senate where senators either read it or accepted the synopsis of Senate Judiciary Committee staff members.
Q: Why can't all of us read it?
A: The premise is that this was not a public investigation, but a simple supplemental background check on a job applicant and the results are the property of the prospective employers, meaning the nominating president and the Republican-controlled Senate committee charged with confirming the nomination. That they all work for us eventually is a sweet but quaint and irrelevant notion.
Q: Will any of the report leak?
A: Probably like a sieve by the time you read this, though only in selected parts by partisans in ways that can be spun to desired implication. Those leaks will be pointless except to give adrenaline charges to partisans, which is all political debate is anymore.
Q: But it's generally acknowledged that the report fails to corroborate charges against Kavanaugh. Isn't that enough basis for everyone to find even grudging agreement to put this sad and divisive episode behind us?
A: Either way, absent our own informed judgments, we're taking a politician's word. Do you trust that? I don't. Not Trump's, McConnell's, Grassley's, Graham's, Hatch's, Feinstein's, Harris', Booker's, Leahy's or Blumenthal's. I maybe take Christopher Coons' word. The Delaware Democrat says the report raises more questions for him than it answers.
Q: But, even so, if there's no corroboration, then there's no basis to consider Kavanaugh complicit in the accusations. Right?
A: Sexual assault is a charge often lacking corroboration. It happens between two people privately. Here there was an eyewitness, the accuser says. But the accused says there was no incident at all. And the eyewitness--who the heck knows what he said, or whether to believe him? Generally speaking, a simple sexual-assault accusation absent witnesses or clear corroboration is harder to advance against a privileged male from Yale than, say, a young black man in the South. It's a matter of whom you want and choose to believe. Everyone's truth nowadays is what they want it to be, and there is a source somewhere to confirm it. Just Google "agree with me" and something will come up.
Q: But no less than the FBI investigated the charge against Kavanaugh. Doesn't that settle it?
A: No. The FBI didn't investigate. It supplemented a job-based background check with a few new interviews carefully limited by the prospective employers who wanted clearance to hire, not reasons to not.
Q: But aren't we obligated to prove Kavanaugh guilty before we violate his right to a presumption of innocence and keep him off the Supreme Court?
A: No. This was not a trial. He faced no criminal charge. He was standing for consideration to a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. I opposed him from the get-go because he is too conservative for my taste, which is my right. I opposed him further because he behaved like a wild-eyed partisan zealot in his angry Judiciary Committee testimony. I opposed him because he wanted the nomination so desperately that he performed for Trump one day and apologized for it in an op-ed another day. I opposed him because I believed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
But I admit there is no known corroboration and that I can't expect others who favor him philosophically to keep him off the court on that basis alone. Some will disbelieve her. Others will declare her simply mistaken. Some will say it is no big deal to have become drunk and behaved as a fool as a boy. Some will say Kavanaugh is entitled to lie now because Bill Clinton got away with worse. All are arguable points except the latter. Clinton was not seeking office or confirmation to one. He already held one. He got impeached. He got tried. He got acquitted. I called on him to resign, but he paid me no mind. None of that clears Kavanaugh. The "yeah, but ..." or "what about him" defenses are for grade-school playgrounds, such as the U.S. Senate.
Q: Won't I at least admit that Senate Democrats mishandled the Ford matter and left her out to dry when they could have worked earlier and more quietly to honor her anonymity while checking her complaint?
A: Yes. I'd follow with a "yeah, but ..." or "what about the Republicans calling her credible and then not giving her charge a thorough investigation," but, alas, I just nobly called that an argument for the grade-school playground.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 10/07/2018