Kavanaugh and the Death Knell of American Institutions

Hello, reader (or readers, if I’m being especially optimistic). This is usually the time and place where I would go through the ritualistic motions of acknowledging that I haven’t written anything in a very long time, blame it on the toxic nature of our current political climate, and throw out some nasty adjectives to describe our president. I won’t bother you with that today; I’ve done it enough times and I’m quite sure anyone who knows me or has read any of my past missives knows exactly where I stand on contemporary American politics. So let’s just get to the point.

I’m pretty sure the United States Senate died this week. Mind you, what was once known as “The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” had been on life support since at least 2013, when then-Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the “nuclear option” to allow most executive branch nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority vote. But things have gone uniformly downhill from there, with the Merrick Garland stonewalling followed by current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell extending the nuclear option to Supreme Court nominees last year and now this.

You know what I’m talking about—the Kavanaugh Debacle. From Cory Booker’s “I am Spartacus” moment to Lindsey Graham’s Tyra-Banks-level screed, the confirmation hearings for retired Justice Anthony Kennedy’s replacement have been an epic display of partisan meltdown. We all already hate each other so much, and the raw tribalism fueling that hate has now spread, virus-like, across our entire federal government. First it was the House, then the Presidency, and now—thanks to Brett Kavanaugh and the Beach Week Ralph Club—it has reached the Senate, and through it, the Supreme Court. By my count, that leaves us with exactly zero governing institutions free of partisan taint. This is bad, folks. This is really bad.

I’d really rather not wade too deep into the matter of the accusations surrounding Judge Kavanaugh. In our current state of play, it’s more than a little tricky for a straight, white male to offer any kind of opinion on sexual assault without getting into some kind of trouble. This is especially true if what I have to say is something other than unequivocally believing Dr. Ford and categorically dismissing Judge Kavanaugh as a boorish, lying rapist. (Or, alternatively, I risk being branded a coward by the other side if I give Dr. Ford even one inch.) That, in and of itself, is a problem—and yet another symptom of our hyper-divided polity. As with everything else, essentially no room has been left for middle ground here, which is particularly troubling considering we are talking about an event that happened 35 years ago with almost no way to know definitively what actually occurred. So let me ask just this one question: is it really so bad that I believe that both Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh told the truth last week? Is it really impossible that Dr. Ford was sexually assaulted and remembers it vividly while her assailant was so drunk—or the event so insignificant in his adolescent eyes—that he doesn’t have any recollection of it whatsoever? Because I watched both her testimony and his and that’s what I saw.

I reject this kind of unconstructive and harmfully dichotomous reasoning (if it can even rightfully be called that). I don’t have to choose between a Christine Blasey Ford who is a paid agent of Democratic sabotage and a Brett Kavanaugh who is a calculated, professional perjurer. I do, however, agree with Ross Douthat and Frank Bruni at the New York Times that our country and our institutions would be best served if Judge Kavanaugh were removed from consideration, regardless of what happened that night three and a half decades ago. We deserve—no, we desperately need—to confirm a Supreme Court Justice who is at least seen as legitimate (if not necessarily agreeable) by both sides. And let’s be clear—these accusations have rendered Judge Kavanaugh illegitimate and his fiery, partisan testimony has disqualified him for this position. Of course, with Senators Collins and Manchin announcing yesterday that they will vote “yes” on Kavanaugh, his ascension to the high court seems all but assured. And that’s a damn shame, because now we’ll have a forever tainted Justice on our Supreme Court, one who could trigger a culture war Armageddon if he goes anywhere near Roe v. Wade.

So yes, I believe this represents the simultaneous death knell of the Senate and the Supreme Court. Whose fault is it? There’s plenty of blame to go around. As I mentioned earlier, Harry Reid got this train rolling (or, really, Bill Frist did when he first raised the specter of the nuclear option back in 2005). Mitch McConnell did nothing to help with his audacious roll of the dice on Merrick Garland and, later, Neil Gorsuch. And now we have Dianne Feinstein entering the fray with a nasty, below-the-belt blow of her own. Yes, as I’ve said, I find Dr. Ford to be a credible witness and I believe every word she said, but I don’t think I will ever be convinced that the timing of Senator Feinstein’s release of the allegations was anything other than sheer political calculation. She held onto that letter from Dr. Ford for weeks, only to make its contents known at precisely the moment at which Republicans would be unable to withdraw Kavanaugh from consideration and put forward another nominee before the midterm elections. It looks dirty, underhanded, and quite frankly horribly disrespectful toward Dr. Ford. Did the Republicans deserve it after what they did to Merrick Garland? Probably. But the Senate is supposed to be above that kind of eye-for-an-eye pettiness and Senator Feinstein should be ashamed for handling a woman’s courageous account of sexual assault the way she did, whatever her reasons were.

But, if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m having a great deal of trouble working myself up into my usual “the Democrats have been no better than the Republicans in the way they’ve handled this” fervor. I’m just so tired of all of this—the anger, the vitriol, the Facebook newsfeed littered with arguments and memes spreading misinformation to literally thousands of people at a time. And I hate that our governing institutions have sunk to that same low. If we can’t respect each other and we can’t trust the governing institutions that have kept our country standing for nearly two and a half centuries, then what’s left? I don’t know, but I do know that when Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed later today, it’ll only make things worse.

Well, that’s it for today’s uplifting rhetoric. Here are a couple of quality links if you want some further reading on Kavanaugh: from Rod Dreher at The American Conservative; Caitlin Flanagan at The Atlantic; and the aforementioned conversation between Ross Douthat and Frank Bruni at The New York Times. And let’s not forget my good friend CJ Bergin’s sober analysis via viral Facebook post.

Stay tuned for my next post (yes, I’m actually planning another one) in which I endorse a couple Democrats (gasp!) and talk about the forthcoming electoral bloodbath next month.