It seemed like a different person altogether
Benjamin Wittes wrestles with the Kavanaugh issue.
I have a long relationship with Kavanaugh, and I have always liked him. I have admired his career on the D.C. Circuit. I have spoken warmly of him. I have published him. I have vouched publicly for his character—more than once—and taken a fair bit of heat for doing so.
He advised Kavanaugh (also at The Atlantic) to withdraw unless he could dispute Ford’s account without leaving a scorched earth behind.
Kavanaugh, needless to say, did not take my advice. He stayed in, and he delivered on Thursday, by way of defense, a howl of rage. He went on the attack not against Ford—for that we can be grateful—but against Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and beyond. His opening statement was an unprecedentedly partisan outburst of emotion from a would-be justice. I do not begrudge him the emotion, even the anger. He has been through a kind of hell that would leave any person gasping for air. But I cannot condone the partisanship—which was raw, undisguised, naked, and conspiratorial—from someone who asks for public faith as a dispassionate and impartial judicial actor. His performance was wholly inconsistent with the conduct we should expect from a member of the judiciary.
Consider the judicial function as described by Kavanaugh himself at his first hearing. That Brett Kavanaugh described a “good judge [as] an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy.” That Brett Kavanaugh reminded us that “the Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution. The justices on the Supreme Court do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle. They do not caucus in separate rooms.”
That Kavanaugh did not show up last Thursday.
After rightly criticizing “the behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at [his] hearing a few weeks ago [as] an embarrassment,” this Brett Kavanaugh veered off into full-throated conspiracy in a fashion that made entirely clear that he knew which room he caucused in:
When I did at least okay enough at the hearings that it looked like I might actually get confirmed, a new tactic was needed.
Some of you were lying in wait and had it ready. This first allegation was held in secret for weeks by a Democratic member of this committee, and by staff. It would be needed only if you couldn’t take me out on the merits.
When it was needed, this allegation was unleashed and publicly deployed over Dr. Ford’s wishes. And then—and then as no doubt was expected, if not planned—came a long series of false last-minute smears designed to scare me and drive me out of the process before any hearing occurred.
He went on: “This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”
I still wonder why he did that, and all the more so after reading the bit from the first hearing. Did he simply lose his temper? Lose it so thoroughly that it remained lost while he wrote that statement? And while he delivered it? (There again – if so, that itself hints at a temperament not ideal for the Supreme Court.)
The Brett Kavanaugh who showed up to Thursday’s hearing is a man I have never met, whom I have never even caught a glimpse of in 20 years of knowing the person who showed up to the first hearing. I dealt with Kavanaugh during the Starr investigation, which I covered for theWashington Post editorial page and about which I wrote a book. I dealt with him when he was in the White House counsel’s office and working on judicial nominations and post–September 11 legal matters. Since his confirmation to the D.C. Circuit, he has been a significant voice on a raft of issues I work on. In all of our interactions, he has been a consummate professional. The allegations against him shocked me very deeply, but not quite so deeply as did his presentation. It was not just an angry and aggressive version of the person I have known. It seemed like a different person altogether.
I think that’s the part that interests me the most. I’ve been trying to imagine a Kavanaugh who was admired by people like Wittes and I couldn’t do it – because the one who shouted and blubbed at that hearing is the only one I’ve seen.
And what about Dr. Ford? She has been through a hell for 30+ years. I’m sorry, I can’t feel sorry for him as long as I believe her. If I find reason to believe that she is lying, then I can feel sorry for Kavanaugh, but at this point? No. If he did as accused, he has earned his hell fair and square.
He didn’t lose his temper in the way you mean. You’re thinking of the flash of temper, of fury at a single incident that a normal person might display. This was the rage of an out-of-control addict, a morass of swirling resentment and bottled-up anger because when you’re a drunk and you’re trying to keep that on the down-low, you end up keeping it all inside.
He went into that room in high dudgeon because all he would have heard during the break is how well Dr Ford performed as a witness. So his fury boiled over. But the substance, that he wrote the night before in his statement, that was the long-simmering resentment that is common in addicts added to a toxic stew of white male privilege.
People like Wittes never seem to take the next (to me, fairly obvious step). “If Kavanaugh had me fooled, maybe I’m just not a good judge of character. Maybe I should spend some time reflecting on that, and the harm I’ve done by being a useful idiot for a man like that.”
Am I the only one who was left doubting Kav’s opening statement that he wrote the speech all by himself, with no input or even editing from anyone else? I’m sensing the hand of Trump, or at least of Trump’s advisors, here–the same ones who encourage President Dumpster-Fire to continue Tweeting his obscene musings. It would explain the difference Witter noted (and further my theory that Trump is literally so toxic that he actually takes people with a certain degree of self-respect and drags them down into the muck with himself).