Rarely have we witnessed so many people pretend a controversy was about one thing when it was so obviously about another. Since September 16, when the name of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser became known—Christine Blasey Ford, a California psychologist, alleges that he sexually assaulted her in 1982—Democratic politicians and most of the mainstream news media suddenly seemed to care deeply whether Kavanaugh behaved reprehensibly when he was 17.
If that’s what they are concerned about, we gladly join them. We hope Ford will accept Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley’s invitation to testify, either publicly or privately. Her claim should be taken seriously. And although we have some apprehensions about the practice of probing an adult’s youthful history in search of culpable behavior, Kavanaugh has now categorically denied the accusation—evidence corroborating her claim would mean he spoke falsely and so shouldn’t be elevated to the Supreme Court.
But from the moment on September 14 that California senator Dianne Feinstein issued a statement that an unnamed person had made some allegation about Kavanaugh—she wouldn’t say who or what—the truth of what did or didn’t happen was irrelevant. Feinstein had had a letter conveying the charge for more than a month, but waited until after Kavanaugh’s hearings were concluded. She claims she wanted to preserve Ford’s request for anonymity and that “the media outed her.” But how, we wonder, did the media “out” her if not by Democrats leaking her identity?
Since the Democrats don’t control the Senate and, thanks to former senator Harry Reid, they can’t filibuster judicial nominees, their strategy from the instant Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement was to delay confirmation hearings until after the midterm elections: They would capture the Senate and block all Trump nominees. Democrats and their most enthusiastic supporters justified this strategy by equating it to the Senate GOP’s refusal in 2016, at Mitch McConnell’s behest, to hold hearings on Barack Obama’s third Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Yet in mid-2007, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer had vowed to hold no further hearings on George W. Bush’s nominees. And in any case, McConnell’s strategy didn’t involve defamation.
The Democrats’ original strategy for delay—requesting thousands of documents, then claiming they didn’t have time to read them, then caviling about what could and couldn’t be made public—failed badly. That’s when Feinstein threw the process into confusion with the anonymous accusation, and someone leaked the accuser’s name to the media. The behavior Ford then described to the Washington Post isn’t just boorish or inappropriate but criminal—an attempt to rape her. If it is true, Kavanaugh would have to withdraw his name from consideration for the Court. But the circumstances adduced are so distant and hazily recalled that conclusive proof or disproof of them is nearly impossible. There is no contemporaneous corroboration—Ford told no one at the time—and since she can’t remember specifically when and where the incident took place, Kavanaugh can’t produce an alibi.
In support of her claim Ford produced notes from a 2012 therapy session and a 2018 polygraph test—all 30 years or more after the alleged encounter. It’s very plausible that she is mistaken. Three other people supposedly present—Mark Judge, Patrick Smyth, and Kavanaugh—have denied the allegations.
Cristina King Miranda, who attended the same school as Ford, set the media aflutter with a Facebook post claiming the incident was widely discussed at the time—contradicting Ford’s claim she had told no one until 2012. Now King refuses to speak further about it on the grounds that “I do not have first hand knowledge of the incident.” Virginia Hume responded on Twitter: “I also graduated from Holton-Arms in 1983. I have no recollection whatsoever of any discussion in or out of school of the alleged incident. As I’ve said previously, I knew Brett in high school and never heard anything untoward about him.”
Ford’s recollections to her therapist are inconsistent on the matter of how many people she now says were involved in the alleged assault. The notes also do not name Kavanaugh, though her husband told the Post she did mention Kavanaugh at the time of the session and expressed concern he could become a Supreme Court nominee. “If a Republican, any Republican, wins in November, his most likely first nominee to the Supreme Court will be Brett Kavanaugh,” concluded a March 2012 New Yorker profile of Kavanaugh. Ford concedes that she had been drinking at the alleged party.
Perhaps the strongest evidence for taking Kavanaugh’s denial seriously, however, is that no other women have come forward to testify of similar treatment by him. Men who attack women in the manner in which Ford describes are almost always serial offenders. Others may still come forward, but a week after Ford’s explosive claim went public, none has, while many women have testified to his decent and honorable conduct.
Making Ford’s claims even more suspect is the way in which their revelation happens to align with the strategy of Senate Democrats. They don’t so much want to persuade moderate Republicans to vote No as to delay the vote—and so, it would appear, does his accuser. At first she expressed, through her attorney, a desire to testify. Then a reluctance to do so. Then an insistence that an FBI investigation be carried out first—this despite the fact that the FBI has carried out no fewer than six comprehensive background checks of Kavanaugh and found nothing akin to the conduct alleged by Ford. On September 20, as we write, Ford’s attorney sent an email to Judiciary staffers requesting a conference call to discuss the terms under which Ford might agree to testify. More delay. More diversion.
The demand for a time-consuming investigation quickly generated arguments about whether the FBI investigates allegations of long-ago local crimes. Democrats argue that the bureau investigated Anita Hill’s charges; Republicans argue that was because they had to do with a federal employee’s conduct in a federal building, not a 36-year-old act by a teenager in a private home.
What Republicans making such arguments fail to grasp is that for most Democrats, what matters isn’t evidence or truth. For them, what matters is the defeat of Kavanaugh’s nomination and their further self-identification with victims of harassment and assault. Hence the mind-numbingly idiotic statements by Senate Democrats. “Guess who is perpetrating all of these kinds of actions?” asked Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. “It’s the men in this country. I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up.” New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand asked (via Twitter), “The fundamental questions we must answer right now: Do we value women? Do we believe women? Do we give them the opportunity to tell their story? To be heard? Will we ensure they get the justice they deserve?” How about: Is it true?
Across the media, Democrats pretending to care about Ford’s treatment 36 years ago insisted that Kavanaugh’s nomination to the High Court must be either slowed or blocked because—well—men do bad things to women. A classmate of Ford’s told a sympathetic Jim Acosta on CNN that she backs Ford because many women in her class had “similar experiences. . . . Not with Brett Kavanaugh, but with other boys in our community.” Philip Rucker, the Washington Post’s White House bureau chief, remarked on Twitter that “During Brett Kavanaugh’s time as an undergrad at Yale, his fraternity, DKE, marched across campus waving a flag woven from women’s underwear.” Kavanaugh was in no way connected with the story, but no matter.
We’re put in mind of James Nolan’s 1998 book The Therapeutic State. Nolan chronicled the way in which, over the course of the 20th century, justifications for public-policy decisions drew increasingly on the subjective language of therapy. A hundred years ago, a public official might base an important decision on what was true or patriotic or in line with public virtue. By the end of the century, the official would base the decision on what “feels right” or what will “bring healing” or because he or she “cares” so deeply.
We’ve arrived at the ludicrous conclusion of the transition Nolan described. A good man with an impeccable reputation and a stellar record may be denied a seat on the nation’s highest court and defamed as a sexual aggressor. Why? Because important people feel he probably did something terrible. They just feel he did it.
