Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

An Injudicious Man, Unfit for the Supreme Court

This was a job interview, not a criminal trial. Kavanaugh, in his fury and pathos, failed the test.

By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist

What America saw before the Senate Judiciary Committee was an injudicious man, an angry brat veering from fury to sniveling sobs, a judge so bereft of composure and proportion that it was difficult not to squirm. Brett Kavanaugh actually got teary over keeping a calendar because that’s what his dad did. His performance was right out of Norman Rockwell with a touch of “Mad Men.”

This is what you get from the unexamined life, a product of white male privilege so unadulterated that, until a couple of weeks ago, Kavanaugh never had to ask himself what might have lurked, and may still linger, behind the football, the basketball, the lifting weights, the workouts with a great high-school quarterback, the pro-golf tournaments with Dad, the rah-rah Renate-ribbing yearbook, the Yale fraternity, and the professed sexual abstinence until “many years” after high school.

“Sometimes I had too many beers,” Kavanaugh said. “In some crowds, I was probably a little outwardly shy about my inexperience; tried to hide that,” Kavanaugh also said. Christine Blasey Ford, his steady accuser, made a persuasive case that, in the summer of 1982, she paid the price for the teenage aggression and insecurity linking those two avowals.

Kavanaugh swears under oath that he never “sexually assaulted anyone.” To entertain even the possibility of it would be to dismantle the entire edifice of his holier-than-thou life. He’s the all-American jock, the model only child. For God’s sake, he contingently, and a little presumptuously, hired four female law clerks to work with him at the Supreme Court, the first (prospective) justice to have “a group of all-women law clerks.”

The words that resonate for me are the very words Kavanaugh used about his mother, Martha, the Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, whose trademark line was: “Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false?”

For my common sense, Mr. Kavanaugh “doth protest too much, methinks.” Christine Blasey Ford rang true. I’ll take her “100 percent” over his. She felt no need to yell. Nor did she hide behind a shield of repetition. She did not succumb to pathos (“I may never be able to coach again”). She spoke with a deliberation, balance and humanity missing in the judge.

This was a job interview, not a criminal trial. The accusation against Kavanaugh — involving an incident 36 years ago in an undetermined location, uncorroborated by those present — would not currently stand up in a court of law. As a juror, with the available evidence, I could not say “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he committed this assault. (This, of course, is precisely the evidence that the F.B.I. investigation that Kavanaugh evaded backing, and that Senator Jeff Flake has now decisively endorsed, might produce.)

But Kavanaugh’s bleating about due process and presumption of innocence — his rage at a supposed “national disgrace” — misses the point. He failed the job interview. Who would want this spoiled man pieced together on a foundation of repressed anger and circumscribed privilege — this man who quite plausibly was the teenage drunk near-suffocating Christine Blasey Ford as he ground his body against hers, this man who may now have perjured himself — occupying a place for life on the highest court in the land?

I began this column by describing what America saw on Thursday. But it’s not what all of America saw. Millions of Americans, including President Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham, saw something else: a despicable Democratic Party conspiracy against an innocent and upstanding middle-aged judge, the latest victim, along with his family, of gender politics, the #MeToo revolution, and an ascendant culture dictating that whatever women say must be true and whatever men say must be false.

The hearings were a Rorschach test for America’s tribes. They saw what they wanted to see. For Kavanaugh’s supporters, his rage was as good a primal scream for threatened white male privilege as may be imagined. No wonder Trump loved it.

A tribal confrontation is not conducive to the establishment of truth. That’s why the F.B.I. investigation is important. Despite Trump’s best efforts to trivialize the everyday lie, facts matter.

Addressing the Democrats on the committee, Graham fumed: “You want this seat? I hope you never get it.” But of course, as Democrats will never forget, Republicans stole a seat. Remember Merrick Garland? There is something so hypocritical in Republican outrage that it would be comical if the issue were not so grave.

It’s hard to argue that America’s tribal democracy is not dysfunctional these days, but still the United States is a democracy. Flake’s 11th-hour decision to demand a week’s delay before a full Senate vote to allow the F.B.I. investigation — a decision driven by conscience over Republican Party allegiance — is a small act of honor in a tawdry time. It can take a while for democracies to zigzag toward the truth.

Kavanaugh has revealed himself to be a man without measure, capable of frenzy, full of conspiratorial venom against Democrats. Justice would not be served by his presence on the Supreme Court.

Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in 1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/opinion/kavanaugh-supreme-court-temperament.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

tradio Loc: Oxford, Ohio

Oh, the NYT's. Well there is an unbiased editorial.

McKinneyMike Loc: Texas

I agree. Mr. Kavanaugh lost his cool and control of his superior intellect when he was cornered. I would hate for him to face something where it might be more serious than a job interview.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Kavenaugh's performance alone should be more than enough to eliminate him from further consideration. I read Cohen's piece this morning-New York Times whatever it was printed--the analysis rings true. The Supreme Court is not a place for an angry, blubbering, bitter, self-pity filled victim of imagined conspiracy.
Totally aside from any alleged sexual bad behavior, his terperment Thursday was more than enough.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

OK When a man reacts in a very emotional way, he is unbelievable. And when a woman acts without emotion she is to be believed. sounds a little backward anti male to me. also sounds lika she was very well rehearsed

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Best Newspaper in the Nation, most honest, reliable, and neutral in its coverage.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Remember, HE is the judge, supposed to be impartial, to follow the law, to bring sense and rationality to the situation; he couldn’t.

Let’s say she was motivated, by fear and terror, but she responded as an adult.

He was an immature teen, drunk in the past, sober this time, but still an immature teen.

Texcaster Loc: Queensland

It has been pointed out many times in recent days that if Dr Ford conducted herself like Kav, she would be said to be suffering from PMS.


Our Own Lord Fluffy, The Leader Of The Free World,

Trump slammed Kelly, saying her questions were "ridiculous" and "off-base."
"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes," Trump told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday night. "Blood coming out of her wherever."

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Ford was the thoughtful, composed, articulate believable witness. Kavenaugh was the blubbering, wandering, self-pityfilled, over-emotional witness.
That doesn't lend itself to who was truthful--but it says much about grace under pressure.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

His reaction doesn't prove she is correct. It does show he doesn't have the temperament and impartiality to be a justice. You seem to be confusing to very different things.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Do you think he was sober Thursday? I have no way of knowing, but I suspect he wasn't. If you watch him, watch him lose control, watch his belligerence, it seems suspect to me. It wouldn't be illegal, but it wouldn't show good judgement.

Texcaster Loc: Queensland

From his early days in DC, Kav and other bright sparks, were being groomed as a partisan warriors, the goal was always the courts.

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

When asked straight out if he did it, he squirmed and went on a tangent rather than answering directly. When asked if he would take a lie-detector test, he responded about how inaccurate they can be and how they are not admissible in court. He sounded a lot like a guilty man. His tirade about "Hillary's revenge" was bizarre and uncomposed - very Trumpian.

This editorial echos my thoughts that he was a spoiled, privileged little rich kid that got away with being a brat and a bully. And even though I am a liberal, I am pragmatic - I am not worried about justice Gorsuch, for example, because he seems to be imminently qualified and well balanced and even though I may not always agree with his opinions, I respect him and think he will prove to be a solid member of the Supreme Court.. The fact that Kavanagh has lost much respect is disqualifying.

yhtomit Loc: Port Land. Oregon

Where do you find un-American crap like this. Out of context, bold lies and just plain misleading statements.
You have my pity for believing any of this.