Kavanaugh a bad reflection on US

The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US supreme court, as much as any development in the challenging era of Donald Trump, is testing the US’s politicians and its civic institutions.

Few, so far, have met the test. Not Republican senators, who, after denying one president his legitimate authority to appoint a justice to the supreme court, are now rushing their own nominee through while weeping crocodile tears about other people’s partisanship. Not Democratic members of the Senate judiciary committee, who tainted the process by bringing forward damaging allegations at the last minute. Not the FBI, which, either of its own volition or because of constraints imposed by Republicans, failed to interview many key witnesses.

And not Trump, to absolutely no-one’s surprise. Kavanaugh also failed, decisively. First, he gave misleading answers under oath. The knuckleheaded mistakes of a young person should not in themselves be bars to high office. Deliberately misleading senators during a confirmation process has to be a bar to high office. Second, confronted with the accusations against him, Kavanaugh made recourse not to reason and methodical process, but to fury and the rawest partisanship.

While many of Kavanaugh’s defenders leapt to exonerate him of sexual assault or excused his rage-bender, virtually no-one has tried to deny his rank partisanship. Yet after last week’s testimony, how could any self-identified Democrat or leftist or sexual assault victim or anyone who is not identifiable as a Republican, expect to get a fair shake from a justice Kavanaugh?

Presidents have the prerogative to name supreme court justices who reflect their values and views of the constitution. Trump has no shortage of highly qualified, very conservative candidates to choose from if he will look beyond this first, deeply compromised choice. /New York, October 4