US politics has reached its most vicious nadir – until the next one
If any consensus is to emerge from Thursday’s emotional Senate hearing and the bad tempered committee vote yesterday, it is not around the truth or otherwise of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, during which she admitted all the gaps in her memory.
Nor is it around Brett Kavanaugh’s scorched-earth response in which he revealed the ugly rage of a privileged white man who might be denied the job he covets.
If there is any consensus to be had, it is that US politics, and “the shining city on a hill” that its democracy is meant to represent to the world, as Ronald Reagan memorably put it, has reached a vicious nadir.
At least until the next one, that is. It was not just Mr Kavanaugh’s behaviour. His fire and fury, his theory that the allegations against him were nothing but a hatchet job dreamed up by his opponents, suggested the sort of partisan firebrand beloved of Donald Trump, but deeply unbecoming in a judge.
What about the spectacle of the Republican senators? All white men. All apparently so divorced from humanity that they could not trust themselves to question an alleged sex crime victim – they had to hire a woman for the day (or at least up to the point when they thought they could do a better job).
Did Jeff Flake offer a solution yesterday, with his call for Mr Kavanaugh to be advanced to the Supreme Court, with the proviso that the FBI conduct a one-week investigation into Prof Ford’s allegations? Such an investigation to establish a framework of evidence would be a start, but his vote to propel Mr Kavanaugh’s nomination forward at the same time suggests it is merely another form of politicking.
The Democrats are just as guilty of scoring points. Their strategy has been to drag this process out to the midterm elections in November when they can make this a campaign issue.
It still remains to be seen if the Democrats will stop Mr Kavanaugh during a vote of the whole Senate, but if they do it will send a message that one uncorroborated account and some ill-considered yearbook boasts from more than 30 years ago is sufficient to derail a life.
Can that be right? It is no surprise that it is a battle over the Supreme Court that reveals the very ugliest aspects of America. Its black-robed justices have become the arbiters of the country’s culture wars, from abortion to campaign finance and guns to gay marriage. Its role in interpreting the constitution is inherently political.
So, it is not just the behaviour of partisan senators and commentators that is so troubling. Nor the spectacle of a Supreme Court nominee pleading his innocence. Nor the fact that Mr Kavanaugh and Prof Ford both ended the week in houses protected by security guards.
Rather, it is the dawning realisation that every sphere of American public life is contaminated by the notion that the easy virtues of sincerity and spittle-flecked authenticity are equivalent to truth.