Pathetic vetting process serves purpose
For just a moment, to borrow a line from Kipling, the tumult and the shouting have died, offering a welcome respite from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s haggling over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s worthiness to join the Supreme Court.
It was flat-out uncomfortable to behold the bratty behavior of men and women holding reins of power in our government, tossing civility to the wind while pouncing on the nominee like ravenous hounds gnawing on a lamb chop.
Some, like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, were clearly auditioning for runs at higher office while others, like Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, were painfully trying to hide the fact they were out of their league.
As Billy Bulger would put it, “To a battle of wits he came unarmed.”
Nor did groveling, obsequious Republicans cover themselves with glory, basically telling flailing Democrats “your mother wears combat boots!”
You’d find more decorum in a Yankees game at Fenway Park.
Whatever your thoughts on Kavanaugh were, surely you, too, must have felt “we’re better than this” as you watched America’s leaders in action.
It brought to mind something Celtics legend Bill Russell said as he reflected on winning 11 championships in 13 seasons: “We played like children and argued like men, instead of the other way around; we were childlike without becoming childish, and that made all the difference.”
If only Congress played that way.
Indeed, it was almost embarrassing, realizing the whole world was watching how we do business in America.
Then again, could it be that it was our strength, not our imperfections, on display last week?
During the Watergate scandal a now-forgotten columnist wrote a wonderful response to someone who fretted we were hanging our dirty laundry throughout 51 days of gavel-to-gavel coverage.
“This does not make us look smaller,” he insisted. “It makes us look larger because it shows we’re not afraid to scrutinize ourselves.”
A long departed friend of this column named Eric — a survivor of concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald — noted to friends at his 1990 Seder: “For all our social discord, we remain the longest-enduring society of free people, governing ourselves without benefit of kings or dictators; we are the marvel and mystery of the world.”
Perhaps so. But it was still a pleasure to see Chuck Grassley, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and the rest of that annoying crowd go away.
Public service? Please. They came across as a public nuisance.
Yet Winston Churchill still had it right: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others.