Not fit for the high court

Kavanaugh released his rage, self-pity and partisanship

Iwasn’t in that Maryland bedroom in 1982. You weren’t there. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says he wasn’t there. But after listening to every word uttered by his tearful, yet calm and respectful accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, and Judge Kavanaugh’s combative, weepy refutation, I have no choice but to conclude she is credible and he is not.

He is not suited to a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Because of his self-pity and rage.

Because of the way he shredded the idea that he can be an impartial arbiter on the high court when he accused Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee of seeking “revenge on the behalf of the Clintons” and “left-wing opposition groups.”

Because of the insulting way he spoke to Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar when she asked whether he ever drank so much he could not remember what happened. (”You’re talking about a blackout,” he said in a nasty tone. “I don’t know. Have you?”)

Because he refused to give a straight answer about whether he would support an FBI investigation into Ms. Ford’s charges.

Judge Kavanaugh’s anger may be understandable in a man who claims — hyperbolically — that his life and family have been “destroyed” by false allegations of sexual assault.

But it is hardly what we deserve or expect in a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has so much control over Americans’ lives, especially women’s.

Ms. Ford, 51, a psychologist who studies trauma, was a mesmerizing witness.

She seemed honest, and pained, and, as she put it, “100 percent” certain that the 17-year-old boy who threw her on a bed, ground his hips against her and covered her mouth so she could not scream was Judge Kavanaugh.

She practically pleaded for an FBI investigation that would include the only witness to the alleged attack, Judge Kavanaugh’s high school friend Mark Judge. Mr. Judge, who once wrote a memoir about his blackout drinking in high school, said in a statement to the Senate committee that he has no memory of the event and never saw his friend behave in such a manner.

Ms. Ford spoke knowledgeably about the biological processes of memory.

When asked to describe her most vivid memory of the assault, she replied, “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense.”

Ms. Ford on why the other witnesses don’t remember the party where the alleged assault took place: “Nothing remarkable happened to them that night.”

When she described the room where the alleged assault took place, and the loud music and the laughter of the two teen boys who were in cahoots, I believe that every viewer who has ever been assaulted probably had an unpleasant flashback. I know I did.

Like Anita Hill before her, Ms. Ford had wanted to remain anonymous.

But when she was outed, she said she felt she had no choice but to tell her story, knowing full well, as she testified, that the experience would be like stepping in front of a moving train, and that she would probably be “annihilated.” As she said this, however, she displayed not a whit of self-pity.

It was clear that Mr. Kavanaugh’s Judiciary Committee supporters didn’t particularly care whether or not he assaulted Ms. Ford all those years ago at a high school party. And their pent-up rage exploded after Ms. Ford finished her testimony. They turned their wrath on Democrats, who were accused of withholding information in order to delay the confirmation until after the midterm elections, when Democrats have a fighting chance of gaining the majority in the Senate and could scuttle Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.

In tones verging on hysteria, they railed about the timing of the allegations (as if there is a good time to step forward alleging you’ve been attacked by a Supreme Court nominee).

I’ve never seen a theatrical outburst like Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s display of self-righteous anger, sparked by Democratic Sen. Dick Durban’s simple assertion that if Judge Kavanaugh truly cared about clearing his good name, he should want to have the FBI investigate Ms. Ford’s claims. “God help anyone else that gets nominated,” Mr. Graham said, forgetting that Neil Gorsuch was confirmed last year with barely a ripple.

Sen. Orrin Hatch’s outraged voice broke as he scornfully dismissed the idea that anyone would care what had happened in high school. And yet, Ms. Ford had very specifically discussed the “anxiety, phobia and PTSD-like symptoms” that she had felt, intensely, in the first four years after the assault, and intermittently thereafter.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, forgetting his recitation of “Green Eggs and Ham” during a Senate filibuster, called it “one of the most shameful events in the history of the United States Senate.”

Again and again, Judge Kavanaugh, 53, was described by his supporters as a victim — not of Ms. Ford, because of course, it’s no longer acceptable to publicly attack a victim of sexual assault — but of Democrats.

Ms. Ford, they said, was a victim, too. Of Democrats.

I wouldn’t put Judge Kavanaugh in jail for what he did when he was 17, but I sure as hell wouldn’t put him on the Supreme Court.