KEITH C. BURRIS ON THE KAVANAUGH CONGRESSIONAL CONFLAGRATION
Impugning each other will eventually destroy our politics
The second round of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States, this time to consider the accusation that he molested with intent to rape Christine Blasey Ford, while he was drunk and they were both in high school some 36 years ago, was widely expected to be a circus. It wasn’t, quite. Instead it was a melodrama about one life destroyed by a traumatic event and another being destroyed.
Not the train wreck we expected, but a slow, stately train wreck.
It was hard to watch and harder not to watch. There was so much emotion and so little about the country.
That’s what one noticed, most of all: the personal has become profoundly political and political differences have gotten terribly, terribly personal.
All in the melodrama, players and watchers, seemed to come at this, purely and exclusively, from their own experience and biases. No one seemed to come at it clean, and from above, as a juror is instructed to do.
And no member of the Senate seemed to approach it from outside, operating from principle, instead of passion or party.
The union, the Constitution, the rule of law, even the truth, either in the big T sense or the “just the facts, ma’am” sense had no real space or place. The personal, two people hurt, damaged, aggrieved — that was the melodrama. And members of the committee were outraged on behalf of one or the other victim, not the country. Only Lindsey Graham seemed concerned with both persons, and the republic.
The TV screen does not accommodate reflection. But can we now step back? Mustn’t we reconsider?
Here is a first principle: In America, justice is evidentiary.
What have the courts taught us over the past 60 years or so? That due process matters more than avenging a cause, or “law and order.” We are not supposed to convict people in this nation for being criminal “types” or looking suspicious. Even for suspected terrorists or serial killers, there must be proof.
Christine Blasey Ford certainly showed the senators and the American public that she was badly hurt back in high school. But she presented no proof that Brett Kavanaugh did the damage. Her certitude is not proof. Eyewitnesses are often certain, and wrong. Memory, especially over long spans of time, is more often in error than reliable. Ms. Ford’s trauma should make us respect her pain, but that pain is not proof.
When people talk about “McCarthyism” today, they scarcely know what it means. But what Joe McCarthy did was to make accusations, sometimes very wild ones, with no proof. He was enabled by fear. Americans feared communism. They feared foreign influences in our government. They feared there were communist spies in our State Department. All McCarthy had to do was call a person a communist, and that person was finished. Sometimes just hinting at leftest sympathies was enough.
The U.S. Senate finally stood up to McCarthy and for itself. It said, in effect, you can’t accuse people without proof. And you can’t use the Senate to do it.
It should be noted that Joe McCarthy turned out to be right about a few of the people he accused. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
But the Senate affirmed that evidence matters more than fear and due process actually matters more than suspicion. You may think a man is guilty of something; if you have not proof, what you think, or feel, does not matter.
There is another element to this saga: The right to free speech, more nearly absolute in our country than anywhere else in the world, makes it allowable for Americans to impugn each other — to cast doubts on the motives and character of those with whom we disagree politically. We have the freedom to misuse our freedom to malign and slander. For the words in this column, for example, I will be called, by some, a right-wing extremist, a poor journalist and an inadequate human being.
This is a cost of freedom, and American politics and journalism has been mostly rough and tumble from the start, with a few civilized interludes.
But Americans impugning each other’s motives and character has become a contagion, exacerbated by cable TV and the internet.
For most of my life, the right called liberals unpatriotic and got away with it.
Now the left calls anyone who disagrees with it racist and misogynistic and gets away with it.
Senators who vote to confirm Mr. Kavanaugh will be called not only misogynistic but abettors of rape.
This impugning of each other in America is tearing us apart. And it is destroying our politics in three ways: First, no one in his right mind wants to go into politics and public service and risk not only abuse but personal destruction. Would you, dear reader, submit to six FBI background checks and 1,200 written questions? Second, the Lindsey Grahams of the Congress are burning their bridges to the other party. And, third, more American citizens are going mute. Why discuss politics at all when you will be called a deplorable or a snowflake? Why vote when the result is the slow train wreck we are watching?