Crisis demands reflection
Not to be overwrought, but we have reached a crisis point in his country that requires — demands — reflection and sober judgment.
The tipping point of this crisis stems from the convergence of two ideas momentarily at least in conflict. The first is the Republican attempt to gain control of the Supreme Court, regardless of the consequence, including, as seems reasonable likely, the court’s loss of public esteem.
This drive is what compelled Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to set aside the nomination of Merrick Garland during most of the last year of the Obama administration.
And it’s why Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are hell-bent on bringing Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Court to a vote as soon as possible.
It’s widely perceived by social conservatives and others that most immediately at issue is the high court’s 1973 decision on abortion. Roe vs. Wade has been in conservative cross-hairs since it was decided by the court of Republican-appointee Warren Burger several generations ago.
The right of women nationwide to autonomy over their bodies seems increasingly at stake in the Kavanaugh nomination.
That, and much else.
The second convergent factor is the #MeToo movement. It was striking that former senator Barbara Boxer of California, appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews last week, accused Kavanaugh of attempted rape for an incident that took place when he was a 17-year-old high school student in the early 1980s. D.C. congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton made the same charge on Friday.
That Boxer and Norton could have leaped to such a conclusion was telling. The evidence in this case is not at all developed. It rests on the word of a single person. As a 15-year old, Christine Blasey Ford claims Kavanaugh assaulted her by throwing her down on a bed, groping and trying to remove her clothes, and then covering her mouth with his hand in an attempt to muffle her cries for help.
Kavanaugh claims the incident never took place.
#MeToo insists, as a matter of principle, that a woman, bringing charges of sexual assault, must be believed. The working assumption is that a woman would not lie about so traumatizing an event.
To her credit, Dr. Ford has asked that the FBI be given time to investigate the matter. In the the absence of such an investigation, she says she will not appear at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Monday to air her story before the panel’s all-male Republican majority and a nationwide television and internet audience.
Who can blame her?
Senate Republicans — the people with the power — need to back off.
More than one GOP senator has already demonstrated acute insensitivity. One was Utah’s tone-deaf Orrin Hatch, a Judiciary Committee member during the 1991 sexual harassment testimony of Anita Hill against Justice Clarence Thomas. Another was Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who intoned, regarding further investigation, that Dr. Ford is “really not in a position to make conditions.”
Talk about the arrogance of power.
The House is already gone for Republicans. The Senate would surely come into play if the GOP runs roughshod over Dr. Ford, who has indicated she could be in Washington on Thursday, if certain conditions are met, including providing for her safety. She has received death threats.
Republicans would do well to proceed with caution. Yet a higher imperative is at work, or should be, for the GOP, as well as for Democrats and the nation.
In 1999, minutes before the Senate dismissed impeachment charges against Bill Clinton, West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd commented to his colleagues that Washington had become “poisoned by politics and even by personal vendettas…. A sense of balance has been lost.” A process – in this case, impeachment – had been reduced to soap opera “watched by an incredulous people ….”
Byrd called for a halt, not of partisanship, but of hatred and “the politics of ruin …. Instead of shoring up the divisions that have eroded decency … and dimmed our collective vision”, senators should “search for common ground.”
In this case, that means a Supreme Court nominee other than Brett Kavanaugh; it means a nominee who can command wide bipartisan support. Public support and the institutional integrity of the Supreme Court for the next quarter century or more will likely be decided in the next several days.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.