IT MAY never be possible to know what really happened in the suburban Maryland home where Christine Blasey Ford recalls being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh in the summer of 1982. Mr Kavanaugh vehemently denies the accusation. Given the difficulty of litigating a 36-year-old case, the risk of destroying the reputation of a man who may be innocent, and the partisan nature of the opposition—Democrats were against Mr Kavanaugh long before he faced allegations of sexual assault—should Republican senators confirm the president’s nominee when the Senate votes?
They should not. Even if an FBI investigation fails to turn up new evidence about what happened in a bedroom 36 years ago, there is no disputing what Mr Kavanaugh said in his confirmation hearings last week. And it was damning.
Over his skis
Mr Kavanaugh was evasive and disingenuous. Under oath, he depicted himself as a typical teenage drinker and in control. A number of contemporaries at school and college dispute that. He claimed that he could legally drink in Maryland in his senior year—hence the “100 Kegs or Bust” boast in his yearbook. In fact, by the time he turned 18, the drinking age was 21. Lots of American teenagers drink before they are legally allowed to. They do not mislead the Senate about it three decades later.
Mr Kavanaugh told other small fibs under oath. He said that references by him and his friends to a girl called Renate, which contemporaries say were boasts of sexual conquest, real or pretended, were “intended to show affection, and that she was one of us”. He changed the meanings of slang from his yearbook: the “Devil’s Triangle” (sex between one woman and two men) became a drinking game nobody has heard of; “boofing” (anal sex or infusion of drugs or alcohol) became farting. The real meanings might be awkward for Mr Kavanaugh, but a judge should not redefine words to avoid embarrassment.
Nor should a judge give the impression of being consumed by hatred for one of the main political parties. Mr Kavanaugh described the allegations against him as “a political hit”, “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and the fruit of “millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups”.
Defenders of Mr Kavanaugh, worried about an open season on powerful men, point out that any innocent person in his position would rage against his accusers. Yet Mr Kavanaugh was not just angry, but conspiratorial. He chose to direct his fury at the Democrats personally, as if he were a signed-up member of the other side.
As it happens, that is precisely what Democrats have always alleged—and how Republicans are now honouring him. Before he became a judge, Mr Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr on the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He was part of George W. Bush’s legal team, which opposed a recount in Florida in 2000, and later worked in the Bush White House. This explains why hostility to Mr Kavanaugh has eclipsed that faced by Neil Gorsuch, who joined the Supreme Court last year. Mr Kavanaugh says he put party allegiance aside on becoming a judge. After last week, that claim looks misleading, too.
It is hard to see how someone who harbours such feelings can decide cases on gerrymandering, say, in a credibly non-partisan way. Mr Kavanaugh’s conservative judicial philosophy is not a problem. His visible loathing of Democrats is. That is not just our opinion. In 2015 a prominent jurist told the Catholic University of America: “A good judge, like a good umpire, cannot act as a partisan…If you are playing the Yankees, you don’t want the umpires to show up wearing pinstripes.” The jurist’s name was Brett Kavanaugh.
