3 reasons I opposed Kavanaugh
I would have opposed Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I outline three reasons for this below, followed by a brief reflection on topics related to the hearings.
1. His resume is tarnished by overt and aggressive partisan actions,
which the Supreme Court should not tolerate in its justices.
Kavanaugh spent a meaningful three-year stint of his professional career on Kenneth Starr’s independent counsel, probing then-President Clinton’s sexual scandals. This episode was a nadir in American politics, and the toxicity it created helped shape the ugliness we have experienced in the decades that followed.
It needs to be said that judicial nominees and political candidates should not be endlessly subjected to minor or irrelevant historical indiscretions or controversies. In fact, opposition research in today’s elections is often humorously overdone. We’re all imperfect and should not expect otherwise from the candidates we elect.
But Kavanaugh’s involvement in the Clinton impeachment proceedings is different. It represents the very spirit of partisanship, a quality unfitting of a Supreme Court justice. It wasn’t just that he was associated with a larger misguided movement; his own behavior was aggressive and ugly.
The entire legal effort was hardly the honorable endeavor it was made to appear, and his voluntary association with it causes me to question his judgement. Someone rising to that level of seniority should be cognizant of the malicious and self-righteous politics the role would tether him to, particularly if his ambitions were set on the bench.
As an aside, given Kavanaugh’s personal experience in assessing gender workplace issues, I was surprised by how tone deaf his post-nomination gesture felt, relating to the hiring of an all-female clerk staff. It felt more akin to “Big Ern” McCrackin’s charity for fatherless families than a true spirit of reconciliation.
2. Kavanaugh’s past writings advocate for a stronger Executive
Branch.
This should raise red flags with any true conservative. The Legislative Branch is designed to be the most powerful of the three branches of the federal government, because its power is distributed among many rather than concentrated in any one individual. In Congress, 535 individuals are given the power of creating laws precisely because it’s harder to accomplish than if power was consolidated into one person.
An expansion of Executive Branch powers concentrates power in the individual, which compromises our robust system of checks and balances. Americans shouldn’t have to be vulnerable to the whims of any one person, thus power is assigned to larger bodies comprised of cross-sections of Americans who hold contrasting beliefs that require collaboration to produce positive shared outcomes.
3. His flustered and sometimes contradictory testimony, overly defensive demeanor, partisan remarks, and history of drinking lend themselves against a credible defense.
Maybe he would pass in a court of law, but in the Senate Judiciary Committee with the entire country watching, his confirmation did not make the country better off; rather, it politicized the Supreme Court, entrenching the third and final branch of the federal government in polarization.
Surely other candidates exist that would not pose such a controversy. Neil Gorsuch certainly didn’t.
Select reflections on the hearing’s particulars
Sexual assault
As it relates to the sexual assault allegations, sincere and logical individuals can come to different conclusions in this case. But in the absence of definitive evidence, those of us who have come to a conclusion, believing one side over the other, must also acknowledge that doing so requires us to make assumptions.
In other words, there is no evidence that can prove us right. This alone should cool our tempers, because it forces us to acknowledge the uncertain nature of the situation and, thus, our imperfect views.
Shouldn’t this mindset also instil appropriate restraint on our actions, words, and protests towards each other?
The logic behind our conclusions
For many people, it was a foregone conclusion who they would support. This demonstrates a devastating lack of intellectual honestly. I won’t claim either side’s conclusions are wrong. But, curiously, they seem to largely be split along party lines, which should raise red flags regarding the sincerity and rigor being applied to the facts.
Regardless of what we believe, we have to resist bursting into this conversation, guns blazin’, ready to establish a new legal precedent based on our own sense of right and wrong.
The #metoo movement has been and will continue to be incredibly important, and republicans can’t be tone deaf to it. But at the same time, establishing guilt without evidence undermines the rule of law, including the very laws that the movement’s supporters (rightly) want applied in so many of the situations they’re calling to our attention.
Senate Judiciary Committee
So, we can be convinced, but we cannot be certain. This agonizingly frustrating position that hangs in the balance between black and white could put a court room jury in a frenzy. But the Senate Judiciary Committee is not a court of law. It is, instead, the Founder’s choice to provide advice and consent on the President’s nominee.
The Upper Chamber is meant to consist of an older, wiser membership that can rise above the harsh back and forth of political winds to make solemn determinations based on facts and discretion. It follows that Members of the Judiciary Committee should put forth our country’s most robust and deliberative thought leadership to provide resolution in the face of heated conflict.
But they caved. Caved to the provocation of protestors, finger-pointers, incendiary advocacy organizations, news anchors and cable news roundtables that stir up aggravations of party stereotypes and incite indignation. They dug in their heels and come to what is now a forgone conclusion of their verdicts.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) is one of few senators who displayed the attributes of what a senator should be. After empathizing with both sides, he pleaded with everyone to acknowledge the lack of evidence and that any decision could not be substantiated. Therefore, it will be up to the imperfect humans of the Senate and an imperfect process to determine a path forward and, inevitably, there will be a losing side that will be disappointed. He called for humility in how that side approaches defeat.