It is a shame that last week’s vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, like the debate over his qualifications and fitness for the office, was so partisan.
This is especially so when you consider after the FBI investigation demanded by Democrats reportedly found no proof of sexual assault by Kavanaugh. Yet the vote was 50-48, with one Democrat voting for Kavanaugh and one Republican voting against him.
This emphasizes that the severe divisiveness that has marked American politics ever since the justices settled the presidential contest in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore has spilled over to the court, whose historical respect and authority have been grounded on its supposed separation from politics.
But the nomination of Kavanaugh — fraught with rancor from the start because it will alter the court’s tilt from the left to the right — brought the process of filling vacancies to a new low.
When the nomination could not be stopped based on Kavanaugh’s record in public service, including as a federal appeals court judge since 2006, the Democrats tried an 11th-hour strategem of accusing him of sexual misconduct in his teens and early 20s, hoping that it could sway just a couple of Republican votes in the Senate.
The fact that Democrats had to go back more than three decades to find anything approaching credible accusations would suggest that this was more than anything an act of political desperation. Their biggest mistake was failing to have the FBI quietly investigate the initial complaint, made this summer, to see if there was anything to it.
For his part, it’s regrettable that Kavanaugh rose to the Democrats’ bait and lashed out with rage at the senators on the Judiciary Committee during last week’s explosive hearing at which both Kavanaugh and his main accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, testified.
Although the judge had a right to be personally incensed at what he saw as an unprincipled effort to destroy him and harm his family, Kavanaugh’s performance — while cheered by many conservative supporters — is very likely to damage his ability to be seen as an impartial arbiter of the cases that will come before him.
Further contributing to the divisiveness of the Kavanaugh nomination was a rules change pushed through in 2017 by Republicans that effectively said it would only take 51 votes, rather than 60, to get a Supreme Court justice through the confirmation process.
When the higher threshold was in place, it could often be frustrating to the party in power, but it did help ensure that a nominee would have to be able to command support from both sides of the political aisle. It was a requirement that tamped down emotions.
The nasty confirmation hearings, the protests at the Capitol, the confrontations in the halls of the Senate and the widening gulf between Americans are all an outgrowth of letting this process of advise and consent spin out of control. Both parties are to blame for that.
