A SCRIPT FOR THE KAVANAUGH FINALE

Here’s a modest proposal for ending the Brett Kavanaugh melodrama: Strap down the judge with polygraph equipment and ask him about Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault accusations. If he fails the lie detector test – the same one Blasey Ford has already passed – his nomination is off the table. If he passes? Then he joins Clarence Thomas as the shamed-but-confirmed male caucus of the United States Supreme Court. Put the whole thing on pay-per-view and give the proceeds to a #MeToo organization, just like CBS is doing with Les Moonves’ severance pay.

Okay, as Jonathan Swift did with his Modest Proposal, I jest. Still, there is more poetic justice in that scenario than we are apt to see from Chairperson Charles Grassley and his 10 fellow white male Republican elves who control the Senate Judiciary Committee. Oh, to see the gnashing of all those pearly white conservative teeth over the sight of an originalist judge wired to a lie detector machine! Would the American Civil Liberties Union come to his rescue? The ACLU has long led the legal battle against polygraph testing in employment situations. On the other side? You got it: the conservative, originalist bar, including Kavanaugh and his Federalist Society buddies.

The far right has long adored lie detectors. Just ask Vice President Mike Pence. Only days ago, he offered to be polygraphed in order to prove that he did not write the anonymous New York Times op-ed that labeled Donald Trump amoral and unhinged. (Do we live in interesting times, or what?) Kavanaugh himself has waxed eloquently on the usefulness of lie detectors “to screen applicants for critical law enforcement, defense and intelligence collection roles”. Writing the decision in a 2016 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals case, Kavanaugh called polygraph testing “an important tool” to keep undesirables out of significant jobs.

It may be an important tool to Judge Kavanaugh in the abstract, but now that it affects him personally, don’t expect to see him in a blood pressure cuff and skin sensors anytime soon. The polygraph is not going to resolve this issue. The question before the Senate is not about truth. It’s about votes. As long as the Republicans hold together, they can push the nominee over the finish line, and lock in a conservative majority on the court for a generation or more. As soon as two Republican senators jump ship, however, Kavanaugh is finished and Trump pulls out his Federalist Society list of reasonable facsimiles.

Meanwhile, this Capitol Hill political crisis has brought out hardball tactics eerily reminiscent of the ugliness that surrounded the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill fiasco 27 years ago. The focus inside the beltway is much more about counting votes than addressing the meta issue of what happens to women who accuse powerful men of sexual assault.

The Republican boys club in the Senate has attacked Blasey Ford’s veracity and “suspicious” timing every day since the California research psychologist went public with her accusation. Overcome with their hunger to get their man on the court, this aging Senate fraternity of old white guys wants to know why these women wait so long to make their accusations. How many television appearances, books and op-eds by sexual assault survivors will it take for us to learn that women who speak up subject themselves to a whole new round of abuse that, in many cases, is worse than the original assault?

Last week at this time, Christine Blasey Ford was in the middle of her life: doing research, teaching classes, raising children. Following a torrent of death threats after her name was revealed, she and her family had to flee their home. She is unable to work. She and her husband are in an undisclosed location and the children are being cared for elsewhere. Why, indeed, don’t women speak up more often about this stuff?

Meanwhile, Grassley and his crew are busy planning the stagecraft of a Senate hearing, should Blasey Ford decide to appear. Mindful of the horrendous optics from the Anita Hill hearing, where the young law school professor was grilled by a gaggle of old white men, Grassley suddenly noticed that all of the Republicans on his committee are men. He said earlier this week that they may bring in a woman to interrogate Blasey Ford. Borrowing from their own rhetoric, the Republicans have had 27 years to put women on that committee. Why wait until the last minute?

Over at the White House, Kavanaugh is being thoroughly prepped for his testimony. I get the importantance of preparing a judicial candidate for testifying about various legal nuances, like saying, “Roe v Wade” is “settled law”, but declining to call it “correct law” so he can vote later to unsettle it. But how many more ways are there to say that he did not, in a moment of drunken abandon at the age of 17, throw himself on Blasey Ford, grope her, cover her mouth to stifle her screams and try to undress her?

It’s important to remember that this moment in time is not just about the political composition of the Supreme Court. It’s also about how we view sexual assault and harassment, and how we treat the perpetrators and the accusers. We are, after all, in the middle of a reckoning on that subject. Giving Christine Blasey Ford, in 2018, the Anita Hill Bum’s Rush Treatment of 1991 is a perverse reversal of moral thought in this post-Harvey Weinstein world.

Here’s how this story should end: Without making a factual determination on the sexual assault allegation, the Senate should reject Kavanaugh’s nomination. Such a decision does not “convict” the judge of anything. But it acknowledges the reality that Blasey Ford could be right. Why take the risk of putting a man who attempted to rape her – and then lied about it – on the country’s highest court? It’s not as if he is facing jail time. He remains on the country’s second highest court. He can commiserate with fellow Judge Merrick Garland, who was denied a Supreme Court seat by Senate Republicans without so much as a whisper of bad behavior.

Such an endgame doesn’t alter Republican dreams of a conservative Supreme Court. The bull pen is packed with like-minded ideologues just waiting to take a seat on the bench. What it does do, however, is send a clear message that we have entered a new era, a time when we take accusations of sexual assault seriously, a time when one brave woman coming forward can change the face of history, and not ruin her life. Sadly, I strongly suspect we have not yet reached that time.