In Supreme Court hearings, years of grudge politics boil over
At the close of the day, as with the Thomas-Hill hearings, we were left with a he-said-she-said drama, with everyone left to pick their favorite witness and narrative. On Friday, the committee voted 11-10 along party lines to move the nomination forward. But GOP leaders agreed to delay a floor vote for a week to allow the FBI to investigate the sexual assault allegations. Maybe that will bring some clarity.
But the end of this political drama will be decided by politics. If Democrats lost the Thomas-Hill hearings, they later gained a record number of new Democratic women in Congress. Record numbers of women have entered the midterm races, which has only added to the pressure felt by Republicans to win this Supreme Court battle.
Beyond that is the question of how the nation will fare in the wake of this latest heated example of Washington's polarized politics. The day that began in civility and ended in angry finger pointing will be remembered as bitterly as many remember the Thomas-Hill hearings. Even that anger-infused event raised public awareness of such issue as sexual harassment, an old plague but a new issue at that time in national politics.
This time, after the beer-stained "Animal House" scenarios of Kavanaugh's and Ford's prep school years, we are left with a question that CBS News reporter Steve Portnoy put to Trump in an earlier New York news conference: "What's your message to the young men of America?"
Trump dodged that question with a partisan defense of his nominee. But I like the answer given later by satirist Samantha Bee on her "Full Frontal" show: Teach them about "consent."
Indeed. And I would add: respect.
========
(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
