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Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was devastating

Ruth Marcus on

WASHINGTON -- "Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two ... I was underneath one of them while the two laughed."

Indelible in my hippocampus, too, and, I suspect, in the minds of everyone who listened to Christine Blasey Ford's testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I have built my professional career on words, and the capacity of words to convey information and argument.

But Thursday's session reaffirmed the unrivaled and compelling power of personal testimony, not only in providing information but in assessing competing narratives. Long before the advent of livestreamed hearings, the framers of the Constitution embedded this crucial insight into the 6th Amendment guarantee that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him."

And while a nomination hearing is not a criminal proceeding, and it would be wrong to import some of the other essential elements of criminal process into the confirmation, the fundamental wisdom of the Constitution's approach was on display Thursday. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was confronted with the witness against him -- one of them, anyway -- and it was devastating.

Ford was not a perfect witness, in the sense that her memory, and therefore her testimony, has significant gaps (Whose house did the party take place at? How did she get there and back home?).

Still, she came off as both unshakeable in her conviction that it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her ("100 percent" certain, she said) and anything but eager to thrust herself into the political maelstrom that has ensued. While President Trump railed against Democrats for orchestrating a "big fat con job" against Kavanaugh, Ford did not seem either conner or conned. To listen to her account of that summer night in Bethesda was nothing short of heart-breaking.

 

More than a quarter-century ago, Anita Hill persuaded those who were willing to listen with her law professor seriousness and her natural reserve. Ford's demeanor was different, more informal, and for all her girlhood in the capital she seemed far more naive and unschooled in the ways of politics than Hill.

Part of the power of her testimony came in the disconcerting blend she presented: a surprisingly girlish voice that evoked the 15-year-old teenager trying to avoid being seen with her mom in the Potomac Village Safeway, melded with the scientific language of cognitive psychology, about "the level of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in the brain ... and so the trauma-related experience is locked there whereas other details kind of drift."

Partly it was the stricken look on Ford's face, the terror evident even before she spoke her first word. Partly it was her winsome helpfulness. "Does that work for you?" she asked Committee Chair Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, when he suggested a break at 12:40. "I'm used to being collegial."

"I would like to be more helpful about the date," Ford told Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona sex crimes prosecutor questioning her on behalf of Senate Republicans.

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