Ambrose: Attacking both Kavanaugh and the republic

It's another sad summation of this nation's political state that an unprovable, 36-year-old, last-minute sexual allegation just could keep the U.S. Supreme Court from decades of re-establishing constitutional faithfulness we so badly need. But there you have it, and what you also have is moral chest-thumping on the side pulling this off just as it comes up with a frighteningly ruinous tactic.

We're talking, of course, about calling for an FBI investigation into an allegation from Christine Blasey Ford. A 51-year-old college professor, she says that, when she was 15, a drunken, 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh got on top of her, felt her body, tried to take off her clothes and put his hand over her mouth before she escaped to a bathroom and locked the door.

But she did not tell anyone about it until six years ago and does not know exactly where or when it happened. Psychologists tell us it is not all that rare for people to get something like this entirely wrong, and the only witness says the story is untrue. So does Kavanaugh, and coming to his defense are 65 women who knew him in his high school days and say he was one highly reputable guy. Think about that for a minute. How many men could count on 65 women putting a halo around their teen years?

It hardly stops there because numbers of women who have worked for and with Kavanaugh have spoken up about his decency and integrity, and then we arrive at another matter. Kavanaugh is someone who believes in rule of law, in the court abiding by credible interpretations of what the Constitution says instead of obtuse legalese expressing subjective judgments about what it should say. What we get with that line of thought is a betrayed republic and an oligarchy of appointed, unaccountable justices taking the place of legislatures.

Kavanaugh, who could give the court a constitutionalist majority, performed brilliantly in a clownish hearing and even made it clear he does not think Roe v. Wade should be scuttled, a foremost concern of Democratic senators. But then came a particular Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein of California, releasing an anonymous letter she had received six weeks earlier. It was written by Ford, who then reached out to the Washington Post, which identified her in a story after an interview. Republicans said she could speak at a hearing.

Ford, a Democrat, hired fiercely feminist lawyers and one of them along with crass Democratic opportunists called for this FBI investigation. The FBI has already checked Kavanaugh out a half-dozen times; this goes beyond its duties, and there is almost surely no way to verify the charge at this point. A probe could also take months during which President Donald Trump would have to come up with another nominee and Democrats might slow things down and take control of the Senate in the midterms, erasing chances of reform.

Kavanaugh just may have already lost enough votes to count him out, even though some of what we are seeing is little short of madness. If some citizen can come out of the blue with a decades-old allegation and no evidence and have everything come to a halt in a nomination, what's to stop dozens from doing this in the years to come? We already have a Democratic senator, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, saying men should all “shut up” and women should all be believed, and it almost seems this bigotry has become the new, hallowed way of things.

None of this means that Ford herself should be treated with disrespect. She does indeed seem a victim of terrible hurt. It does mean our political process should not give way to political machinations threatening the substance of our republic.

Jay Ambrose is a columnist for Tribune News Service.

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