[perfmode]

His attitude while defending himself on the stand is the basis for which I would rescind his nomination. His behavior was not befitting of someone who is about to be conferred lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country. I don’t want him crafting laws and making decisions that impact huge groups of people.

[manfredo]

Behavior such as? Most people who I've seen criticize his behavior essentially boil down to criticizing him for not admitting guilt, or because he tried to discredit Ford - neither of which are valid points in my view. Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an accusation. While I probably won't agree with Kavanaugh's court opinions, the opposition to his appointment also has negative effects. It was correlated with a drop in trust for alleged victims of sexual assault, for example: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-...

[jacobolus]

Behavior such as repeatedly making easily disprovable statements (which numerous past acquaintances who had no particular reason to otherwise make public statements about his nomination called out as blatant lies), and pugnaciously asking a Senator whether she ever gets black-out drunk.

After starting his career in politics as a vicious partisan hack e.g. involved directly in a conspiracy to undermine Judiciary Committee hearings, perjuring himself in his first judicial confirmation hearing, and spending his judicial career on tireless and extreme support for corporate interests, he should have not been the nominee; there are many less controversial and more respected choices among high-profile career members of the GOP. But if he had acted like an adult in the hearing and been willing to admit to being an angry drunken partier as in his teens and twenties who might have done stupid things and not remembered, and demonstrated some contrition and sign of personal growth, I and many others would have some respect for it.

Instead, his behavior was the most hostile and disrespectful I have ever seen in a public hearing. I urge anyone curious about this to watch the 3 hour hearing for yourself. In my view his confirmation is a stain on the Senate and the Court. It cements the public perception that the rich and powerful can do anything they want, remain unapologetic, and face no consequences.

[manfredo]

He repeatedly stated that did consumed large quantities of alcohol in late high school and in college. Maybe there is diagreement over the exact degree of inebriation, but I am not so sure it's correct to say he lied. Regardless, the two points after are where the problematic nature of the complaints against Kavanaugh surface:

> who sometimes shoved his penis in women’s faces,

Another allegation which he denies. As I predicted, the core complaint is that he denies the allegations made against him. This is effectively constructing a situation in which the accused is guilty of something no matter what. Either 1) the accused does not defend themselves and is guilty of the alleged crimes, or 2) the accused does defend themselves, but in the world view you've constructed this makes them guilty of hostility and disrespect.

> and demonstrated some contrition

Contrition for what? He denies said allegations. Again, when you get to the bottom of it this is essentially criticizing the fact that Kavanaugh maintained his innocence. This is what was so pernicious about the Kavanaugh hearings that bothered even me, a lifelong Democrat. The fact that merely trying to defend oneself against an allegations is grounds for negative character judgement is at odds with the core principles of justice.

> and sign of personal growth, I and many others would have some respect for it.

If going from a binge drinking teenager to Supreme Court nominee (let alone Justice) doesn't demonstrate personl growth I don't know what does. This is greater growth than most people on HN will likely achieve (myself included).

Update: It appears the above poster had since edited their comment. My response took a while to write, so it could be that their edit was made before my response was done. I urge commenters not to assume bad faith on their part.

[jacobolus]

> He repeatedly stated that did consumed large quantities of alcohol in late high school and in college.

No, he repeatedly denied it (while only admitting that he “liked and likes beer” and occasionally drank beer in moderation). He also made up comically absurd lies about his high school yearbook, and lied about several other more serious topics e.g. related to his work for Starr and his work as a Bush staffer. (I don’t intend to re-litigate this here. You can do a web search and find numerous analyses of the details.)

[manfredo]

From his testimony:

> I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers.

It may be valid to say that his drinking was more serious than his tone seems to indicate, but to say that he did not admit drinking to excess is factually incorrect.

[jacobolus]

The description from everyone who knew him was that he got shit-faced several times per week, and was commonly a belligerent drunk.

Did you watch the hearing? If not, I strongly recommend it. I don’t know anyone who watched it all the way through who thought that Kavanaugh was being candid or sincere in response to Senators’ polite questioning.

A nomination hearing is not a trial; you should not be trying to parse his statements as if it were. The standard for a Supreme Court Justice should not be “well if we give him the benefit of the doubt he was grossly misleading, uncooperative, and aggressively disrespectful but a jury might not convict him of perjury”.

P.S. What do you think “boof” and “devil’s triangle” mean?

[BryantD]

> Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser

This reduces the question to a black and white decision, which is unreasonable. I see two major flaws here:

1. You're eliding the difference between discrediting the accuser's claim and discrediting the accuser themselves. There is a significant difference between saying "that's not accurate" and saying "the person who said that is a drunken loser who has been out to get me for years."

2. You're likewise removing any distinction between true and untrue responses! Surely it's acceptable to criticize a defendant for lying?

Now, we have not established whether or not Kavanaugh was lying, and I'm not saying he was -- but your response completely skips over that entire facet of the question. You are assuming a conclusion which has not been reached.

[manfredo]

>There is a significant difference between saying "that's not accurate" and saying "the person who said that is a drunken loser who has been out to get me for years."

Did Kavanaugh ever say the latter? In fact this line of criticism seems to work in his favor: the label "drunken loser" was applied to Kavanaugh much more frequently than it was applied to Ford, at least from the coverage I saw (admittedly, mostly from left leaning outlets so that may be a factor).

I'm not sure why you brought up #2 given that you later state that you don't know of any instances in which Kavanaugh lied. Yes, if Kavanaugh lied that would be significant. But as you stated in your own comment, you do not know of any such instances. I am not aware of any statement that was proven to be false either, at least outside of tangents that stretch my idea of relevance to the accusations (e.g. contents in his yearbook). So, yes if Kavanaugh lied that would be valid criticism - but we both agree that this was never demonstrated, so this point is moot.

[BryantD]

No, he did not say such a thing.

I'm not specifically addressing Kavanaugh, I'm pointing out a flaw in your logic. You made a general assertion, which I'll quote again: "Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an accusation."

Did you mean that, or did you generalize a bit more than you intended while defending Kavanaugh?

[manfredo]

Yes, I meant precisely what I wrote. Defending oneself entails discrediting the accuser. Knowingly lying, or insulting the accuser in a way unrelated to maintaining one's innocense is not necessary. But as you stated yourself, the subject at hand did neither of these things.

How you made the leap from, "Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser" to, "knowingly lying and needlessly insulting people is okay" is a mystery to me.

[BryantD]

> How you made the leap from, "Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser" to, "knowingly lying and needlessly insulting people is okay" is a mystery to me.

Ah, I'm sorry that was unclear.

The word "discrediting" is ambiguous. It's sufficiently general so that it's hard to make a moral statement about it. You can discredit someone by pointing out flaws in their statements. You can discredit someone by lying about them. There are lots of ways to discredit people, so just saying that it's OK to discredit the accuser doesn't really imply any specific moral principle. It's not a useful statement.

Does that help?

Edit: whoa, crap, I missed something. I did not say "the subject at hand did neither of these things." I said "we have not established whether or not Kavanaugh was lying, and I'm not saying he was." Close one there!

[zozbot123]

I would not say that the "inherently" in that comment should be read as a necessary condition, since some false accusations are the result of e.g. mistaken identity, that entails no blame on the accuser. However, it certainly is the case often enough to deserve mention, entirely aside from what the specifics of Kavanaugh's case might be.

[manfredo]

Saying that the accuser mistook someone's identity is still discrediting them. It's selectively discrediting them, by specifically discrediting the part where the accuser claims it was the defendant that did the crime while not discrediting the fact that the crime took place. But it still is discrediting the accuser.

[lern_too_spel]

He was often blackout drunk according to his classmates, but he repeatedly lied and said he wasn't.

[jerf]

Stand in his place for a week and tell me that.

To echo manfredo, if the only people we can nominate to the Supreme Court are people who can just calmly sit there while the absolute worst accusations possible are flung against them, we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican). Or, alternatively, we're going to get a very, very distorted set of justices who lack all emotional affect or something.

Or, looking at it from another view point, there is this idea floating around (you're not the first place I've heard it from) that simultaneously, poorly-founded [1] accusations of rape are really, really terrible, like, the worst thing ever, more than sufficient to scotch a nomination to any serious office of the land... but at the same time, a person who is so accused of literally the worst thing ever should also have no reaction to this and be completely impassive in the face of these nominally terrible accusations.

Look, either it's that serious and it should be treated that seriously across the board, or it's not that serious at all, and it should be treated unseriously across the board. But if you try to have it both ways, the conclusion people are eventually going to come to is that it must not be serious. That's what's going to win out; are you sure you want that? Do you really want to say that the standard for reacting to being accused of serious crimes is that the accused should just wave the accusations away and be completely unaffected by them? Are you really asking for that to be the standard? Because if you think about it, I bet that's not what you want.

[1]: You want to consider them true, you want to consider them false, that's your business, but I'm very comfortable characterizing the accusations as very poorly founded either way.

[yongjik]

> Stand in his place for a week and tell me that.

Imagine going to the less well-off part of America and start a conversation like that.

"Imagine you're accused of rape twenty years ago and you have to defend it in front of angry people."

"So, if I fail, I go to jail?"

"No, not really."

"...Are they gonna beat me up?"

"No."

"Do I lose my job? My house? Will they take my daughter away for me being a rapist?"

"No, none of this happens. But a lot of people will call you names."

"...A lot of people call me names for just walking around!"

[manfredo]

From my discussions, as well as from surveys conducted (remember, poorer less educated people were more likely to support his appointment), it actually resonated more with less well off demographics. True, for Kavanaugh the stigma of being seen as a rapist doesn't have much effect - his employment is guaranteed for life after all. But for a poor person it may greatly impede their ability to get employment, potentially even putting them on the streets. For the less well off, being seen as a rapist, is a lot more impactful than getting called names.

[perfmode]

That office is so important that I’m happy to wait until the right candidate shows up. And I don’t want republicans or Democrats.

I want scientists of law with integrity.

And there are plenty competent people with integrity. It is people who lack integrity that marginalize them.

[lifeformed]

Well there was one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland

A bipartisan moderate that everyone loved, recommended by both parties, poised to take the nomination, then blocked for years by the Republican party just as a total partisan f-you to Obama.

[zeveb]

> blocked for years

He was nominated on the 16th of March 2016; the election was on the eighth of November of the same year, and his nomination expired on the third of January 2017, less than a year later. No matter how you slice that, his nomination to the Supreme Court wasn't 'blocked for years.'

[lifeformed]

Whoops, you're right. I got that bit wrong.

[AcerbicZero]

Garland would have made an excellent choice instead of Kagan, or even Sotomayor, if there was a desire for a more balanced, more centrist SCOTUS. However after those two nominations replacing Scalia with Garland was obviously a bridge too far which the R's could not accept. As unpopular as it may have been, In a way, I don't really blame them, and it seems to have paid off for them in the long run.

[jerf]

"And there are plenty competent people with integrity."

But there are also plenty of people who lack integrity and, if it is permitted and gets them what they want, will fling arbitrarily nasty false accusations at people. There is no one with so much integrity that false accusations can't be made of them. You're pushing a rope.

[perfmode]

The Obama family has not had a single scandal.

[brodouevencode]

Shouldn't that office should be held to the same standards as the other three branches?

[int_19h]

No, because the other branches have failsafes, such as periodic elections. But with SCOTUS, if you make a mistake and confirm the wrong candidate for the job, the only remedy is impeachment, which is very hard to pull off (by design). Thus, the standards have to be extremely high.

[brodouevencode]

That was actually my point. The lifetime appointments are given because they want the appointees to act as freely as possible without consequence. This is a result of elections having consequences.

[commandlinefan]

> I’m happy to wait until the right candidate shows up

Well, you're in luck, because he was confirmed.

[lifeformed]

In Kavanaugh's case, the problem is deeper than the rape accusation itself. False accusations are horrible but we have to stop pretending that the people pushing for his nomination even cared if it was true or not. A majority of Republicans polled said that he should be confirmed even if it is proven he is a rapist. The Republican senators said they'd push the nomination through no matter what was found. It's clear from these facts that these Republicans were not approaching the nomination in good faith.

If you were interviewing someone for a job, and then found that he was accused of rape multiple times, do you:

A) Ignore them.

B) Not hire him.

C) Look into the situation more deeply.

D) Want to hire him even more.

I think we can agree C makes most sense, but most Republicans were pushing hard for D. They were an inch away from doing it without an investigation, but finally caved due to one holdout senator, and then did a quick crippled investigation where they couldn't even interview Kavanaugh or the accuser Ford.

As for the accusations itself, we know that Ford named Kavanaugh as her rapist to multiple people decades ago. We also know that Kavanaugh sent texts about how to deal with another accuser, before the accuser even went public. Also, he then perjured himself saying he didn't know about her until she went public.

Because of these reasons, I think the outcry against Kavanaugh's nomination was justified. If the Republicans really wanted the best person for the job, and if he really was innocent, they should have all agreed early on for a thorough FBI investigation which should clear his name. Instead, they made it a culture war issue and played up the circus. If they didn't want it to be a shame storm, they could've taken the allegations seriously and do their job to represent the will of the citizens.

We all know that we're not going to get 100% evidence of if he did it or not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to find what we can and build up some percentage of confidence in the candidate. If the available evidence instills us with perhaps 30% doubt of his word, should that have a factor in our hiring decision? Or do we only consider 0% or 100% conclusions? Is 30% too risky for hiring someone for what is arguably the most important job in the world?

To be fair, I don't think a media circus crucifixion is the right outcome of an unproven allegation, but it's also wrong to totally disregard such allegations when making such a high-stakes decision. It seems fair to me to at least take a risk-adverse approach without casting total judgement on the candidate.

[perfmode]

Thanks for taking the time to write this analysis.

[weberc2]

"I don't like their attitude" is even more rife for abuse than blocking nominations on the basis of unsupported allegations...