The three days of testimony from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that concluded on Thursday were less a showcase for Kavanaugh, who delivered a steady, if evasive, performance, than a depressing display of the breakdown of Senate norms.
Kavanaugh dodged question after question, frustrating senators attempting to pin him down on relevant legal issues.
To his credit, the nominee embraced the crucial 1974 United States v. Nixon decision, which forced President Richard M. Nixon to turn audio recordings over to the Watergate special counsel. Yet Kavanaugh should have done more to reassure senators.
Kavanaugh's lack of specificity was most concerning on whether he should recuse himself from cases involving President Donald Trump. "I should not and may not make a commitment," he said. But that should not have stopped him from offering more detail about his thinking.
In the past, Supreme Court nominees have been less than forthcoming. But in Kavanaugh's case, the stonewalling was compounded by Republicans' refusal to wait for relevant documents to be released. Some documents were leaked to the New York Times in the middle of the hearings. Two Democrats distributed documents they believed should have been on the record from the beginning. Though they offered no disqualifying revelations about Kavanaugh, they nevertheless contained material relating to abortion, his past work vetting judicial nominees, and other relevant topics.
Republicans' refusal to allow an orderly and transparent process cast a shadow on the whole proceeding. Democrats resorted to hints about what sealed documents might show, such as when Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., warned the nominee to be very careful about how he answered a question about any potential past contact with Trump-connected lawyers. Last-minute document dumps only compounded the absurdity.
Nothing Democrats or Republicans have done before has more poisoned the Supreme Court confirmation process, perhaps irrevocably, than Republicans' blocking of Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's nominee, and their subsequent effort to rush through Kavanaugh. It is a shame two distinguished jurists have been caught in a disgusting partisan spectacle.
Editorial on 09/08/2018