The Kavanaugh hearing is a picture of American democracy in crisis

Did you watch the Kavanaugh hearing? If anything could convince you that the British judicial system (if nothing else) is in safe hands, this was it. When a vacancy arises on the UK Supreme Court, a selection commission, presided over by the current president of the court, identitifies the most suitable candidate, who is is then recommended to the Lord Chancellor and, ultimately, the Queen. Just about never, outside the pages of the Daily Mail, is there any suggestion that the appointee is likely to be other than a fair-minded, deeply experienced and obviously well-qualified jurist.

Not so in America.

On Thursday, we were able to watch, as if it was a particularly lurid edition of the afternoon soap opera Days of Our Lives, the spectacle of a senior appeals court judge nominated by the President for membership of the Supreme Court being openly accused in the Senate of attempted rape, sexual molestation and habitual drunkeness. At times it was hard to believe that this was Madison’s Constitution in action. Was it a job interview that went horribly wrong, or was it an act of character assassination, with, in either case, a group of elderly Senators as accessories before, during and after the fact?

For those unfamiliar with America’s longest-running soap, Days of Our Lives bills itself as dealing in “love triangles, murder, amnesia, rape and divorce”. Much of the same ground was covered this week in the Senate, though how much was real and how much was fiction remains to be seen.

Brett Kavanaugh, formerly a respected judge on the U.S. Federal Appeals court, dealing with highly complex cases in and around the nation’s capital, spent much of Thursday defending himself against the accusation that, as a drunken 17-year-old high school student, he had attempted to rape 15-year-old Christine Blasey, placing his hand over her mouth when she screamed for help and laughing at her in her distress.

The complainant, now a distinguished psychology professor at Palo Alto University, California, known as Dr Christine Blasey-Ford, had earlier captivated not only Senators and officials at the hearing, but just about the entire country as, through tears but with evident conviction, she recounted an experience that had marked her for life and which she said she was revealing, 36 years on, purely out of a sense of public duty.

Kavanaugh, whose c.v. up until this month looked to have made him something of a shoo-in for the top court’s ninth black robe, was devastated. Gone was his judicial mien. Instead, in between moments of dumbstruck incoherence, he lashed out like a man who had been mugged in a back alley.

“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” he said. “The Constitution gives the Senate the important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advise and consent with search and destroy. Since my nomination in July, there has been a frenzy on the Left to come up with something – anything – to block my confirmation. Shortly after I was nominated, the Democratic Party leader said he would oppose me with everything he’s got. A Democratic senator on this committee publicly referred to me as ‘evil’. Evil? Think about that word. He said that those who supported me were ‘complicit in evil’.”

And there you have it. As straight down the middle as an Alpine descent. Along the way, amid tears of his own, Kavanaugh denied that he had played any part in whatever might have happened to Dr Ford. He had not even been to the party in question, he said, and those whose names had been mentioned as witnesses in connection with the attack, or had attended the party in question, had stated formally that they had no recollection of any such event.

For her part, Dr Ford came across as sympathetic, clear-headed and rational. If there was any reason why she had come forward other than because she wished the truth to be known about a man who could serve as a Supreme Court Justice for the next 25 years, none was advanced by anyone at the hearing.

What observers took away from the melodrama played out in front of them depended on their point of view. If they were Republicans – most obviously if they were Donald J Trump – they were reinforced in their conviction that their guy, though clearly no angel as a teenager (the young scamp), had been cruelly and criminally traduced by the Democrats. If they were Democrats, they felt that by exposing the deeply conservative, anti-abortion Kavanaugh as a fraud, and possibly a monster, they were negating a threat to all that was good in liberal, trans-gender, Me-Too America.

If they were women, other than hardline Republicans, the strong temptation was to believe Dr Ford and to regard Kavanaugh as a one-time sexual predator whose occupation of a seat on the Supreme Court would represent an affront to decency. The impact of a Yes vote on November’s mid-term elections, in which half the voters will be women, remains to be seen but is unlikely to work in favour of the right.

Finally, if they were simply “Americans” tuning in to see how the system worked and how the men and women of the Senate went about their duties as tribunes of the people, they will have been shocked, and more than a little horrified. Kavanaugh, frequently emotional and quite often stuck for words, did not impress. It was not obvious how he had gained his reputation as one of the country’s leading lawyers. But the Senate came across as a collection of bar-room brawlers, as far removed from their carefully-cultivated self-image as the world’s foremost deliberative body as one could reasonably imagine.

The Democrats, led in the hearing by 85-year-old California Senator Dianne Feinstein, were clearly determined to do whatever was necessary, by fair means or foul, to bring Kavanaugh down. The way they saw it, it was payback time. The Republicans, in 2017, had refused to even set a date for the confirmation of a liberally-inclined Obama nominee; now it was their turn to eat dirt.

But they also had sound practical reasons for opposing the appointment. The 53-year-old judge is on record as stating that no sitting President can be indicted, or even subpoenaed, in respect of criminal offences – a potential get-out-of-jail-free card for Trump – and Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court would give the body a built-in Conservative majority for the first time in years, with far-reaching implications for such “settled” law as the Roe v. Wade accomodation on abortion. While they constantly repeated that they weren’t judging what may or may not have transpired at a teenage party 36 years ago, it was obvious that Democrats had long-since made up their minds and that the committee could only come to one conclusion: guilty.

On the Republican side, marshalled by Iowa’s genial, but equally octogenerian Chuck Grassley, the contention was that the Democrats were enemies of democracy, who could not be trusted further than they could throw a sofa. Though careful not to impugn the integrity of Dr Ford – America’s new middle-aged darling – they spelled out again and again their belief that Kavanaugh was an innocent man caught up in a web of intrigue. The hearing, in their view, was a farce, a tragedy and an outrage, and they weren’t having it. The Trump nominee would be confirmed exactly as planned, and if the Democrats didn’t like it, they could shove it.

No one ever said that politics wasn’t a dirty business. But this week’s hearings in Washington hit a new low, even for Capitol Hill. The committee’s decision, expected to be announced as early as Friday afternoon, is likely to prove a lose-lose for the Senate – damned if they confirmed him, damned if they didn’t. But for America, the embarrassment, even the shame, is likely to last a lot longer.