You Can't Walk Back a Categorical Denial
The Categorical Denial is a two-edged sword, which is why politicians and those nominated for seats on the Supreme Court avoid the Categorical Denial as though it were a subpoena from Vlad The Impaler. For example, one Doesn't Recall. One can Not Recall from hell to breakfast and the people who are opposing you can pound sand. One can Not Respond To Hypotheticals. One can Not Comment On Cases That Might Come Before The Court. All of these are perfectly legitimate Beltway strategies by which one can avoid the glistening blade of the Categorical Denial.
Most of the time, of course, they are laughable on their face. (Memorably, Clarence Thomas claimed he'd never discussed Roe v. Wade with anyone while he was in law school. This was either hilariously untrue, or Thomas went to a law school where nobody talked about the law, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case at Yale.) Nevertheless, if you have sufficient political support, and if you have the votes, then the institutions of free government generally will give you a slide on things.
But the Categorical Denial is a different level of threat. I am not a crook. We did not trade arms for hostages. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. These are Categorical Denials. They also are lies. They did nothing except give the politicians who uttered them endless grief, and those three men were presidents of the United States.
Throughout his hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Brett Kavanaugh, the president*'s choice for a lifetime gig on there Supreme Court, managed to dodge the Categorical Denial. He was not as slick at it as was Neil Gorsuch. He stammered and blathered and came off like someone who hadn't learned his lines very well. He was plainly wrongfooted by Senator Pat Leahy on the subject of Democratic committee e-mails that had been hacked while Kavanaugh worked at the White House. He managed to keep up the pretense, but you could see all the gears and flywheels working just below the surface.
He was an unconvincing performer giving an unconvincing performance. But he had (barely) sufficient political support, and he (barely) had the votes, so he looked like he was going to slide. But there was a certain stirring in the underbrush that gave his hearings a kind of spooky counter-melody. The massive credit card debt suddenly paid off. The 300-large worth of baseball tickets. The strange questions from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about gambling. And a line of inquiry from Senator Maizie Hirono that seemed to come from even deeper left-field:
“Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?”
“No."
All of these curious questions were a direct result of those documents that the committee members have seen that are nonetheless kept secret from the rest of us. They know what's in there, and Kavanaugh knows that they know, but they can only vaguely hint at the material in open session. (This is the half-arsed policy that sent Senator Cory Booker up the wall.) Kavanaugh took full advantage of the protection this policy offered him. Until the end of last week, when a story appeared in The New Yorker about a woman who accused Kavanaugh of a brutal attempted rape when they were both high school students, and Kavanaugh found himself issuing a Categorical Denial.
“I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
Here's the thing about Categorical Denials. They push all your chips to the center of the table. If you're mistaken, or you've forgotten, or you did it but you were too sockless hammered to recall the events, you're just as done as if you were flat-out lying about the whole matter. Certainly, if you're trying to be a Supreme Court justice, you better hope there isn't evidence out there that you've somehow misplaced in your memory, because peddling untruths in public, and before the Senate, and under oath, is a guaranteed way back to your old job. So, if the woman in question steps up, bravely, and describes in detail what she remembers about the night in question, you can suddenly realize that there isn't quite as much limb under your feet as you thought there was.
The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others. Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help. Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh's hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me. From across the room a very drunken REDACTED said mixed words to Kavanaugh ranging from "go for it" to "stop."
At one point when REDACTED jumped onto the bed the weight on me was substantial. The pile toppled, and the two scrapped with each other. After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stair well at which point other persons at the house were talking with them. I exited the bathroom, ran outside of the house and went home.
(According to an interview with the Washington Examiner, REDACTED is Mark Judge, a conservative Washington writer who has appeared in this shebeen once before. But bad sportswriting is only a fraction of Judge's oeuvre. He wrote a memorably awful piece about how he'd lost his white guilt when a black kid, he said, stole his bike. He dabbled in what can fairly be called skeevy photos of young girls. He wrote for Internet white-supremacist performance dummy Chuck Johnson's GotNews website. He wrote a memoir of being a blackout drunk...in high school. That he has such a prominent role in this saga is more proof that only 30 people actually live in Washington, and that they all know each other.)
The woman's name is Christine Blasey Ford, and she spoke to Emma Brown of TheWashington Post. To back up her story, she has notes from a 2012 marriage counseling session in which she told the story to a therapist. She also has taken, and passed, a polygraph test. Polygraph tests are not admissible in court, but they are nice things to have in your pocket when things get rough. And things are going to get very rough this week. Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh is standing by his Categorical Denial because that's another thing about Categorical Denials. You can't walk them back.
As Sunday rolled on, and the reaction rolled in, I began to wonder if, maybe, some of the Republicans in the Senate might just have had enough of this. While most of the attention was directed at Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, I was thinking as well about Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, two Republican senators who are retiring and who, therefore, have absolutely nothing to lose from delaying this hurried confirmation until, as a prominent Republican politician once said, we can find out what the hell is going on with Brett Kavanaugh. Both, admittedly, have been big-talking pillars of marshmallow in confronting this administration*. However, later on Sunday, Flake called for a delay in the process until Ford's charges can get a complete airing. Corker joined him a few hours later. Significantly, Flake is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which right now is split, 11-10, with a Republican majority. If Flake were to go over the side, the nomination would stall in committee.
I said last week that I feel just as strongly that Brett Kavanaugh will slither onto the Supreme Court as I do that he should be kept away from it with a moat of fire, if necessary. Offer me a bet, and that's still where my money goes. But these allegations, and the absolute brawl that is shaping up in the Senate this week, may just be too much for delicate constitutions to handle. I also believe that, if the committee vote is postponed beyond Thursday, or if it fails because someone like Flake defects, then this nomination is as dead as Kelsey's nuts.
Then, after sedating the president* heavily and throwing his phone off the Truman Balcony, someone in the White House will go back to the original Federalist Society-approved list of candidates and find someone who will be just as retrograde as Brett Kavanaugh, but who is a smoother and more accomplished prevaricator. Because that's the way American democracy works these days. If you don't lie well, find another line of work.
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