Two years ago, when the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings were ripping this country apart, I tried to get a few minutes to ask U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, a question.
It was about Amy Coney Barrett.
I wanted to know why the GOP leadership had decided to throw its weight behind Kavanaugh, rather than Barrett.
Kavanaugh had a history of political hatchet work that was bound to enrage Democrats and trouble independents. Any competent background investigation would – and eventually did – turn up troubling incidents in his personal history.
All of this might have been acceptable if Kavanaugh were one of the great legal minds of his generation. But he isn’t. He’s bright enough, but not much more likely to arrive at an original insight or thought than a cinder block is.
Barrett is a different story.
I’ve never met her, but I know people who do know her – including some who disagree with her thinking on law and politics. To a person, they all tell me she is kind, hardworking and smart.
Off-the-charts smart.
Her personal life apparently is without significant blemishes. She and her husband have seven children, including two from Haiti they adopted.
More important, unlike Kavanaugh, she is one of the finest legal thinkers of this time. She finished at the top of her class at Notre Dame’s law school and has dazzled people with the force of her intellect both as a law school professor and as a judge.
She’s as conservative as Kavanaugh, but a whole heck of a lot smarter and more capable.
If Republicans wanted to have a debate about principle, why weren’t they advancing Barrett – someone who represents the values of personal responsibility and advancement based on merit that conservatives, at least in theory, champion – rather than Kavanaugh?
Wouldn’t the GOP rather have had a battle about something other than the notion that might makes right – and, at the same time, forced Democrats into making uncomfortable votes against elevating a woman to the nation’s high court?
That’s what I wanted to ask Young.
But, in the hothouse atmosphere of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, my request to a Young staffer for a few minutes to talk with the senator was politely, oh so courteously, ignored.
Kavanaugh went on to be confirmed through a process that disregarded precedent and by a vote that was heavily partisan.
His elevation split the country.
Republicans paid a price for it.
Two years before Kavanaugh’s nomination, President Donald Trump lost the popular vote by just under 3 million votes. A few weeks after Kavanaugh’s confirmation, when Americans trooped to the polls, the Democrats’ popular vote advantage in House races across the nation swelled to 10 million. Longtime GOP bastions such as Orange County, California, fell into Democratic hands.
Republicans lost the House. Kavanaugh remains a divisive figure on the bench.
We’re in another election year now.
Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and other GOP heavyweights don’t seem to have learned much along the way.
The death of legendary Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened a vacancy on the bench.
Trump and McConnell have rushed to fill it. They want Barrett named before election day.
This is unfortunate, for several reasons.
The GOP’s hypocritical stance on naming justices will further taint the Supreme Court’s standing and undermine Barrett’s reputation.
It also likely will backfire on Republicans politically. Polls indicate that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden doesn’t whip up much enthusiasm among voters on his own, but Trump and McConnell have so energized the opposition that the president trails in almost every battleground state and GOP Senate seats presumed safe now are up for grabs. Voters opposed to the GOP cite the heavy-handed, court-packing attempts as a major reason for their antipathy.
But one reason this haste to appoint is so unfortunate involves Barrett herself.
Unlike Kavanaugh, she’s a serious figure – one who deserves thoughtful and unhurried consideration. Maybe many Americans will end up not liking some of her positions but hearing her argue her reasons for adhering to them is likely to be illuminating, because, again, she’s off-the-charts smart. We will learn something from hearing her out.
It’s a pity we didn’t get to have that kind of conversation two years ago.
It’s an even greater pity that we won’t get to have it now.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com
