Trump’s sex quagmire

The raging political controversy over US President Donald Trump’s nomination of 53-year old Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has captured world-wide interest with serious implications – for example, the severe contestations between the executive and the legislature, how ugly two-party democracy could become, limits of transparency in public hearings, and the quagmire in which both victims of sexual abuse and alleged offenders could find themselves.

The word “quagmire” is described as “an awkward, complex or hazardous situation.” And having himself been at the awkward centre of several sexual allegations, Trump now also finds himself in a quagmire – obligated to defend his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Kavanaugh, while trying not to appear sexist or unsympathetic to the passionate sincerity of 51-year-old Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s narrative of the alleged sexual assault by Kavanaugh during their high school years 35 years ago.

If this were all, Trump could have gotten a good night’s sleep. But as the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee continued to heat up, there became much more than that in the public theatre. It became a political war – Republicans vs Democrats, a war between the sexes. It involved a dent in due process– pressured by street protests and women rights. Another cultural war, a milestone, within American democracy, with the Senate Judiciary Committee (11 Republicans, 10 Democrats) itself coming under severe attack.

Republicans seemed anxious to get Trump's nomination over as fast as possible. The Democrats had other ideas. Suddenly, breaking news spread that Dr Ford, as a former high school classmate of Kavanaugh, was allegedly sexually assaulted by a drunken Kavanaugh during a school party. Dr Ford’s written allegation quickly became part of the committee’s record and subject to inquiry from Kavanaugh himself. Trump, blaming the Democrats for playing cheap politics, reaffirmed his faith in the judge. He declared: “The Democrats are on a smear campaign, a disgraceful, obstructionist, political sham.” Media exploded with commentaries – obviously biased one way or the other. Talk shows quarrelled. Two more sexual allegations against Kavanaugh poured fire on an already heated public hearing. This did not help Trump.

As things started to look really bad, Trump held a room-packed press conference to talk about his role as UN Security Council president and meetings with some 12 world leaders, but certainly to help his nominee Kavanaugh. He reminded reporters how he too was “unfairly” accused, but if he had to change his mind about Kavanaugh’s nomination he would do so after hearing all witnesses. “You are all fake media,” he blurted to reporters. Anyhow, a week after he heard witnesses and still remained fully supportive of Kavanaugh, citing his testimony as “honest and riveting.”

The 1991 nomination Senate hearings for Anita Hill’s sexual allegations against Judge Clarence Thomas were recalled by Democrats to help exemplify how unfairly such “male-dominated” hearings treat women who have the courage to protest, complain, then lose. The Republicans were not moved, relying on the six previous FBI checks on Kavanaugh, his safe passage through 30 hours and 1,300 questions by the Senate Committee, his “brilliant record” at the nation’s second highest court (Washington), his significant women support– all this against, as Republicans felt, the lack of corroboration by Dr Ford, her lapse in precisely naming place and date, etc. When does knowledge, credible as it may be, become fit for concluding guilt?

Dr Ford will remain for the women’s movement an admirable icon, a flagship. She did appear sincere but eventually beaten. A troubling remnant of this unprecedented Senate judicial hearing is the extent to which politicians can take undue advantage of democracy. Two views arise here.

(1) How can the structures and process which democracy offers for civility, fairness and justice be so broken to satisfy partisan political advantage? How the freedoms which democracy offers can become the same freedoms used to subvert democracy itself.

(2) The alternative view is, don’t worry, be happy, all the noise, contradictions, cross-talk, inefficiencies and embarrassment are part of democracy in action – soon once again to find its equilibrium.

Maybe, but as the monthly Atlantic (October 2018) asked in its lead story: Is Democracy Dying in America? Part of the answer lies in Trump’s rise in American politics and his current sex quagmire arising from the current Senate Judicial Committee hearings.