Republicans and Democrats are setting different standards by which to judge Thursday’s hearing, with the former framing it as a legal proceeding and the latter as a job interview.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has some advice for Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as he prepares for Thursday’s climactic Senate hearing to confront sexual misconduct allegations: Be more aggressive, show more outrage, push back more. In other words, be more like Mr. Trump.
But what works for Mr. Trump might not work for Judge Kavanaugh. His challenge is not to look like he is attacking his accusers. Anger could touch off a backlash, advisers said, though at the same time he needs to show more indignation than he did during a Fox News interview on Monday when he stuck closely to talking points and looked rehearsed.
For Christine Blasey Ford, the California university professor who will testify about the night she said a drunken Mr. Kavanaugh held her down on a bed and tried to remove her clothes, the challenge is different. An unknown figure, she will be introducing herself to the senators and the nation for the first time, explaining who she is, what happened 36 years ago and why her account is more credible than his denial. She faces a veteran sex crimes prosecutor who will question her for Republicans, a scenario that could rattle even a more seasoned witness.
In her case, according to political veterans, details will matter. She has not been able to determine the date or location of the incident, so the more she can recall about the event, the more specific her account is, the stronger her case will be. She is no veteran of the klieg-light culture of Washington.
Any way it proceeds, the hearing scheduled to open at 10 a.m. on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee will be unlike any Washington has seen since the Clarence Thomas confirmation in 1991. At stake is the swing seat on a Supreme Court divided ideologically between four conservatives and four liberals. And if that were not consequential enough, the debate is taking place in the thick of a midterm election campaign that will determine who controls Congress for the final two years of Mr. Trump’s term.
Just as the two main protagonists will be tested, so will the 21 senators on the Judiciary Committee. Judge Kavanaugh’s future may hinge on a question that Republicans and Democrats approach very differently: What should be the standard of proof for Dr. Blasey’s allegations?
Republicans are framing the hearing as a legal proceeding. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has said Judge Kavanaugh deserves a “presumption of innocence.” Other Republicans argued that they are not obligated to believe Judge Kavanaugh’s accusers — a stance that carries considerable political risks in the era of #MeToo.
“I’m not big into my feelings; I don’t believe you have to believe a woman because they said it,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the Judiciary Committee, adding, “I’m going to ask myself: Would this allegation in a legal system go anywhere? And the answer is no.”
Democrats, by contrast, are framing the hearing as a job interview to determine Judge Kavanaugh’s fitness to serve; a Supreme Court seat is a privilege, they say, not a right. They intend to use Thursday’s hearing to raise questions about his character and his truthfulness — a narrative they were pushing even before the sexual assault allegations emerged — in an effort to darken his image so voters will see him as unfit.
“There’s no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “There is rather — rather, find the facts. Find the facts, and then let the Senate and let the American people make their judgment not whether the person’s guilty or innocent, but whether the person deserves to have the office for which he or she is chosen, plain and simple.”
The hearing is bound to evoke comparisons of the 1991 hearings where Anita F. Hill, an African-American woman, was questioned by an all-white, all-male panel of senators about her allegations that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. Today, the Judiciary Committee has four women, but all are Democrats. Republicans, mindful of those optics, hired Rachel Mitchell, an Arizona prosecutor, to handle questioning for them. But Democrats say they will do their own questioning.
Like the Thomas-Hill hearings, Thursday’s session of the Senate Judiciary Committee is bound to become a public spectacle. Judge Kavanaugh has already discussed his sexual history — he told Fox News that he did not have sexual intercourse in high school, in college or for “many years after” — and one person close to him said he was prepared to delve into such intimate details if asked.
In his opening statement, which he released in advance on Wednesday, Judge Kavanaugh plans to call the allegations against him “last-minute smears” and “grotesque and obvious character assassination.” But while denying sexual misconduct, he will acknowledge that he drank too much in high school and sometimes behaved badly. “In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now,” he says in the statement.
Democrats have been debating how far to go in asking Judge Kavanaugh about such prurient matters. But they consider it fair game to ask about Judge Kavanaugh’s high school behavior, including the reports of excessive drinking.
They intend to contrast Judge Kavanaugh’s interview with Fox, where he portrayed himself as a high scholar and athlete who was focused on “going to church every Sunday” and “working on my service projects,” with a damning statement from James Roche, his freshman roommate at Yale. Mr. Roche said that while the young Mr. Kavanaugh was “normally reserved, he was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and that he became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk.”
“I view a central issue here as credibility,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Judiciary Committee, adding, “The drinking issue is a very, very significant one because it goes to his veracity as well as his conduct.”
To the extent that it is a contest of credibility, Judge Kavanaugh’s categorical denial arguably made his task harder. He left no room to explain away the allegations by saying that anything that might have happened with Dr. Blasey was a misunderstanding. Instead, he initially portrayed himself as a studious churchgoer, an image that seems belied by the stories of booze-binging parties and sexual innuendo in his yearbook.
Judge Kavanaugh has undergone practice sessions in which advisers pretending to be senators hurled tough and sometimes even over-the-top unfair questions at him to help him figure out how he would respond and maintain his composure. Unlike his mock sessions before his first hearings, these practices have been kept to a smaller set of people.
His interview on Fox on Monday was, in effect, a dress rehearsal, albeit in a less hostile environment. He was not rattled, answering the questions calmly and, toward the end at least, with evident emotion as he seemed to hold back tears. But he seemed nervous and kept retreating to the same lines, the same phrases, clutching onto them like a lifeline in white water rapids rather than risk going off course. He said he treated women “with dignity” four times, he “never sexually assaulted anyone” six times and he wanted a “fair process” 17 times.
While providing encouragement publicly, Mr. Trump has privately told advisers that he thought Judge Kavanaugh appeared weak and that he hoped he would be more aggressive on Thursday. While such an approach might be uniquely Trumpian, even some of Judge Kavanaugh’s friends, advisers and allies worried that he was not forceful enough in denying the charges.
