There were many issues in the 2016 Presidential election, but perhaps the most important was over control of the United States Supreme Court. Both sides had reason to count on the results of the election to determine who would be nominated to the high court after the death of Antonin Scalia a few months previous. President Obama had nominated liberal Merrick Garland to the seat but his nomination was held up in the Republican-controlled Senate. Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, was able to postpone the vote til after the November election. “It’s the Supreme Court”, said both Democrats and Republicans in talking about the crucial issues in the coming election. At stake were both Scalia’s seat AND any upcoming open seats.
The election was won by Trump and the Republicans. In fact, not only did they control the White House, they retained both houses of Congress. Neal Gorsuch, a strong, steady Conservative voice was confirmed to replace Scalia. A conservative replaced a conservative, well, that wasn’t as bad as it could have been; it was the next replacement choice that was the killer, as far as liberals and Democrats were concerned. It was the selection and confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, a US circuit judge on the US court of Appeals, that dominated the news in the summer and fall of 2016. It is the subject of Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus’ excellent book, “Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover”.
Brett Kavanaugh had been working towards a seat on the Supreme Court most of his life. He attended the right universities and clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose seat he too after Kennedy resigned in the summer of 2016. But Kavanaugh had another thing going for him. He had been included on the Federalist Society’s all-important list of “preapproved” potential Supreme Court justices. The people on the list thought the “right” way for the president who had promised to only appoint Conservative judges.
Marcus’s book goes into the stories behind the stories; the facts behind the facts. Kavanaugh was accused of sexual misconduct and several very brave women testified in public about his actions as a teenager. Has there ever been a teenager who liked beer more than Brett Kavanaugh? Between the talk about beer and the calendars Kavanaugh produced to show he was too busy drinking to assault anyone, the Senate hearings were an odd mixture of grotesqueness and shame that our own government had descended into “Brett Kavanaugh country”.
Ruth Marcus has written a compulsively readable book about the whole sorry Kavanaugh-mess. You don’t need to be a lawyer to read and enjoy her book.
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