President Trump was proud of his nominee, understandably so. His opening statement, reminiscent of Clarence Thomas' claim that his confirmation hearing was "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks," could have been written or delivered by the president. But Justice Thomas was confirmed 27 years ago, when we survivors were still trying to convince people that no meant no. And this time, there is no racial issue to make an all-white Senate uncomfortable. Judge Kavanaugh was reduced to the usual Trumpian name-calling, attacking rather than explaining, turning himself into the innocent victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy.

The problem is that his flat denials and depictions of himself as a choir boy who did not abuse alcohol changed the issue from what happened when he was in high school whether it mattered (a battle during which he could have made things murky enough to give Republicans cover) to a much simpler question: Did Dr. Christine Blasey Ford make the whole thing up?

The only arguments Republicans had fell apart, and rightly so. Dr. Ford described herself as independent. She was there because her claims, made anonymously, were leaked, leaving her no choice but to defend her honesty and integrity. And it was precisely because her memory was not perfect (whereas Kavanaugh claimed to remember every detail of his drunken past) that her insistence that she was 100 percent certain Judge Kavanaugh attacked her is utterly credible.

As for Judge Kavanaugh, his anger did seem authentic, if not particularly sympathetic. The air of entitlement that has clung to him since these allegations surfaced was on full display. How dare they do this to him, rich prep school boy, Yalie through and through, to which my response was: How dare you claim that this woman is lying? Where is your buddy Mark Judge, and why are the Republicans so determined to avoid issuing a subpoena or asking the FBI to investigate?

No one has a right to be on the Supreme Court. Whether the Democrats handled the complaint properly or not has nothing to do with Dr. Ford's truthfulness, or for that matter, Judge Kavanaugh's.

So will the Republicans put a liar on the Supreme Court? They very well might.

Any other Republican president might be unwilling to put senators through a vote that will either anger partisans or anger women.

Any other Republican president might be concerned that shoving Kavanaugh down the throats of the Senate and the country could give Democrats their best chance to take the Senate.

In short, any other Republican president, having given Kavanaugh his chance to defend himself, would come out tomorrow and announce with great regret that Judge Kavanaugh did not want to put his family or friends through this process for even one more day and insisted that his name be withdrawn. None of that would actually be true, but it doesn't matter; a shrewd president would pull the plug on this showdown, preferring to shove down our throats an even more conservative nominee who would certainly be a woman.

But this is Donald Trump, who thinks only about Donald Trump, who grabs women by their private parts, and who prefers to cheat and pay. Judge Kavanaugh handled the situation exactly the way Trump would, neither calm nor candid but angry and defiant, the facts be damned: a veritable mini me.

If the senators were able to put their partisanship aside, there would be a clear lesson here for future nominations. The members of the Judiciary Committee and their staffs, on both sides of the aisle, devoted endless hours to analyzing every word that Judge Kavanaugh ever wrote. How many hours were spent parsing his views on Roe v. Wade only to come up with nothing but the usual babble: settled precedent should be respected (except when it isn't)? Everybody knows the balls and strikes of it all. No nominees who are smart enough for the job are ever going to give up anything about the positions they plan to take. And one of the striking things about the Supreme Court, at least before the selection process itself was completely politicized, is how many justices end up in different places, politically speaking, than where they started. Hugo Black was a Klansman who became an outspoken champion of the Bill of Rights. Earl Warren, the chief justice responsible for Brown v. Board of Education, and William Brennan, for decades the court's most liberal Justice, were both Republican appointees. So was Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade. It's a question of character, the question that never really arose in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings — until Thursday.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: at Pixabay