We all have blind spots; some of ours are greater than others. If you happen to be someone in the public eye, it’s more likely that other people will happen to see yours.

Each of us needs one or several people who can help us identify our blind spots and warn us when they seem to be leading us into a danger zone.

There may be no one in the world of politics who consistently gets duped more often than Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins. She seems to be about as well-intentioned as any Republican can be. She hopes for the best, so much so, that there are many times when she thinks that the better angels will visit upon the shoulders of someone who clearly has no intention of taking a compassionate or reasonable path. While often being naïve in judging the intentions of judicial nominees, she can be a savvy politician when dealing with the likes of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia on possible bi-partisan agreements (this plays into his blind spot on bi-partisanship). She also knows well the playing field of her home state of Maine and consistently wins reelection by substantial margins in a fairly progressive state.

But nowhere has her blind spot been more apparent than in her assessment of Supreme Court nominees. A backdrop to this is that Collins is clearly pro-choice on the abortion issue, and she has wanted Supreme Court nominees to be committed to preserving the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

She was completely duped by Trump nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Collins is quoted in Rolling Stone as saying the following about the leak of the Roberts Courts decision in the Dobbs case that overturned Roe, “If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.” Perhaps it would be, but clearly the two of them would not be the first individuals to walk into the office of a senator and fudge the truth. Like most others who come to visit Collins and other legislators, visitors generally say what they think will give them the greatest advantage.

Gorsuch told Collins that Roe was “the law of the land.”  Regarding Kavanaugh, Collins asserted that he “said under oath many times, as well as to me personally many times, that he considers Roe to be ‘precedent upon precedent’ because it had been reaffirmed in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood case.”

According to Rolling Stone magazine, “Collins expressed shock and deep concern when a draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Services decision indicated the justice would likely vote to overturn Roe was leaked to the public.” She felt that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh had misled her.

One of the most important assets that a politician can have is a strong BS detector. Not telling the truth, embellishing the truth, misleading others are all essentially components of the currency of politics. Why should nominees for the Supreme Court be any different? They want to both advance their own careers as well as the beliefs they have on issues that are likely to come before the Court.

This summer our non-profit worked with an outstanding group of high school interns. One of them, Corvin Haake, suggested that a president withdraw a judicial nominee if that nominee refuses to directly and honestly answer questions when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Clearly, a nominee must be told in advance by the president that they must answer questions directly or their nomination will be yanked. It would thoroughly change the way in which Supreme Court justices are selected and could be a major first step in elevating the level of honesty in politics.

Maybe Susan Collins could lead the movement, by acknowledging that she has a blind spot when it comes to assessing nominees. She needs ones who would be honest, and so do the American people. She can make lemonade out of a personal lemon she has.

The nomination process is a bullshit-a-rama. We need to find a way to changed it. Senator Collins, please lead the charge!

The post Rescuing Susan Collins – Make Judicial Nominees Speak the Truth appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Believe it or not, there is a thing or two that current Democratic candidates for president could learn from the Brett Kavanaugh story. For all of Kavanaugh’s transgressions, he has at least been honest in saying that he grew up in a life of privilege. Yes, some people do have that good fortune. In fact, if they didn’t, no one would live the conventional definition of the American Dream.

In last week’s Democratic debate, the candidates were asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, “What’s the most significant professional setback you’ve had to face? How did you recover from it, and what did you learn from it?”

While a few of the candidates actually answered the question and talked about professional setbacks, most talked about personal ones. And indeed, some of them have had life experiences that any of us would like to avoid. Most particularly, the loss that Joe Biden has experienced would send most people to the sidelines and into a psychological spin that would be difficult to ever overcome. He seems to have recovered as well as anyone could.

But then there are the Kavanaughs of the world, for whom privilege is the norm and exclusive of his own bad behavior, virtually everything seems to have gone well. Why is it that virtually all of the candidates have “stories” that seem to make their personal achievements seem remarkable beyond believability. If they are not rags to riches, they are victim to forgiver.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing, wouldn’t it be realistic, to hear just one candidate to say that he or she has lived a life of good fortune. He or she may not quite as fortunate as George W. Bush who former Texas Governor Ann Richards described as being “born on third base and thought that he hit a triple.”  At least a few other candidates could say that they grew up in a non-traumatic or neurotic household in a well-to-do neighborhood and enjoyed school and had plenty of friends. That must happen to some people in our world.

Of the ten Democratic candidates who were on stage for the September debate, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke may come closest to having had a healthy childhood. He was born and raised in El Paso. His mother owned a high-end furniture store and his father was active in politics. As a child, Beto went to a Montessori school and later to Woodberry Forest School, a private boarding school in Virginia, and college at Columbia University. He seemed to have a healthy childhood which included being a bass guitarist.

We do not know of him being bullied or experiencing trauma as a child. O’Rourke is very loyal to El Paso and has been deeply hurt by the senseless shooting at a Walmart store there on August 3 of this year.  He answered Stephanopoulos’ question about resilience by saying, “when we finally confront the racism that exists in America, when we’re defined not by our fears, but instead by our aspirations and our ambitions, it will be, in large part, I think, thanks to the example that El Paso has set.”

Credit goes to him for not portraying himself personally as a victim. But at some time in this campaign, it might be propitious for him to say that he has lived a personal life of good fortune. He could tie this in to his assertions that as we address problems such as gun violence, hopefully our country will be a place where more young people can grow up as he did. It has been said that many Americans suffer from “compassion fatigue.” There is much to care about and towards which we can and should address our empathy. But once in a while it might be refreshing to hear a politician talk about the good fortune that has characterized their life. This is not to fault O’Rourke, who I think may be among the best of the Democratic candidates. But it would be refreshing to hear some candidate for some office not use the word ‘hardship’ when talking about their life.

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In a truly just world, Brett Kavanaugh would not be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court for so many reasons. While the “he said – she said” conflict between Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is stealing center stage, there are countless reasons why the process is flawed. Not the least is that Dr. Ford is already receiving the Anita Hill Treatment from many Republican Senators, both on the Judiciary Committee and in the rank and file.

Let’s deal quickly with this issue. It is possible that what Brett Kavanaugh “remembers” (which seems to be nothing) more accurately describes what happened between him and Christine Blasey thirty-six years ago than what she recalls (being attacked; experiencing trauma; and carrying it with her for the intervening years). It’s possible but far from a certainty.

Suppose that there are no credible witnesses. Is the winner Kavanaugh because (a) he’s a male, (b) he’s a Republican and that party holds the moral high ground, (c) his supporters like Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley are more righteous? Or is the “winner” Dr. Ford because (a) she does not have the extensive history of shading the truth as Kavanaugh has revealed in the hearings for his nomination, (b) women are more believable than men, (c) in the history of these kinds of disputes, the man has been believed far more than the woman, and (d) it’s payback time for what happened to Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Hard to tell. Maybe an FBI investigation will turn up incontrovertible evidence. Maybe the questioning of Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford before the Committee will trip up one or the other. If we have to go by a “feeling in the gut,” I would say that the safe thing to do would be to side with Dr. Ford because the consequences of having two sitting members on the Supreme Court who have acted very inappropriately regarding sex is more than the country should have to bear. As said so eloquently by Anita Hill in an op-ed in today’s New York Times:

But, as Judge Kavanaugh stands to gain the lifetime privilege of serving on the country’s highest court, he has the burden of persuasion. And that is only fair.

Surely there is another conservative nominee who has not been charged with such and who may not have the same paper trail as Kavanaugh.

But let’s look at the broader picture of why this process is so flawed. What are we doing here? We’re selecting someone to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States? And what does he/she do? “Interpret” the laws made by extremely flawed individuals; our legislators in the federal, state and local legislatures. While there are some outstanding legislators, the nature of the job is that it attracts many who have excessive egos and who are comfortable asking for money with little to offer in return. That’s not the way in which healthy human beings interact with one another.

As a group, they are not the most qualified people we have in our society to fashion our laws. Yet we treat what they create as being sacrosanct and engraved in stone. The work of these legislators must be precisely interpreted. But what if what they made was crap, as often is the case. What do the judges do then?

If our judges are wise and capable, then their job should be to clean up the mess. That means more than interpreting what has been written. It means working to have our laws conform to the parts of our Constitution that promote democracy and fairness.

How do we know if a nominee is capable of helping us clean up legislative messes? It certainly is not from them providing bullshit like, “That is a hypothetical question and I don’t want to answer it because it’s a case that may come before the court.” Since nominees dodge most questions, we can only use conjecture to try to figure out what they support.

We need a system in which the nominees are fully vetted – and that information is available not only to the executive branch but also to Congress and ultimately to the American people. The nominees must be required to answer all questions, so we learn what their professed beliefs are.

Their skills in interpreting the laws are less important than their abilities to exercise common sense. That means being good at reasoning, having empathy and understanding irony and hypocrisy.

This system won’t change now. If we’re fortunate, Kavanaugh will not be confirmed and we’ll go through the same song and dance with the next nominee. But ultimately, we need to face reality and have Supreme Court Justices be individuals who have boots on the ground of the United States and who are more arbiters of fairness than presumed scholars of the law.

The post It’s not just Kavanaugh; it’s the whole process appeared first on Occasional Planet.