of the things I know,” the witness said, “but I don’t want to put myself out there.”
The president and the Senate majority leader chatted by phone after Ford’s testimony to assess each other’s reaction. Neither was wavering.
No Republican senator thought Ford had performed poorly in her testimony, but the reactions varied strongly. Some thought her attorneys had done her no favors. Others felt the gaps in her recent memory were disconcerting. And one staffer, early on, thought she was doing so well that he joked about calling in a bomb threat to stop the hearing.
But some Republican senators were more fickle. One member of the Judiciary Committee went to Senator Collins with a plan. In light of Ford’s testimony, they should go to the White House and make an offer to confirm a different nominee if Kavanaugh’s nomination were pulled. Collins, whose diligence and regard for rule of law had remained intact throughout the process, declined. She never would have recommended withdrawing the nomination based on Ford’s testimony alone. She was determined to hear Kavanaugh out.
CHAPTER NINE
Miracle
The unwillingness of nearly everyone to question Ford’s credibility publicly made the pressure on Kavanaugh before his testimony nearly unbearable. After the Fox News interview, Don McGahn encouraged Kavanaugh by reminding him there was a reason he had been nominated to the Supreme Court. His professional performance over three decades gave people confidence in him. Figure out what you want to do in Thursday’s hearing and execute it, he said. Too many people telling him too many things, McGahn thought, was making him come across as too rehearsed. Kavanaugh should just be himself.
McGahn’s advice was a huge relief and exactly what Kavanaugh needed to hear. He was being pulled in two directions, which reflected the influence of two very different Republican presidents. His temperament was a perfect match with President George W. Bush, a man adored by those who worked closely with him. But Bush’s willingness to brush off slights and to discard conservative principles for the sake of political expediency made many Americans feel he had let them down. At the other end of the spectrum was the brash outsider President Donald Trump. Reviled by the Washington establishment, he had been brought to power by an American people worried about the direction of the courts, the rise of “social justice warriors,” and the corrosive influence of the media. Voters were seeking someone willing to stand strong against these forces.
McGahn liked to remind Kavanaugh that he was a Trump nominee, but as Thursday approached, he didn’t need reminding.
Kavanaugh and Ford were supposed to submit their written statements to the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning, twenty-four hours before the hearings opened, but Kavanaugh’s wasn’t finished. He had been thinking about his statement for a while, but because of the uncertainty of Ford’s appearance, he had not gotten down to writing in earnest until Tuesday. The Kavanaugh team realized that his statement would not be ready by the ten o’clock deadline, but they were not worried about that. Strategically, it did not make sense to submit his full statement in advance, for much of its power would be in the delivery. And given Ford’s cavalier attitude toward deadlines, they doubted she would submit her statement in time. They also knew that delivering a statement in a congressional hearing that differed from the written form previously submitted was common. So shortly before noon on Wednesday, the team submitted to the committee an early draft that they knew would need more work. It consisted of seven fairly dry, biographical paragraphs but ended with the promise of more: “Additional testimony to follow.”1 Ford submitted her testimony, a close approximation of the statement she would deliver the following day, at around five o’clock p.m.
Less than two hours later, the Avenatti allegations of gang rape broke. A White House aide suggested to Chris Michel, the former clerk and Bush speechwriter helping Kavanaugh prepare his remarks, that he tear up what he had and start over. The campaign to keep him from being seated had just escalated to accusations of serial gang rape. It was time to get angry.
Kavanaugh had already taken that advice. Michel had presented him earlier in the day with his rough draft of the speech, timed to last about ten minutes. The judge retreated into his office and spent the next several hours rewriting and dramatically expanding the draft. The White House kept asking to see it and he kept declining. Finally, he told them they weren’t going