Ford-Kavanaugh saga a reflection of social, political schisms in the US

Washington

AT the beginning of the day, she was asked if she was sure that he was the one who sexually assaulted her 36 years ago. "One hundred per cent," she said. At the end of the day, he was asked if he was certain he had not. "One hundred per cent," he said.

One after the other, Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh sat in the same chair before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, separated by less than an hour but a reality gulf so wide their conflicting accounts of what happened when they were teenagers cannot be reconciled.

With millions of Americans alternately riveted and horrified by the televised drama, Dr Ford and Mr Kavanaugh left no room for compromise, no possibility of confusion, no chance that they remembered something differently. In effect, they asked senators to choose which one they believed. And in that moment, these two 100 per cent realities came to embody a society divided into broader realities so disparate and so incompatible that it feels as if two countries are living in the borders of one.

It has become something of a cliche to say that the United States has become increasingly tribal in the era of President Donald Trump, with each side in its own corner, believing what it chooses to believe and looking for reinforcement in the media and politics. But the battle over Mr Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination has reinforced those divisions at the intersection of sex, politics, power and the law.

Senators emerged from Thursday's hearing bitterly split into those tribes, with Democrats persuaded by Dr Ford's calm and unflustered account of being shoved onto a bed, pawed, nearly stripped and prevented from screaming for help, while Republicans were moved by Mr Kavanaugh, who bristled with red-faced outrage and grievance at what he called an orchestrated campaign to destroy his life.

By Thursday night, only a few of the 100 who will decide Mr Kavanaugh's fate remained undecided, searching for answers where none were readily available. "There is doubt," said Senator Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. "We'll never move beyond that. And just have a little humility on that front."

It was surely the most explosive and surreal confirmation hearing since Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill in 1991. A nominee for the Supreme Court was asked if he was "a gang rapist" and a blackout drunk, while defending himself by describing how long he preserved his virginity. His accuser described him "grinding into me", covering her mouth and fearing that he "was accidentally going to kill me". Unlike Ms Hill almost 27 years ago, Dr Ford, 51, a psychology professor in California, was treated gingerly by the committee Republicans, who feared looking as if they were beating up a sexual assault victim and handed over the questioning to an outside counsel, Rachel Mitchell, who never meaningfully challenged her account.

For a dozen days, Dr Ford had been an abstraction rather than a person, the focal point of one of the most polarised debates in a polarised capital without anyone having seen her, met her or heard her. But on Thursday, she became very human, telling a terrible story about Mr Kavanaugh in compelling terms that brought many women to tears and transformed the battle for the Supreme Court.

She came across as Everywoman - an Everywoman with a PhD - at once guileless about politics yet schooled in the science of memory and psychology, "terrified", as she put it, to be at the centre of the vortex. By the end of her testimony, even Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee chairman, thanked her "for your bravery coming out". At this point, at the White House, on Capitol Hill and in Republican circles around town, there was despair. Even Mr Kavanaugh's friends acknowledged that she had come across as powerful and credible. Text messages with words such as "disaster" rocketed around town as Republicans began thinking ahead to what would happen after the nomination was withdrawn or rejected. Liberals began arguing that Mr Kavanaugh should even step down from the appeals court where he currently serves.

But when Mr Kavanaugh, 53, showed up in the same hearing room, it was a different nominee than the mild, overly rehearsed jurist who was interviewed on Fox News earlier in the week. Encouraged by Mr Trump, he ripped up his original opening statement and embraced Mr Thomas's approach of confrontation and anger, appealing to his tribe by adopting the narrative of the president who nominated him and the base that supports him.

While careful not to directly attack Dr Ford, Mr Kavanaugh practically shouted at the senators, calling the confirmation process a "circus" and "national disgrace" and blaming the questions about his history on a conspiracy to "destroy my good name" fuelled by "pent-up anger about President Trump" and "revenge on behalf of the Clintons". Suddenly, the Republican senators who seemed so defeated just minutes earlier roared back to life with righteous indignation on Mr Kavanaugh's behalf and dispensed with the outside counsel, taking over the questioning for themselves.

Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, the only Republican who had aggressively defended the judge in the hallway, now led the way in the hearing room with a scathing assault on Democrats sitting just a few metres away.

"What you want to do is destroy this guy's life," he railed at them.

Turning to Mr Kavanaugh, he said, "You've got nothing to apologise for." Then addressing the wavering Republican senators whose votes will determine this confirmation, Mr Graham said: "To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you're legitimising the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics."

In the end, the court of public opinion will weigh in. One tribe will win. The other will lose. But they will not meet in the middle. NYTIMES