Kavanaugh-Ford clash to weigh on midterms

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, I moved to Washington, DC, and was preparing to start writing about American politics and economics, and immediately found myself covering one of the greatest political spectacles in US history.

I could not believe my luck: What came to be known later as the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings had all the ingredients of a big political story, centring on constitutional deliberations involving the White House and Congress, in the form of Congressional hearings on whether to confirm the Republican President George HW Bush's Supreme Court nominee, a conservative African-American lawyer by the name of Clarence Thomas.

Until then and with a few exceptions, the process of confirming an appointee to the Supreme Court bench was considered to be a relatively boring event, the kind that would be analysed by legal experts who would assess the nominee's professional and academic background and his or her (there was only one female Supreme Court judge in 1991) constitutional philosophy.