I Also Blame the FBI

There are ample causes of the miscarriage of democracy that happened in the U. S. Senate today - the anti-democratic Electoral College that put Trump in office in the first place (while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote), the anti-democratic set-up of the Senate itself (as Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out on his show The Last Word tonight), with populous and non-populous states getting the same number of Senators - but I also blame the FBI.

Yes, I know that the background investigation the FBI was tasked to conduct is not the same as a straight-up investigation.  I get that background investigations are constrained from the outset.  But given what has been going on in this country, the intense controversy over the charges raised against against Brett Kavanaugh, the FBI had an obligation to either conduct a fuller investigation, or the let Senate and the American people know that the investigation it did conduct was a sham.

Presumably, Senator Flake was not interested in a sham, but a full investigation in which all leads were looked into, when he called for a pause in the confirmation process last week.   Presumably Senator Collins knew that all leads had not been investigated by the FBI when she said today that no one interviewed by the FBI had corroborated Dr. Ford's account.  Or did she?

The point is that there should have been no ambiguity, no wiggle room, in what kind of investigation the FBI conducted.   By allowing itself to be cited as conducting an investigation that Senators relied upon when casting its votes, even though that investigation was obviously incomplete, with interviews of just a fraction of all the potential witnesses who had been brought to its attention, the FBI became complicit in the result, the likely confirmation tomorrow of someone who has been accused of multiple assaults of women, and who obviously has a temperament unfit to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Count yet another part of government that has been compromised in our age of Trump.

Yesterday's Victory for Justice, Democracy, and Reason Depicted on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word

What I saw last night on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word on MSNBC was one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen on television.   Republican Senator Jeff Flake being talked to in the elevator by Maria Gallagher and Ana Maria Archila.  Flake later listening intently as his Democratic colleague Chris Coons made the eminently rational case for an FBI investigation of the Kavanaugh sexual assault charges.  Flake standing up, walking by Coons, and signaling his colleague that he wanted to talk.  All leading to the result:  the FBI, ordered by Trump who had no choice - because Kavanaugh needs Flake's as well as Sen. Sue Collins' or Lisa Murkowski's votes to be confirmed - is now conducting this investigation.

Lawrence aplty called this historic moment in American and U. S. Senatorial history "a victory for decency".  Maria Teresa Kumar said "that's what democracy looks like".   Both true.   And as media historian, I would also add this was a wonderful moment for television.  Lawrence and his producers put the segment together perfectly.  Lawrence's narration was perceptive and sage, like everything else he says.  Only television, only with us in American homes since the late 1940s, could have done this.

And it also is a vindication of John Milton's view that if truth and falsity are allowed to fight it out in the marketplace of ideas, our human rationality will award the victory to truth.  Not for everyone all the time.  But for enough people enough times to make democracy work.  Were Milton able to be a guest on Lawrence's show last night, he would have no doubt said that Jeff Flake's decision was evidence of this power of our rational minds.   It's not easy being reasonable when emotions run high.  But Gallagher and Archila provided the wake-up call, making Flake realize that something had to be done, and Coons the path forward, with his focus on the FBI investigation.  Flake's mind was open enough to hear it all, and rational enough to be persuaded by it.

Democracy has been called, with due cause, the least worst form of government.  Yesterday demonstrated that in a way I've never seen before.  For those like me who view Kavanaugh on the Supreme Courts as an affront to everything we hold in high esteem in our democracy, his fate is still undecided.   But we pulled back from the cliff yesterday, and a way that all champions of justice, democracy, and reason should applaud.