A year ago on Sunday, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, despite Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that he had sexually assaulted her in high school. That he was able to take a lifetime seat on the highest court following Ford’s tearful, credible account before the Senate Judiciary Committee is still surreal. But Kavanaugh’s rise to Supreme Court Justice was rhetorically aided by one artful, inescapable phrase: “good man.”
the following day while explaining that prior to Kavanaugh’s nomination, he had “spent time with this good man and his family.” Time and again, being a “good man” was treated as evidence of Kavanaugh’s fitness, as though it was a singular qualification.By the end of the summer, as Democrats continued to push back on Kavanaugh’s nomination, the phrase shifted into a signifier of politically-motivated character assassination. Not only was he a “good man,” but a “good man” under attack.
Calling him a “good man” implied that Ford was a liar—the “bad woman” opposite this “good man”—without having to explicitly say it.In September, the nature of the “good man” narrative again morphed, this time disturbingly and permanently. Theits report on as-yet-unnamed Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of “sexual misconduct” against Kavanaugh.
speculated that this “strategy had been in deference to the #MeToo movement, or out of fear of contradicting a woman’s memory of sexual assault.” All that changed, though, when Trump posted a series of tweets indirectly challenging Ford’s accusation. In one tweet, he used a variation on the “good man” phrase,
, “Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a fine man, with an impeccable reputation, who is under assault by radical left wing politicians... .” With this rhetorical sleight of hand, supporters of Kavanaugh could avoid the unseemliness of blatantly attacking Ford.In none of these cases did anyone ever give a precise definition of “good man.
It wasn’t the first time Hatch had minimized a woman’s abuse allegation with the “good man” defense. Earlier that same year, when then-White House staff secretary Rob Porter was accused of domestic abuse, Hatch
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