To many outsiders it beggars belief that in a nation of 330 million souls the Trump administration has not been able to find a candidate for the Supreme Court who, besides being conservative, is not burdened with a thick file of evidence that he was once a hard-drinking, unthinking, misogynistic jock.

To President Trump the case of Brett Kavanaugh looks rather different. It is about a man who has become a totem of White House executive power, a litmus test of Republican loyalty and a symbol of male vulnerability to women drunk on #MeToo tweets.

That power has been demonstrated in the narrowness of the FBI investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by Mr Kavanaugh. At the administration’s direction, only a handful of people have