We’ll probably never know whether Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford at a small gathering when they were in high school in 1982. A weeklong FBI investigation into her allegation failed to confirm his guilt. Republicans, for the most part, took that as proof of his innocence. On Saturday, Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the narrowest of margins.

Along the way John Cornyn, the majority whip and senior senator from Texas, suggested that the investigation itself was reason, in itself, to support Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

“A vote against Judge Kavanaugh tomorrow will be a vote for abusing the confirmation process and a good person, and it will be a vote for the shameful intimidation tactics that have been employed as part of an orchestrated smear campaign,” said Cornyn Thursday after reading the FBI’s findings, which have not been released to the general public.

Many Republicans had, at that point, come to a similar conclusion. There’s no evidence that Ford herself was part of a partisan scheme. But Kavanaugh was on the verge of confirmation when her allegation was made public last month. And Democrats were eager to believe the worst about him, even though it was possible, at least, that he was wrongly accused — and clear, all along, that we would probably never know the truth.

Kavanaugh would have been able to see that. He therefore should have responded to Ford’s allegation by withdrawing from consideration for the nation’s highest court. That sounds like a ridiculous suggestion, perhaps, but it’s not. Withdrawing wouldn’t have been tantamount to an admission of guilt, and it wouldn’t have set a dangerous precedent. It would have been a small sacrifice on Kavanaugh’s part in the service of the greater good.

Instead, the entire nation has been subjected to a gruesome, protracted and entirely predictable debacle.

Outweighing the bad

It was a safe bet that Kavanaugh would be confirmed, Ford’s allegation notwithstanding. Republicans control the Senate. And Republicans, collectively, think men should be forgiven for sexual assault — as long as they’re Republicans.

Republican leaders wouldn’t put it that bluntly, obviously. But from their perspective, such offenses ought to be weighed against the hypothetical offenses that would be facilitated, or at least condoned, by Democratic policy. The latter include abortion, which as a medical procedure that ends a human life might be characterized as murder — a more serious crime than rape.

That’s why most Republicans stood by Donald Trump, even after the Access Hollywood tape was leaked. That’s why most Republicans stood by Roy Moore even after he was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers during last year’s special election for one of Alabama’s seats in the U.S. Senate. Such decisions aren’t actually illogical, if you share the pro-life movement’s premises — if you believe that abortion is murder, and that restrictions on access to the procedure will result in a lower abortion rate.

The latter premise, incidentally, is actually at odds with the evidence. America’s abortion rate peaked in the early 1990s and dropped to a historic low in 2014, while a pro-choice Democrat, Barack Obama, was president. Moreover, Obama deserves some credit for that because of his role in passing the Affordable Care Act, which expanded access to contraception.

Destined for failure

For Republicans, it didn’t necessarily matter whether Ford was telling the truth about what happened at that gathering in 1982.

Even if she had somehow been able to substantiate her account, she would have had to convince the Senate that such an assault should disqualify Kavanaugh from being confirmed to the Supreme Court — even though he was a teenager, at the time, too; even though he was drunk; even though he went on to have a brilliant career as a judge, after graduating from Yale Law School; even though he seems to be a devoted husband and father, who coaches girls’ basketball.

Realistically, Ford was never going to prevail. And ironically, what she accused Kavanaugh of doing in 1982 is something that a man could be forgiven for, I think. He was a teenager. He was drunk, by Ford’s account. And — at the risk of stating the obvious — Kavanaugh was raised in a society in which, even now, sexual assault isn’t necessarily seen as a big deal, or taken as seriously as the theoretical risk that a man might be wrongly accused of committing it. None of that is an excuse for the behavior Ford described in her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. But it does put such behavior in context and remind us of the possibility that a minor who committed such an assault might have matured and evolved.

Personal ambition

And although we’ll never know whether Kavanaugh assaulted Ford in 1982, we do know what he’s like as an adult. He’s the kind of guy who prioritizes his personal ambition over the well-being of the country and the legitimacy of our institutions, apparently. In fact, in addition to categorically denying Ford’s allegation, Kavanaugh cast its implications for his personal ambitions as a matter that should concern all of us.

“Such grotesque and obvious character assassination — if allowed to succeed — will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country,” he said in his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, after Ford gave her testimony.

Trump literally has a list of 20 conservative jurists who are just as qualified as Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court, and I suspect some of them would have been willing to serve, had he decided to put the country first.

erica.grieder@chron.com

twitter.com/ericagrieder