Christine Blasey Ford, the woman best known for accusing Brett Kavanaugh of trying to sexually assault her when he was 17-year-old high school student, has a new book coming out next week titled “One Way Back: A Memoir.” Part of any major book release is the requisite push to get the book into the media so people hear about it and go buy it. That won’t be hard for Blasey Ford given the impact of her 2018 testimony. Already there are pre-publication write-ups appearing in major papers once again highlighting her claim that Kavanaugh is a liar.
“The fact is, he was there in the room with me that night in 1982,” Ford writes. “And I believe he knows what happened. Even if it’s hazy from the alcohol, I believe he must know.
“Once he categorically denied my allegations as well as any bad behavior from his past during a Fox News interview, I felt more certainty than ever that after my experience with him, he had not gone on to become the consummately honest person befitting a supreme court justice.”
Kavanaugh’s nomination became mired in controversy after a Washington Post interview in which Ford said Kavanaugh, while drunk, sexually assaulted her at a party in Montgomery county, Maryland, when they were both in high school.
At one point in the book she apparently asks herself a question that others have asked. What if Kavanaugh had come to her and simply said he didn’t remember?
“All I can guess is that if he’d come to me, really leveled with me, and said, ‘I don’t remember this happening, but it might have, and I’m so sorry,’ it might have been a significant, therapeutic moment for survivors in general … I might’ve wobbled a bit. I might have thought, ‘You know what, he was a jackass in high school but now he’s not.’
“But when my story came out and he flat-out denied any possibility of every single thing I said, it did alleviate a little of my guilt. For me, the question of whether he had changed was answered. Any misgivings about him being a good person went away.”
What’s striking to me, reading all of this again, is how certain Blasey Ford is that Kavanaugh must remember what happened on that night more than 35 years earlier (at the time of the hearing), a night when she says he was clearly drunk. And because he claims not to remember he must be a liar and a dishonest person. As she describes it, her guilt melted away when he outright denied her story rather than saying “I don’t remember but it could have happened.”
But on what basis is he supposed to say “It could have happened” if he honestly doesn’t remember it? Again, it feels like she’s sneaking in the idea that he must really know. That is after all what she claims to now believe. He remembers the truth and therefore his denials are all lies and a sign of his failures as a person.
And yet at the same time it’s clear that many of the details about when and where this happened are gone from her own memory and haven’t returned even five years later. The Washington Post says there is no new information in the book to back up Blasey Ford’s story.
Readers looking to “One Way Back” for a magic bullet to prove Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence are out of luck. Ford doesn’t remember anything more than she’s already publicly recalled; there are no new witnesses or unearthed diary entries. What she gives instead is a thoughtful exploration of what it feels like to become a main character in a major American reckoning — a woman tossed out to sea and learning that the water is shark-infested, or at the very least blooming with red tide.
If she could remember more about that night it would benefit her personally to do so. But she can’t recall any more than she has already and so, points for honesty. But there seems to be a disconnect between her own imperfect memory and her assessment of Kavanaugh. What if he really doesn’t remember this? What if he’s not lying about that? What if the details she claims to remember are, for him, like the details she claims not to remember? In that case, Kavanaugh isn’t a liar or a dishonest person. And his reaction to the allegations wouldn’t have to be framed as a show put on for the cameras but rather as an essentially honest reaction to something his own mind tells him never happened.
The fact that no one else remembered that night, including her good friend Leland Keyser who said she believe her story but couldn’t remember anything about it, also suggests that Brett Kavanaugh may not be lying about not remembering that night.
It would be nice if Blasey Ford could extend the same kind of nuance to Kavanaugh that she wishes he had extended to her in that private conversation she imagines, the one that never happened. But if she did that she’d have to admit that maybe he wasn’t a liar who “knows what happened.” It seems she just can’t accept that as a possibility.
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