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The media is engaged in a full-court press to establish that Kavanaugh drank to excess — when he admitted in his testimony that he drank to excess. After every new story hits, Kavanaugh's opponents say it's more proof that he lied, but piling up detailed accounts of excessive drinking doesn't achieve anything if he was truthful about excessive drinking.
The focus on Kavanaugh's supposed lies comes as the rest of the case against him is falling apart or is at a standstill. The latest FBI inquiry has wrapped up with, it appears, no game-changing discovery.
This has forced Kavanaugh's opponents to resort to his testimony itself as the reason he should be disqualified, although they gloss over the most important part if they want to hang him on adolescent drinking.
In his opening statement in the Senate hearing, Kavanaugh said, "Sometimes, I had too many beers." This is obviously an acknowledgment of excessive drinking. He further allowed of himself and his friends, in a statement that covers a lot of misbehavior (but not alleged crimes), "We sometimes did goofy or stupid things. I doubt we are alone in looking back in high school and cringing at some things."
In a Fox News interview the week before the hearing, he said much the same: "And yes, there were parties. And the drinking age was 18, and yes, the seniors were legal and had beer there. And yes, people might have had too many beers on occasion." (The reference to the drinking age was to explain the ready availability of the beer.)
Kavanaugh never denied going to keg parties, or — to cite the recent reporting — enthusiastically planning his high-school friends' excursion for beach week, or getting in a barroom scuffle at Yale, or even throwing ice at someone he and his friends mistook for the lead singer of UB40.
If Kavanaugh had been asked about any of these specifically and denied them, his critics would have a case for dishonesty that simply doesn't exist.
His critics took great umbrage that he told MacCallum that "the vast majority of the time I spent in high school was studying or focused on sports and being a good friend to the boys and girls that I was friends with."
This is almost certainly true, though. If he was at school for roughly a 7-hour day, five days a week, and had football and basketball practice too, and had to spend some time studying and six to eight hours a night sleeping, that doesn't leave the "vast majority" of his time for anything else.
He wasn't a dropout or alcoholic. He, by his own recollection, was at or near the top of his class during high school. None of that means that he didn't drink to excess, but he never said otherwise.
His specific denial is that he never blacked out. So far, in all the people who knew him who have emerged to say he slurred his words or stumbled when he'd been drinking, no one has said that Kavanaugh told them after a bout of drinking that he had no idea where he was or what he did the night before.
The other allegations of Kavanaugh lies are picayune. A cluster concerns his high-school yearbook and his allegedly dishonest explanation of the slang terms "boof" and "devil's triangle." His critics say those terms refer to sex acts, whereas Kavanaugh says they refer to flatulence and a drinking game, respectively.
The evidence suggests that he's right. A history of farting — yes, there is such a thing — notes that boof was one slang word for flatulence, and former classmates of Kavanaugh's wrote a letter saying that they played Devil's Triangle, and explaining how it was done. A yearbook entry of one classmate seems to take credit for coming up with the name.
Another yearbook phrase is "Renate alumnus," a reference to a female friend of Kavanaugh and his buddies. His critics believe it's sexual innuendo. Kavanaugh said the "reference was clumsily intended to show affection," and expressed regret over it and specifically apologized to the woman. How you regard this answer will depend on how much weight you put on the word "clumsily," but it's hardly the stuff of perjury.
The emphasis this week of Kavanaugh's opponents on his drinking isn't a sign of strength, but of desperation and weakness. On lying under oath, they have nothing.
(COMMENT, BELOW)