(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When President Donald Trump gave his first press conference in 19 months on Wednesday, he was asked about the laughter that greeted him at the United Nations this week after he claimed that “in the history of our country” his administration had proven to be unusually successful.
“They weren't laughing at me. They were laughing with me. We had fun. That was not laughing at me,” Trump replied. “So the fake news said people laughed at President Trump. They didn't laugh at me. People had a good time with me. We were doing it together. We had a good time.”
As the UN fiesta demonstrated — alongside the jolly cage match otherwise known as the Kavanaugh-Ford Senate hearing, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's jovial visit to the White House to find out if he still had a job, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's mirthful explanations for why he needed to ignore Trump's public lobbying against interest rate hikes — lots of people and institutions have, indeed, had a really fine time with the president this past week.
Let's put all the fun aside for a moment, though. Instead, let's think about the thread tying of all these episodes together: An assault on the independence and reputations of the — admittedly imperfect — institutions that protect civil society or help keep domestic and international affairs humming along.
The Supreme Court is, by constitutional design, meant to have some distance from the political fray, cloaked in jurisprudence. In practice, it is often shot through with bias and insularity and is regularly buffeted by other branches of government as they try to influence it. Still, it's all we have. It offers the possibility of final judgments and it sits atop a court network that compares pretty well to other countries. And it should live beyond the president's narrow partisanship, even when seating a new justice becomes a smackdown.
In Brett Kavanaugh, we have perhaps the most openly political nominee in the modern court's history. Under pressure yesterday, and stressed to the point of tears, he lashed out at a murky network of lefties determined to ruin his nomination in alliance with the Clintons. Will he ever be seen again as a jurist who can put politics aside to serve the country on the court?
Kavanaugh, after a round of calls to senators seeking support and a publicity stop at Fox News, also displayed a previously hidden belligerence when arguing his case. This could have been a response, in part, to the wrenching and credible testimony offered by Christine Blasey Ford — alleging that he'd sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. But his defiance and disdain were behaviors that sell well to the president. It would have been hard for Kavanaugh to miss his cue:
