Rhetoric is an old art, with what amount to textbooks going back, just in the western tradition, to the 4th century BCE. And, one of the very old concepts in rhetoric is the apologia, or defense speech: the genre of speech in which someone is responding to an accusation. It’s an old concept, and there’s a lot of advice out there as to good and bad practices in apologia. More recently, businesses got interested in the topic, and the field of “crisis communication” was born (with the sub-field of reputation repair). And there are people who work with public figures who can advise people facing accusations as to the best ways to respond.
And they all say the same thing: be clear, take responsibility, be honest.
Kavanaugh, the GOP, and the pundits trying to support him have blown this about as badly as it’s possible. They are clearly not talking to anyone who knows anything about how to handle this kind of situation, and that’s concerning.
There are complicated situations in which no apologia is going to work, or in which it might take months or years. And apologia is a rhetorical strategy–in public rhetoric, it might be purely Machiavellian (the person might not really be very sorry at all). But, there are some principles that are so straightforward they can be taught in a first-year college course in rhetoric. (In fact, they were laid out in a 1973 article.)
So, setting aside the question of ethics or sincerity, the savvy move for Kavanaugh and his handlers to have made was to get advice from at least a first-year rhetoric student, if not an actual expert. Kavanaugh had, from the Machiavellian perspective, an easy case.
The accusation, to be clear, is that, as a drunk teen he tried to rape another teen. No one is claiming that he could not have done it–there is plenty of evidence that Kavanaugh and friends were living a kind of life in which it could have happened. They’re claiming it hasn’t been proven to have happened, and they’re pulling out all the standard misogynist rape culture strategies.
And someone who knew apologia 101 would have told them DO NOT DO THAT. The right response would have been an apologia that engaged in denial of intent, bolstering, and differentiation. That would have been something like, “I am tremendously sorry for anything I did in those days–I never had any intent to rape anyone, but I was young, stupid, irresponsible, and drinking too much. I don’t know what I did, but I’m sure I hurt people, and I have put those days behind me” [and then a move to bolstering].
Regardless of whether it was sincere or not, it would have been rhetorically savvy–it would have put opponents of Kavanaugh in the position of trying to attack him for something he might have done a long time ago, for which he has apologized, and which he can plausibly say is not a reflection of who he is now. Opponents would have been trying to deny someone a SCOTUS seat on the basis of the character he had at 17.
But, because they went both barrels of rape culture defenses, Kavanaugh and his supporters have made it clear that he probably still is that entitled and irresponsible person, he doesn’t take responsibility, and they still basically endorse the premises of rape culture. They have made it a question of his character now.
And it’s also now a question of his judgment. And theirs. What is striking to me about the current GOP leadership–and this is a new phenomenon–is the extent to which they reject expertise. There are experts out there who could have helped them with this problem, experts whom they either didn’t consult or whose advice they ignored. And that’s the new GOP in a nutshell. It’s all about each of these guys being all the expert he needs.
Sensible crisis communication is a basic concept in business, and it’s one that’s news to the GOP leadership.