It seems your whole life has been a careful choreography bringing you inevitably to the place where you would step out onto the world stage and proclaim your innocence against a charge of sexual assault.
You were the lead climber. Since high school it has been your ambition to sit on the Supreme Court. D.C. was base camp. You had good back-up, good coaching, well-positioned and resourceful. You yourself are very resourceful. You had reached the final push to the top of the U.S. political establishment for life. This was it. The eyes of the world were upon you.
My opinion means nothing, mind you, but I’d venture to say that you’ve fared badly in the court of public opinion. Some are saying that, even if you get the job, it will be a sour victory for the rest of your days. Even if you get the job, the world will keep turning, the birds will keep chirping and the rivers will keep running. Even if you get the job, the demands of women seeking the rights over their own bodies will outlast you.
You might have thought about fessing up. Can you imagine the furor? If, in front of all those cameras, in the very belly of the beast, among all those special personages, you stood up and announced: “Yes, damn it, I am guilty as charged! And I am ready to take the consequences.”
Secretly we might have had an understanding, you and I, that your extremely questionable behavior as a participant in the criminal enterprise of the G.W. Bush regime — perjury, warrantless wire tapping, providing legal cover for torture, black ops and crimes against humanity — were the unspoken sins for which you also sought atonement.
The masses would have been rioting in the streets with joy at having found an honest man in Washington.
You would have lost everything, of course. But you’d have saved your soul.
God be with you, my friend.
Ralph J. Dolan
Haydenville