It seems very few minds were changed by the Christine Blasey Ford-Brett Kavanaugh hearings. But mine, I’m sorry to say, was one of them.

I was enthusiastic about the Kavanaugh appointment. From everything I’ve heard and read, he’s a smart, responsible, conservative judge — which is what I tried to be when I was on my state’s highest court. People who have dealt with him professionally, including many on the left, like and respect him. If we had never heard of Ford — if the malicious idiot who leaked her name to the media had just kept his or her mouth shut — Kavanaugh would have been sworn in by now, and I would be joining the chorus of conservative applause.

I watched the hearings hoping, and maybe expecting, that I could disbelieve her and believe him, but I couldn’t. Can anyone who watched Ford totally disbelieve her? Okay, her credibility isn’t 100% (“fear of flying”). But with understandable exceptions, she testified like a smart, honest woman, in the grip of strong emotion but trying hard to tell the truth. The idea that she fabricated her encounter with Kavanaugh, or imagined it, seems fantastic. And the idea that she’s thinking of another guy is totally implausible. This wasn’t a stranger attack. She knew him.