The motto of North Carolina, the state of my birth, is "Esse Quam Videri." It's Latin, meaning "To be rather than to seem." Drawn from an essay on friendship by Cicero, an ancient Roman statesman, it also includes this: "... [N]ot nearly so many people want actually to be possessed of virtue as want to appear to be possessed of it."
The just-concluded Senate hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson suggests that many senators to whom the Constitution assigns the responsibility to "advise and consent" on Supreme Court nominations are dismissive of Cicero's judgment about public servants.
That doesn't absolve them from the responsibility to see their constitutional role in vetting Supreme Court nominees is not just a solemn privilege. They should approach the vital responsibility of interviewing the nominees with the respect that every future Supreme Court justice deserves.
Indeed, if senators treated nominees with courtesy instead of contempt, who knows? They might realize that it would be politically virtuous to interview nominees rather than interrogate them.
Even better - excuse the naïveté - they could also resolve to treat interviewees with respect instead of rudeness.
When a senator rudely interrupts a person as he or she begins to answer a question, the result is a combination of self-importance, arrogance and oddly, insecurity.
It's doubtful anyone was surprised when some Republican senators used the hearing to test-drive issues certain to be deployed against Democrats in the run-up to November's mid-term elections.
Still, you'd like to think that instead of inane questions, a reasonably well-educated senator could present a query that would elicit a well-reasoned response. Would that Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn had thought of that before asking Judge Jackson for a definition of "woman."
Ditto Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who, having acknowledged that he goes to church "probably three times a year," delved into some back-and-forth about religion and family before asking: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are, in terms of religion?"
Then there was the effort to depict Judge Jackson as soft on child sexual abuse. One wonders: Was it an attempt to (a) undermine her nomination or (b) use it against Democrats in the mid-term elections. Probably both.
According to a Washington Post article, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., claimed that "Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker."
Oops. A Washington Post fact-checking report found that "Jackson's record in such cases was consistently misrepresented; Jackson herself noted that part of the problem was a congressional failure to update sentencing guidelines. Even the conservative [magazine] National Review found the attack to be "meritless, to the point of demagoguery."
Judge Jackson's confirmation is likely. But neither she nor others will forget that the hearing reflected in its own way the degeneration of politics seemingly unparalleled in American history.
To fully understand that, consider the impressive string of mistruths pushing the lie that Donald Trump's re-election was stolen in the "rigged" 2020 election.
Best example: this text, among others, from Virginia Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows:
"Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc.) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition."
Yikes!
Michael Loftin is a former editorial page editor at The Chattanooga Times.