How the Senate is persuaded to decide the fate of Judge Kavanaugh is highly consequential. Many on the left, in politics and the press, are working to persuade the solons to reject the judge for the Supreme Court. Their right-leaning counterparts seek to persuade solons to support his nomination.

How, however?

Aristotle identified three modes of persuasion: ethos, an appeal to the character of the persuader; pathos, an appeal to the feelings of the audience; and logos, an appeal to reason. Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing was much more about ethos and pathos than about logos.

A decision based on anything other than logos, though, would have disastrous consequences for America.

Christine Blasey Ford, the professor of psychology at Stanford who has alleged that years ago Judge Kavanaugh assaulted her sexually, laid claim to ethos through her standing as a professor and a credible presentation of her allegations. So did Judge Kavanaugh, by way of hundreds of character references, the professional support he has provided to women, and years of press coverage and FBI investigation that have yielded no suggestion of any serious misbehavior.

Meanwhile, pathos is easily pressed into service in the era of #MeToo, a reckoning with the many years during which sexual assault of women was not taken seriously. Here, too, there is a problem. There is enormous support for the #MeToo movement, but many feel the pendulum has swung too far.

Certainly, people and and the press often take positions on #MeToo cases based on their political preferences. Politicians and activists almost always do. So ethos and pathos cannot help us.

The application of logic — logos — to the available facts can help us, because facts easily discoverable by the new FBI investigation can get us closer to the truth. People don’t like the truth when it runs against whom they like or how they feel, but they dislike it only because they know it matters.

The most promising way forward is Judge Kavanaugh’s calendar entry for July 1, 1982, on which a great deal of attention is currently focused. The entry reads: “Tobins’ house — Workout/Go to Timmy’s for Skis w/Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.”

Judge Kavanaugh stands by his calendar: he went for drinks at Tim Gaudette’s house with Mark Judge, Tom Kane, Patrick J. Smyth, Bernie McCarthy, and Chris Garrett. Ms. Ford said Messrs. Judge and Smyth were at the party at which the future Judge Kavanaugh assaulted her, as well as a boy whose name she could not recall, and her friend Leland Keyser.

Under penalty of felony, Messrs. Judge and Smith and Ms. Keyser have denied any knowledge of the party or the incident. We have not heard from Messrs. Kane, McCarthy, or Garrett.

Of the group, the most important are Ms. Keyser and Mr. Garrett. Ms. Keyser wrote that she “does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present.” If she stands by her testimony, the Committee will have to decide what to make of Ms. Ford’s explanation that “Leland has significant health challenges.”

Mr. Garrett was apparently dating Ford that summer, but she did not list him among those present, tried hard to avoid talking about him at the hearing, and would not mention him by name even under direct questioning. This was clearly important to Ms. Ford, so Mr. Garrett’s testimony may well be important to us.

The makeup of the Supreme Court is not the only thing at stake. Reason is the faculty humans have developed to get along with each other in large, advanced societies. It’s no accident we are so bitterly divided at a time when reason commands so little respect.

Ethos and pathos may serve one or another constituency at one time or another, but their two great political triumphs in the last century were Fascism and Communism.

Today, Republicans and Democrats in America seem convinced that members of the other party have gone crazy. A decision about what happened between Judge Kavanaugh and Christine Ford based on ethos or pathos will exacerbate this divide. What better time for a little logos, the anti-crazy glue that holds societies together, rather than ethos and pathos, which rip them apart?

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Image: Detail from ‘The Defender’ by Daumier via Wikiart.

Mr. Rosenberg trains business executives in logic-based decision-making.