resident Donald Trump’s Supreme Court selection sweepstakes ended, as promoted, Monday night with the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The 53-year-old long ago ingratiated himself with the conservative Washington elite, working as an aide to former President George W. Bush, and, before that, as an investigator for special counsel Kenneth Starr, during his wide-ranging inquest into the financial and private affairs of then-President Bill Clinton. In spite of that experience (or maybe because of it), Kavanaugh has more recently asserted that sitting presidents should be “excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship” (including being subject to indictment, prosecution, and trial) because it would prove, as he saw it, too distracting—a sentiment that, no doubt, endeared him to Trump.

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