To be exact, here follows Isaac's take on how Judge Kavanaugh should have begun his second round of testimony to the Judiciary Committee:
Senators, good morning. I'd like to respond to the recent and very public discussion about my time in high school and college. I will not ask you to excuse me for what I was as a teenager. I do, however, wish to apologize to Professor Ford and to the other women whose paths crossed my high school and college groups and who were rightly offended, embarrassed, and scared.
If we were all to be judged as middle-aged adults by the most offensive of the things we did as teenagers, this room would be nearly empty. In the 40 years since I entered high school, society has changed. Forty years ago the rights of landowners to be free of confiscatory land use regulations were conspicuous by their near-absence - until in the 1980s a liberal supreme court adopted conservative positions in the First English, Nollan, and Dolan cases. Forty years ago none of us would have imagined that two men or two women could be a married couple - a liberal right that a conservative supreme court defined and protected in its Obergefell decision. And forty years ago conduct of our sons was excused with the glib saying that "boys will be boys," despite the fear and pain that their conduct caused our daughters.
The president did not nominate the 18-year-old or the 25-year-old Brett Kavanaugh to the highest court of the land. He nominated the 53-year-old Brett Kavanaugh who has a 25-year record as a lawyer, a public servant, and a judge. You can recommend the appointment of the Judge Kavanaugh of today without endorsing the Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge that are a quarter-century in the past.
Some of you may disagree with the positions that I advocated when I was a lawyer in the Bush administration. Others of you may disagree with some of the decisions that I've made as a judge. The questions that I suggest are before you and, if you recommend my nomination, before the full Senate, are whether in my time in the executive branch I honestly and intelligently advocated the positions of the government, and whether in my time on the bench I have honestly and intelligently applied the rule of law to the cases before me. I believe that you can answer "yes" to both.
Judge Kavanaugh chose a different approach. He'll likely be confirmed anyway, but he's going to be tagged as the nominee who was combative when he should have been contrite.