This is bamboozlement of the highest order.

Thou shouldest (gentle reader) esteem his censure and authority to be of the more weighty credence.

Bayh and his supporters ended up maintaining that it was no longer sufficient that a nominee had not engaged in any impropriety; now there must be no appearance of impropriety. Thus opponents of a nominee could raise an appearance of impropriety by false charges and thereby defeat him. It was a vicious circle: the nominee would not be condemned for what he had done but for what he had been accused of having done by his detractors.

This pass is extremely abrupt, and is covered with glaucus, the low scrub I have noticed as common to the sand-stone formation.