Dornan Saga Raises Questions About His Ground Rules

The Bob and Sallie Dornan saga, revealed in depth for the first time in Thursday’s Times, suggests a dozen different scenarios. I don’t have enough room in this column to touch on every twist that’s popped into my head.

Let’s just say there’s enough grist in the couple’s revelations to satisfy every conspiracy theorist, armchair psychologist and political junkie in Orange County.

Bob Dornan as victim? Bob Dornan as beleaguered and, yet, still empathetic husband?

That view of the private Bob Dornan doesn’t square with the public Bob Dornan we’ve come to know and love, but who can say for sure? Bob Dornan as family bulwark is the portrait that emerges now that Sallie Dornan swears that her past charges of spousal abuse that accompanied her four separate divorce filings during the 1960s and 1970s were false.

The multiple divorce filings and abuse charges have lurked like a shadowy monster over Dornan, Orange County’s most colorful public figure. Political opponents whispered but never used the court records in any full-scale attack during any of Dornan’s several campaigns.

Let’s face it, Dornan’s persona fueled the whispers. Given his volatility in public, sprinkled with personal and physical confrontations with opponents, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that allegations about what happened behind the family’s closed doors could be true.

Any claims today by Dornan that this subject isn’t fair game are shattered by his own political ground rules. He once characterized Barbara Boxer donors as “coke-snorting, wife-swapping, baby-born-out-of-wedlock radical Hollywood left.” Presumably, wife-beating would qualify as equally despicable behavior.

Now, however, Sallie Dornan insists that what she alleged in court documents those many years ago never happened. She says she perjured herself and that the false allegations were the product of her own emotional instability brought on by drug dependency and personal stress.

“It’s just very sad that Bob has to suffer what I brought down on his head through illness, major illness,” she told The Times’ Dave Lesher.

Dornan opponents convinced of his malevolence probably won’t be swayed by his wife’s mea culpa . They’ll assume she’s protecting her husband, who has hinted that he might run for U.S. Senate in 1994 or for President in 1996.

That wouldn’t be an outlandish assumption. The country teems with women who have been struck by their husbands at one time or another but who, for their own reasons, have put the incidents behind them and forgiven them. Moreover, depending on the circumstances, many of those women wouldn’t subscribe to the belief that their husband’s career should be derailed by such incidents. Quite obviously, Sallie Dornan knows she holds a career-ending chip in her hand, if she were to stick to her earlier allegations.

Given all that, I’m sure even the Dornans realize that not everyone will believe Sallie Dornan’s denials.

Which leads to the more vexing scenario in all this. Namely, that the congressman has been unfairly tainted all these years.

Let’s take it one step further. If Sallie Dornan’s psychological demons forced her to file for divorce four times and charge spousal cruelty, and if she knew the charges weren’t valid, and if Bob Dornan still hung in there for the sake of his wife and the children . . . well, then, we’re talking about one hell of a family man.

We’re talking about a Bob Dornan largely unrevealed to the public. We’re talking about a Bob Dornan we’d like to know more about.

And consider: What if Sallie Dornan hadn’t had a change of heart over the years? What if she trumped up the charges, as she now admits, but never got over her emotional problems and decided to ruin her husband’s career?

How many people out there would have believed Bob Dornan’s insistence that the charges were all lies and that he was the victim?

The answer is, not many. You could have colored Bob Dornan’s career dead.

The inescapable conclusion is that we can’t know for sure what happens behind closed doors. When it comes to public figures, we probably should remind ourselves of that more often. That would have had a two-edged effect in Dornan’s case: It would have kept us from accepting his moral preachments about others, but also from automatically believing disturbing personal charges against him.

I’ve pecked at Dornan in this column more than once, but I want to believe his wife’s recanting. If he’s unfairly absorbed all the innuendoes over the years, then he’s to be admired for his steadfastness.

Only one thing gives me pause. If Bob Dornan has known all these years how vulnerable he has been to false charges, why hasn’t that understanding surfaced in dealing with his opponents? Why have personal attacks and character assaults been so much a part of his political agenda? You’d think a man who knew from his own experience how complicated private lives can be would be less driven to use character issues as a weapon against others.

I’ll mull that over and also this: Bob and Sallie Dornan as First Family?

Let me get back to you on that one.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.