ETHICS : Packwood: Should Politics Make Strange Bedfellows?

Since he took office in 1969, Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon has consistently supported a woman’s right to choose. He voted for the Equal Rights Amendment and family leave. He voted against the nomination of Clarence Thomas. Gloria Steinem raised money for his campaign.

And all the while, the Senate Ethics Committee has found, there is “substantial credible evidence” that he was making unwelcome sexual advances on women who worked for him, lobbied him, checked him into hotels, seated him in restaurants and baby-sat his children.

The Senate Ethics Committee has charged Packwood with a pattern of sexual misconduct, based on 18 alleged incidents with 17 women between 1969 and 1990. The committee also charged him with tampering with evidence by altering his diary and soliciting jobs for his wife with lobbyists. The committee filed its charges in May but has been unable to reach any agreement on whether to hold public hearings.

Wednesday night, the ethics committee again failed to reach agreement on hearings. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) charged that the Republicans, who will be holding hearings next week on Whitewater and Waco, Texas, are trying to protect one of their own and has pledged to introduce a resolution calling for public hearings if the committee votes against them.

Steinem isn’t supporting Packwood anymore.

Packwood, as finance committee chairman, is one of the most powerful members of the Senate. Ideologically, he is one of the more moderate members of the GOP, and one of the few who is staunchly pro-choice. The Republican next in line to serve as finance chairman, William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, has a voting record twice as conservative as Packwood’s.

The organized feminist movement has united against Packwood in his own state and in Washington. Six women senators, including all five Democrats and Republican Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, have called for the Senate Ethics Committee to hold public hearings on the charges against Packwood, putting them, in this fight, on the same side as anti-abortion activists eager to punish the most pro-choice Republican for his support of Roe vs. Wade.

On Wednesday, a women’s advocacy group based in Oregon took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post that asked: “If your boss stuck his tongue in your mouth, would he keep his job? Only in the U.S. Senate.”

Harriet Woods, head of the National Women’s Political Caucus, admits that losing Packwood would be a grave setback on a range of issues of concern to women. But she believes “we must not forget the victims” and argues that holding “someone accountable for outrageous and abusive conduct” is more important than “how they cast their votes.”

The first woman to speak out against Packwood, Julie Williamson, told of an alleged incident in 1969, when she was alone in the office and her 36-year-old boss kissed her on the back of the neck. The then-freshman senator had already kissed her once before, in a bar while her husband was in the men’s room. Her story forms one incident in the Senate Report.

Williamson, then 29 and mother of two, said she told her boss in the office: “Don’t you ever do that again.” He followed her into the back room, grabbed her by the ponytail, stood her on her toes and started removing her clothing. When he couldn’t get her panty girdle off, he gave up, saying, “Not today, but someday.” A week later she confronted him, reportedly on the way to a Girl Scout cookie drive. “What was supposed to happen next? Were we just going to lie down on the rug? Like animals in the zoo?”

“I suppose you’re one of the ones who want a motel room,” he allegedly replied.

Twenty-three years later, in the wake of charges of sexual misconduct against Sen. Brock Adams of Washington, Williamson was asked if she’d had similar problems. She told her story to a local columnist but insisted on anonymity, so Packwood’s name was not mentioned.

The story tying Packwood by name to charges of sexual misconduct was ultimately printed in the Washington Post two weeks after Packwood won reelection, and included accounts from Williamson and nine other women. The Post was reportedly interested in the story because one of its own reporters had told them of a similar experience with Packwood, but held it until after the election because of charges by Packwood that his accusers were disgruntled and bearing grudges, mentally unstable or had welcomed his attentions. Since then, a total of 23 women have come forward to complain of Packwood’s sexual misconduct.

The senator’s responses have included apologizing, blaming it on alcohol, checking into a detoxification facility, vowing to fight the charges and attacking his accusers. After initially calling for public hearings, he now opposes them.

Should Packwood be permitted to betray the public trust and abuse the power of his office, if that is what he did, because he votes right on the issues? Should he escape public scrutiny because the pro-choice side needs his support on abortion?

The answer to such questions has to be no.

For supporters of women’s rights to forgive abuse in Packwood’s case, because of calculations of realpolitik, would amount to outright abandonment of the women who had the guts to complain. It is entirely appropriate to treat tabloid queens with suspicion in 1995, and tell would-be blue-jeans models seeking fame at the expense of politicians to go it alone--at least until they have proved their complaints are well-founded. Packwood’s accusers have already done that, to the satisfaction of the committee. And not one is posing for a blue-jeans ad.

Even more important is the question of principle. The ideal that no one is above the law is more important than any vote Packwood will cast. We can fight for choice without him.

Columnist William Safire, one of Packwood’s staunchest defenders, argues that the senator deserves an apology from the ethics committee for a two-year ordeal of “undeserved ridicule.” Safire argues, “in the past 10 years there has been exactly one accusation of misconduct that has withstood even the gentlest scrutiny.” Safire also dismisses Packwood’s accusers as “political opponents” whose generation-old memories may be “warped” by time and partisanship.

The complaint against Packwood was initially filed in 1992. Safire’s “one in a decade” arithmetic amounts to giving the senator credit for delaying the proceedings for three years; looking at the 10 years immediately preceding the complaint adds three more instances of harassment. Obviously, it would have been better for some of the women to come forward sooner; but it is no easy thing to complain about a U.S. senator.

Contrary to Safire’s description, most of these women are not the senator’s political opponents: They are Republicans, women who worked for him. The Senate list does not include the complaints of newspaper reporters. And the scrutiny of the Senate Ethics Committee is hardly the gentlest: For them to find “substantial credible evidence” of misconduct by one of their own most powerful members is hardly a casual indictment.

That does not mean the senator should be strung up at dawn. The alleged wrongdoing must be kept in perspective. Packwood is not the only one who has erred, and it’s not fair to use him simply to send a message to others. What is and is not appropriate in the workplace has certainly changed over 25 years--though it is hard to remember any time when pushing the Capitol elevator operator against the elevator wall and kissing her on the lips, or grabbing the crotch of a hostess in the dining room, was appropriate. The only real argument against public hearings is that in America today, we are unable to hold such hearings without turning them into a circus.

That should be an injunction to both sides.

Earlier this spring, Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) warned Packwood’s accusers of the price they would pay in public hearings. “They are going to have their lives examined as they never have had before. This is not a threat but, when you go out to bring another person down, you subject yourself to the same scrutiny.”

Williamson is 55 now. Hopefully, she’s ready. The charges against Packwood deal directly with how he used the power of his office. They deserve to be addressed in public.