POLITICS : The Ritual of Scandal Envelops Packwood

So Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) is finally history. A legendary strategist, he hung on for almost three years after sexual-harassment charges were first lodged against him. He put up a smart fight to the end, even attempting a last-minute feat of political judo by reversing his previous position and calling for public hearings in his case.

In the end, though, scandal felled him in the same predictable, monotonous-- indeed, seemingly inevitable--way it has torpedoed scores of other post-Watergate politicians, almost regardless of the merits of the varied cases.

The pattern has become almost formal. Scandal erupts. The media ferret. New accusations emerge. Political interests keep the scandal fires burning. There are cautionary cries against cover-up. An official body is convened to investigate. The pile of charges mounts still higher, as do potential legal consequences.

Perhaps most important, the person who is the target of the scandal panics and does something that damages him or her more gravely than the original accusations did.

In Packwood’s case, the original charges--well, everyone knows about them by now. Then the press, feeling misled by the senator’s initial denials, went to work with enthusiasm and helped find other women to tell corroborating stories.

Women’s movement groups were naturally dismayed at the complaints against Packwood, one of their most reliable allies. Having insisted for so long on the proposition that private behavior has public implications, they were obliged to board--whether at the engine or the caboose--the anti-Packwood train.

These women’s groups warned repeatedly that the Senate must not try to cover up Packwood’s misdeeds. Such admonitions are perennial features of post-Watergate politics.

Here, Packwood did have an unusually bad piece of luck. In the years immediately after Watergate, anti-cover-up battle cries would typically come from the left, while the right could be counted on to grumble that too much publicity would destroy the ability of our institutions to make sensible decisions. Then came Rep. Newt Gingrich’s campaign against House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas--and, more generally, the rise of today’s right-wing populism, which is at least as anti-institutional as its counterpart on the left.

As a result, nowadays it is nearly impossible to get anyone to stand up for a decent amount of secretiveness and hypocrisy in public life. Packwood suffered the consequences.

Packwood was also bereft of support because his were sexual offenses. Before the rise of the modern women’s movement, members of the religious right had a virtual monopoly on caring about the private morals of public figures. For such a display of interest, these concerned citizens were labeled Babbitts, hypocrites, and worse. Modern feminism sent reinforcements, and everybody stopped calling those religious folks nasty names. Moreover, as this same religious right grew more powerful within the Republican Party, GOP leaders became increasingly nervous about seeming to condone private immorality in fellow politicians.

It is never easy in a scandal to argue for treating it quietly or letting the alleged miscreant off easy. In Packwood’s case, this problem was magnified: Almost no one was willing to argue for hushing the thing up or letting it fade away.

This being post-Watergate, scandal leads to a government investigation. Because of the official sleuthing, and simply because the official body exists, people are found or come forward to provide additional derogatory information on the person being investigated. In this case, the Senate Ethics Committee sent out inquiring letters to Packwood’s many ex-staffers and otherwise behaved like good investigators. They found plenty.

Part of what they found involved possible campaign-finance violations and the senator’s use of his office for personal gain, offenses, in some ways, more serious than the sexual ones.

What finally terminated Packwood, though, was a set of deeds he did himself. He tried to use his personal diary--a product, we now see from the excerpts made public, of deep compulsion--in his own defense. The Ethics Committee responded by demanding to see his diary. Packwood argued. He delayed. Meanwhile, he altered portions of the recorded diary and its transcripts in order to mislead the Senate committee--and, in the “insult to injury” category, he did not do a very professional job of it.

The chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee is Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The last time he appeared in public on the Packwood issue, he was on the Senate floor fighting off the demand of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) for public hearings. Wednesday, when the committee made its unanimous recommendation that Packwood be expelled from the Senate, McConnell appeared in public again--this time to join his Democratic co-chairman in denouncing Packwood’s conduct as “offensive” and “a reprehensible abuse of public office.”

McConnell’s anger made clear that when he opposed public hearings, he did so not out of regard for Packwood but from concern for the business of the Senate. In the same way, he and other committee members made clear that what had moved them to the drastic recommendation for Packwood’s expulsion was not the original sexual offenses they had set out to investigate. Instead, it was that Packwood destroyed evidence, showing contempt for the Senate’s integrity.

The same panicky irrationality led Packwood to offend the committee in other ways as well. He consistently tried to obstruct them, as if calculating that if he could wait out the investigation, the fervor of his opponents would simmer down. He complained that the committee had treated him unfairly. McConnell, while keeping Packwood from the ordeal of public hearings, had agreed to release the documents in the case; Packwood responded by turning around and calling for public hearings himself, on the ground that this was the only way he could confront his accusers.

In short, he behaved with what the committee clearly saw as treachery. As in most of these cases, the committee responded with an outrage greater than what Packwood’s earlier sins had provoked. It was, in short, a classic ending.

Indeed, in looking back, we see that the ending--Packwood being the man he showed himself to be--was already written at the beginning. This was a man who cared so much for his public life and power that he could not stop himself from overreaching in his own defense.

Modern scandals, because they push people so close up against the wall, are excellent at flushing out this quality in their targets. In the process, these scandals tell us some useful things about public people--and other things we wish we did not know.*