a "reflection" published November 1995
The first time I witnessed Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) in action, I was impressed. He was smooth, very smooth, the acme of smoothness. Young and impressionable, I saw Packwood as the ideal to which all politicians should aspire. He came across as knowledgeable, reasonable, considerate, witty, wise.
After his second debate in 1980 with Ted Kulongoski (Democrat) and Tonie Nathan (Libertarian), I chatted with a friend about the relative merits of the candidates in this race for the Senate. She loathed the politics of the Democrat, and admired both the politics and person of the Libertarian (who had effectively skewered
the Big Guys in her first debate with them, according to the major papers). But regarding Packwood, I could see she was struggling. She did not like his big government Republican
orientation, and she knew that every ounce of his being was a carefully contrived artifice. But he was, as she admitted, so very good at his pretense. Suave,
she said of him.
If someone had asked me, right then, how Packwood got on with the ladies, I would have guessed very well. Little did I know that this suave senator was a cad, at the very least.
I had no way of knowing, of course, that there would be such a disjunction between his personal and public personae, but I don't think I would have been shocked. It's tough, being a politician, having to pretend to believe all sorts of nonsense, simply to please the masses of rationally ignorant
voters. The cognitive dissonance can wear at a guy. Perhaps that is the reason Packwood couldn't keep it together, why his drunkenness and lechery and hegemonic seduction
(old-fashioned macho-rapist courting) became a big part of his life. And why it led to his undoing as a senator.
Though I am not usually sympathetic toward politicians, before September 7, when Packwood resigned from the Senate, I had a hard time working up support for the calls for his ousting. It seemed somehow indecent that a politician's private indecency should lead to his undoing, while the public indecencies of many a previous solon had been passed by with hardly a handslap. I loathe caddishness and despise rape, but Packwood's furtive assaults, as related by his many accusers, seemed simply pathetic. Since he was not prosecutable under law, ousting him while having let others' greater crimes slip by seemed itself indecent.
But as Packwood's infamous diaries came to light, the complexion of the case changed: what was so shocking
about the diaries was not all the sexual bravado and indelicacies, but all the confessions of graft, special privileges, and violations of the public trust.
Not really shocking, of course, but it made Packwood's forced resignation much easier to swallow. There is justice in seeing a politician destroyed for his abuse of power. It may be true that this abuse is as commonplace as Packwood's own misuse of alcohol and his abuse of women. But tolerance for commonly practiced indecency is on the wane. Adding fuel to the bonfire of the vanities would be a good thing.
Perhaps the standards are reversing themselves. Perhaps now we will expect bluntness in politicians and suavity in private persons. The figure that Packwood cut in public life may become standard in the realm of sexual relations: knowledgeable, reasonable, considerate, witty, wise. We could do worse. With Packwood, we obviously have.
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