Washington can be a cynical place, but to believe that politics alone motivated six lawmakers, including Barbara Mikulski, to vote to expel the first senator since the Civil War is to believe that the word of 17 women is worth nothing to the U.S. Senate. Even I am not willing to accept that.
Perhaps Packwood made their decision simpler by spurning the opportunity to confront his accusers, then changing his mind, then blaming his colleagues, and finally altering his diaries. In the end, it was not hard for the Senate to deal with this obvious wrong. So I question whether it measures what the Senate has learned about handling allegations of sexual impropriety. Might the outcome have been different if only one, three, or even seven women had come forward? What if the alleged conduct had only been verbal, and could be dismissed as mere flirtation? What if one of the women had been discharged, and could be labeled a “disgruntled employee”? What if another had once engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with him, opening her to the charge that she was a “spurned lover”? Would the committee have acted so swiftly and with such unanimity? I think not: the vast majority of cases are far murkier and more complex than what brought down Packwood.
What is more important than what the Senate has learned since 1991, when I testified, is what the public has learned. Events in the political arena can raise awareness, but too often partisanship is a distraction, not a help. The Packwood affair may prove to be such a case. (It is an exaggeration: saying it’s typical of sexual harassment is like saying the O. J. Simpson trial is a typical criminal proceeding.) Last week, callers into C-Span talk shows suggested the Packwood expulsion opens the door to impeaching President Clinton on Paula Jones’s charges. Another caller suggested that a “few stolen kisses” should not rob her of Packwood as her advocate for the rights of the elderly. Politics becomes a competing interest, and understanding sexual harassment and abuse of power is forgotten.
Will corporate America learn from Washington? In Packwood’s wake, recalcitrant executives can dismiss the episode–and any lessons it might hold for policing their own companies-as politics as usual. They may say it’s the old-boy network on Capitol Hill, overlooking the fact that there are old-boy networks everywhere. Would a corporate board have responded as the ethics committee did if the subject of allegations were a CEO? Very likely the matter, if settled by a corporate board, would have never become public–both the accusers and the accused would have been silenced by a gag order. Lessons that might have been learned would never reach the light of day.
Does the national attention brought by cases like Pack-wood’s result in greater understanding of run-of-the-mill sexual-misconduct cases? Only when there is a concerted effort to connect the two. The retaliation alleged by the women in the Packwood case (he tried to discredit some accusers) is little different from the retaliation that 31 percent of EEOC sexual-harassment complainants report. And charges filed with the EEOC by blacks are more likely to result in findings of “no reasonable cause” than those filed by whites. Might the race and class of the Packwood complainants have made them more believable?
Even for the Senate, the Packwood call was clear. But most cases will not be so easy. And before we begin to discuss sexual harassment in the past tense, consider that if even an easy case requires 33 months of political pressure and 10,000 pages of testimony to be resolved, the average complainant has little hope for a swift and certain resolution. Packwood may be leaving, but for many women the dismal reality remains. I look forward to the day when just one woman’s word is enough to make the Senate-or any institution- act responsibly.
