March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Olympia and Packwood

This week the people of Maine shared an uncommon moment in American politics when Sen. Olympia Snowe signed a letter urging open hearings on charges against Republican colleague Robert Packwood.

A member of an institution whose members too often behave passively, acting and speaking out only when it’s safe, confirming the cynicism of voters, Sen. Snowe was aggressive and plain-spoken:

“The Senate is the people’s house, not a private club.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Snowe and four Democratic, female members of that chamber appealed to the Ethics Committee, to bring its process against Packwood into the open.

It was not an easy thing for any of the five to do, but was especially difficult for Snowe, who would be perceived as menacing one of her own and also destabilizing Republican strategy in the Senate. She signed. It takes courage to do what is right.

In what looks like an example of political cause and effect, the committee Wednesday pushed off until next week a declaration on the hearings.

Republicans would like the sessions conducted behind closed doors. That’s understandable. Although they allow Sen. Packwood to float through the chamber in a state of political grace, his GOP colleagues know his halo is tarnished, if he can find it.

The Senate Ethics Committee following a two-year investigation found substance in allegations against the Oregon senator, the most significant being a total of 18 instances of unwanted sexual adavances against 17 women. The incidents occurred between 1969 and 1990.

All of this was well known last fall. In almost any other business, an individual burdened with such a string of allegations would be moved to a back office while due process took its course. Not in the U.S. Senate. Given the Ethics Committee’s rough-draft resume of a 21-year career of sexual harassment, when the new Republican leadership took control in January it elevated Packwood to chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

This was an insult to the public. It was compounded by threatened revelations from the Packwood diaries — possibly implicating other senators in improprieties — and committee findings that the diaries had been altered and that Packwood used lobbyists to land a job for his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Snowe and her staff reviewed 30 to 40 years of history on Ethics Committee proceedings (overwhelmingly concerned with financial impropriety), and concluded this was the moment to push the process into the open.

The Ethics Committee has given itself the weekend to contemplate its next move. The choice is stark, simple. Follow Sen. Snowe’s suggestion and do what’s right, or yield to political impulse and conduct the Packwood proceedings in the dark.

The panel’s leadership can test the wind of public opinion. It’s strong. There’s no confusion outside of Washington. Packwood’s problems appear to be a symptom of a sickness within the institution of the Congress. Bring the hearings into the open, where sunlight is the best disinfectant.


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