THE BIG POLITICAL surprise these days is no longer the 20 years of seamy, multiple allegations of sexual harassment against Oregon's be-leaguered Sen. Bob Packwood - but that he has a diary of those years spanning 8,200 pages, typed and single-spaced.
Wow!For years I've been trying to get my college students to keep diaries because it is the stuff of history. Diaries always have built-in prejudices based on the author's need to build or protect a reputation, but they almost always have an indispensable dash of character.
Predictably, famous people are more likely to keep diaries because they suspect they will ensure their place in history. On the other hand, the average person usually keeps one as a catharsis or to pass down deeply held beliefs and choice experiences to family members.
But all diaries are gold mines for historians.
Then there is Packwood's - a gold mine with a twist. It is noteworthy - and even bizarre, considering his current problems - that he revealed the existence of the diary to investigators himself. During a deposition he told the Senate Ethics Committee staff that it might corroborate his own innocent version of a relationship with one of the two dozen women who have accused him of making sexual advances.
But now he has changed his mind and wants the diary to be read only selectively. It seems that as a busy U.S. senator, he not only found time to write voluminously about his own experiences but those of other lawmakers, especially their sex lives.
Sounds like a smashing way to blackmail your colleagues - "I have a very fat diary that tells about me. You can read it if you want. By the way, it also tells a lot about you."
There are bound to be problems in that kind of approach, especially in the clubby atmosphere of the U.S. Senate.
It also sounds terribly reminiscent of Richard Nixon and Watergate - those unforgettable days back in the '70s when Nixon taped every single conversation but wanted investigators of his presidential corruption to listen to them only selectively - because, see, some of it involved national security.
Sure.
By the way, just to make matters more interesting, Packwood said his diary includes some conversations with Nixon about Watergate. I wonder if we'll get to read those - or if they'll be erased first?
Packwood, who has been characterized by his associates as a shy "policy dweeb" with persistent, uncontrolled sexual urges, was certainly no Don Juan. His alleged approaches to women were incredibly awkward and lacking in sophistication. Yet, inexplicably, he felt the compulsive need to write about them in exhaustive detail.
Like Nixon, he has hung himself on documents of his own making. His ex-wife, whom he unceremoniously dumped in 1991, thinks he was a decent man who became subtly intoxicated by power. He doesn't care to see his kids. Back home in Oregon, he refuses to speak to the Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper.
When he hung his family out to dry, he said the only important thing to him was the Senate. There is special irony in such a statement from a senator whose days there are numbered.
For years and years Packwood's sexual activities were considered off limits by the press. Those days are gone forever.
One more thing: He isn't even rich, meaning the $250,000 he needs to defend himself against the sexual harassment charges must come from the charitably wealthy - like our own Sen. Bob Bennett, who kicked in $10,000. That, by the way, was just as admirable a humane gesture as it was a politically incorrect one.
As for Packwood, his career is history. But what a dramatic exit.