What if it were President Packwood?

Liberals must face up to their hypocrisy in backing a president who lied under oath in a sexual harassment lawsuit.

By Andrew Ross

Dec 22, 1998 | After the impeachment vote, President Clinton said he hoped that the legacy of his trials and tribulations would be to suck the poison, once and for all, out of American politics.

It was a noble thought, and if achieved, it would be a wondrous legacy of his presidency. At this point, it is hard to see how the threshing cycle of political murder and revenge eating away at the vitals of American democracy will be slowed. The grotesque impeachment proceedings, the cynical Republican rhetoric about "the rule of law," the rank abuses of prosecutorial power exercised by the independent counsel, the vindictiveness, the trampling of rights, the blatant coup in broad daylight -- these will long be angrily remembered.

Testifying on behalf of the coup's opponents, historian Sean Wilentz told the House Judiciary Committee that history would "hunt down" those who voted for impeachment. In faint echoes of the civil rights and anti-war days, celebrity teach-ins are springing up and protesters are taking to the streets. A veritable crusade is shaping up on behalf of a president whom writer Mary Gordon, in the pages of Salon, likened to the martyred Billy Budd.

But before we throw on the chain mail of righteousness, let us imagine that it is not President Clinton on whose behalf we are fighting the good fight, but George W. Bush III, who has overcome his own rather colorful past, or Robert Packwood, who instead of being bundled out of the Senate for sexual matters, has acceded to the highest office in the land.

Let us suppose it was President Packwood who had testified under oath in a sexual harassment deposition and in a federal grand jury proceeding, understanding that failure to tell the truth ("the whole truth") could result in charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Question: Have you ever given any gifts to Monica Lewinsky?

Packwood: I don't recall.

We would know that President Packwood, under oath, had told a flat-out lie. Would we -- good liberals and feminists who have been in the forefront of virtually criminalizing, under the guise of "sexual harassment," any sexual contact between men and women in the workplace -- have been so easily forgiving of this lie? Would it really have been OK with us had it been President Packwood, rather than President Clinton, who also knew that Lewinsky, an intern young enough to be his daughter, was filing a blatantly false affidavit in which she swore she had no sexual relations with President Clinton. Are we so sure we would have dismissed this president's callous indifference to Lewinsky's putting herself in criminal harm's way as "private behavior" or merely "lying about sex"?

Next Page: President Packwood lied to the grand jury? The scoundrel!

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