Time for Packwood to Pack It In : The honorable course for the senator now would be to step down

The distasteful and dispiriting case of Bob Packwood now threatens to drag on well into the new year, after the Oregon Republican changed his mind about resigning from the Senate seat to which he has been elected five times.

Packwood has been accused by more than two dozen women of making unwanted sexual advances over the years of his public life. He has admitted committing improprieties with a number of his accusers. The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating these allegations. In the course of that investigation Packwood’s political effectiveness has steadily declined, as a result of his loss of standing with his colleagues and his increasing unpopularity in Oregon.

Packwood is, of course, entitled to every legal right and protection in facing the accusations against him. At this point he has been convicted of nothing. But the people of Oregon also have rights in this matter, specifically the right to be faithfully represented by a senator they reelected last year in apparent ignorance of the allegations that would soon be made against him. They are largely being denied that representation.

The case has now been further complicated by a new Justice Department criminal investigation. On the Senate floor three weeks ago Packwood acknowledged that in 1991 he approached a lobbyist to seek employment for his estranged wife as part of an effort to win legal approval to lower her alimony payments. Indications of such an approach, which may have been a violation of criminal statutes, appeared in parts of his diary that Packwood had voluntarily turned over to the Ethics Committee. Meanwhile, the committee is seeking a federal court subpoena for parts of the diary that Packwood refuses to submit.

So what had been a consistent pattern of boorish behavior toward women may soon explode into something of heavier legal import. Packwood does, at least, still have it in his power to end the Ethics Committee investigation. He need only resign from the Senate to accomplish that. Clearly, out of respect both for that body and for the people of Oregon, that is the course he should take.