A hard guy to mourn

Bob Packwood has died. He made it to 93 years old. 

You're not allowed to say anything nice about him. Nor am I inclined to, anyway. He was a powerful man, but not a good man. And like the fine box wine with which he used to ply the ladies, the memory of his career has not aged well.

The Oregonian, which missed the defining story of Packwood's life when he was in his heyday, has a big and overly sympathetic obituary now, here. It was Packwood, after all, who made us all realize that if it mattered to Oregonians, it was in the Washington Post. The Weed, which also missed a big chance to play Lee Harvey Oswald on Packwood back then, has a far less kind version here, penned by, of all people, Steve Duin.

Packwood is rightly remembered, first and foremost, as a notorious workplace sexual assailant and harasser in an era in which men could get away with such things. When finally called out for multiple outrageous crimes against women, most of whom worked for him, he used his alcoholism as an excuse, invoked the "times were different" defense, lied, covered up evidence, and did everything he could to weasel his way out of trouble. But it didn't work. His problem was that forcing your tongue into women's mouths against their will had never been okay, and everybody knew it.

There were explanations, but they never rose to the level of a valid excuse. Yes, he was a boozer, and apparently raised by a boozer. Apparently his upbringing was devoid of good models for how to treat women. I can relate, to an extent. I remember seeing him at a back table at Cassidy's late one night with a woman who was not his wife. I was not there on a research project, either.

If you can get past Packwood's sex offenses, his death brings an opportunity to examine his record as a United States senator. But I can understand it if you can't get past his assaults. Drumming him out of Congress was insufficient punishment for them. He should have been prosecuted.

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In the Senate, Packwood was a moderate. By the standards of today's Republican Party, he would have been considered a member of the "radical left." We long for the days when there were Republicans like that. But the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that Pakwood was a cynic, and often a phony, who took whatever position best suited his chances for re-election. It just so happened that in Oregon back then, moderation was the ticket.

Two incidents come to mind. One happened in the mid-'80s when some friends and I were actively protesting the proposed siting of all of the nation's spent nuclear fuel at the Hanford bomb site on the Columbia River at Tri-Cities. There was a hearing – I believe it was at the Bonneville Power Administration auditorium at Lloyd Center – where we were each given two minutes to express our outrage. Packy showed up unannounced and read the guy from the Department of Energy the riot act. We all cheered. But in retrospect, his was not exactly an act of bravery. That audience was like a lynch mob as far as that DOE guy was concerned. It was easy pickings for Packwood.

The other story, which isn't being mentioned these days, was when Packwood was writing fundraising letters to Jewish political donors in which he was passing himself off as Jewish, which he wasn't. It happened more than once before the Oregonian called him out on it.

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High up in the obituaries is Packwood's pivotal role in the enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. He was the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee at the time that landmark legislation was passed. So significant a tax bill it was that today's federal tax law is called the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. The '86 Act was a fundamental reform.

It was the last time that the two parties came together to make principled changes to the tax law. They cut the top tax rate to 28 percent, and at the same time they got rid of the preferential treatment of capital gains. They also eliminated the bogus, mass-marketed tax shelters of the early 1980's that had mom-and-pop taxpayers handing money over to shifty promoters for promised tax benefits that didn't materialize.

But some of the good features of the '86 Act didn't last. When Bush Sr. took over the White House, the top rate was increased, and the tax subsidies for capital gains returned. And the tax shelter rules left a gaping loophole, which persists to this day, for public companies and real estate sharpies. 

And along with the good came a lot of bad. For one thing, the law contained hundreds of special exceptions for favored constituents of the most powerful tax-writers in Congress. And in typical Packwood fashion, these taxpayers were not identified by name. Instead, the law would give away special treatment to, say, "any corporation incorporated in Indiana on June 26, 1937." The public wasn't expected to ever find out who that was.

Another real stinker in the '86 Act was the creation of a special category of deduction called "miscellaneous." Under the new law, these expenses, formerly deductible in full, would be allowed as deductions only to the extent they exceeded 2 percent of the taxpayer's income. They were deductions that little guys used to take, for things like work boots, tax return preparer fees, and union dues. Under the '86 Act, they became nondeductible for most, and since then, they've become nondeductible for anyone.

I remember Packwood defending this awful provision to a skeptical audience. For some reason, I'm picturing this event as being at the University Club in downtown Portland. Wherever it was, he stood there, with a straight face, and said that the taxpayers affeted by the "miscellaneous" rule should actually like it, as it made their lives simpler. Becase they could no longer deduct the work boots, they no longer had to keep the receipt for them.

That was who Packwood was. A greasy guy who would say whatever it took to get through the moment and maintain his aura of superiority. 

His partner in getting the tax bill through Congress was the House Ways and Means chairman, Dan Rostsenkowski, Democrat from Chicago, who later wound up in prison. The two of them sat in a backroom and carved out deal after petty deal, and they threw enough bones into the pot for Reagan that he signed it. Clean-cut guys like Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt had tried their hand at tax reform and fallen short. But in the smoked-filled room, Packwood was the perfect player.

My last contact with Packwood came many years after he had been disgraced. I was telling my Income Tax class about a feature of the tax law that came out of the '86 Act, and I mentioned that the intent of that particular Code provision was obscure. "I wonder what Senator Packwood was thinking," I quipped. To my surprise, a student in the back of the room, who was a friend of the ex-senator, called him on a cell phone and handed the phone to me. Packwood lived just up the road from where I teach.

We never did settle what I was wondering about, but Packwood was cordial, as usual. He always had that senatorial manner about him when dealing with the public. But behind closed doors, he could be a monster.

I can't help thinking ahout Oregon's other dear, fallen leader, Neil Goldschmidt, who had his own problems with women. Which one was worse, he or Packwood?