Privilege still a shield in sexual misconduct cases
Republican President Donald Trump and the late Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy had more in common than wealth and a sense of entitlement. The muddy story of Chappaquiddick in 1969 left Kennedy with no moral high ground on matters of honesty and sexual impropriety. Trump, a self-described groper of women who weren’t interested in him, is in the same position.
The difference is that Kennedy to some small degree knew he would be regarded as a fraud if he lectured too much about men who assaulted or harassed women. Trump steams ahead against his enemies, unconcerned that his own confession of sexual harassment disqualifies him as a voice of moral authority.
Trump will say all he did was talk about his pursuit of women in cocky, locker-room language. His locker rooms were in country clubs, so it’s impossible for most of us to understand his explanation, much less believe it. Kennedy wasn’t worth believing, either. A 28-year-old female political aide was a passenger in a car Kennedy was driving. She died after the car skidded off a bridge and into a canal on Chappaquiddick Island.
Kennedy said he swam to safety. He waited several hours to report the crash, all the while knowing he had not been alone in the car. After a dive team found the woman’s body, even rookie investigators could spot holes in Kennedy’s story.
But with his power and privilege, Kennedy pleaded guilty to a minor charge. He stayed in the Senate until his death in 2009, a full 40 years after Chappaquiddick.
Kennedy was a big reason that Clarence Thomas felt secure enough to withstand allegations of sexual harassment and win confirmation from the Senate for a seat on
the U.S. Supreme Court. Kennedy sat on the Senate committee that questioned Thomas. Kennedy knew he would be dismissed as a hypocrite if he challenged Thomas too overtly.
The fact that Trump and Kennedy were elected to high office revealed two truths: They had weak opponents and their misconduct or crimes were dismissed as unimportant by enough voters to push them over the top.
Little has changed since Chappaquiddick. Well-connected men who have harassed or assaulted women tend to gain or remain in power.
Will it happen again? We should know in days or weeks.
A recently published photo of Minnesota Sen. Al Franken touching the breasts of a sleeping woman in 2006 should be enough to return him to his former job as a comedy writer. Voters in Alabama get to decide if Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore is worthy of their trust after many women say he sexually assaulted or sexually harassed them when they were in their teens or 20s.
It’s so bad for Moore in his candy-apple red state that he is trailing in the polls. As for Franken, he has agreed to an ethics investigation of himself. How sporting of him.
The potential remains for fellow politicians to sweep aside Franken’s behavior, even though Franken had said women who make sexual harassment complaints should be believed.
New Mexico’s senior U.S. senator, Democrat Tom Udall, recently stated the obvious with no hint of condemnation for Franken. “Sexual harassment is never acceptable at any time or any place. I fully support the Ethics Committee investigation into this matter, and I am glad that Senator Franken has agreed to cooperate.”
I support Franken resigning. He pawed a woman who did not consent to his touching her.
Partisan backers of Franken and Moore remind me of my first editors in the newspaper business. They spiked or minimized every story about prominent people who were charged with drunken driving. In those times, many older newspapermen bragged about writing or editing stories while hung over. Drinking and driving didn’t seem all that serious to them.
Along those lines, many politicians don’t seem to take sexual harassment as seriously as their constituents do. Powerful officeholders continued forcing themselves on women after Chappaquiddick.
Ohio Congressman Wayne Hays, a Democrat, used his public payroll to hire his mistress. After the scandal broke, she famously said: “I can’t type. I can’t file. I can’t even answer the phone.”
Hays resigned in disgrace. Yet little changed on a broader scale.
Anita Hill made her sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas 15 years after Hays resigned. Trump won the presidency last year, a month after his admissions of sexual misconduct surfaced publicly. The allegations against Moore and Franken ended an ebb in a wave of sexual harassment.
Chappaquiddick, one of the most successful cover-ups in American political history, established that the well-connected could expect and receive special treatment. That will be the case as long as those in high office see themselves and their colleagues not as public servants but as elected deities.