Mired In Those Shades Of Gray

Washington Gov. Mike Lowry rose to his feet in the capital mansion a few weeks ago and asked for advice from his assembled guests.

“I need your help in improving my public image,” he said with a small laugh.

The room full of Washington’s newspaper editors and publishers giggled nervously with him.

Everyone quickly returned to eating their chicken.

Chicken was the theme of the evening.

Not one editor or publisher asked a question of the governor about the headlines in their own newspapers that aired complaints that Lowry had made an improper advances to a woman in his office and that he drank too much vodka on the job.

The newspaper types joked a bit about who would be tasting their food to test for ground glass.

But the awkward silence after the governor tried his light-hearted comment underscored the difficulties the media face when trying to sort out what does and doesn’t matter to the public when it comes to the private lives of politicians.

These days the gossips, voyeurs and blackmailers of our time voraciously absorb private details about public people.

But all these reports about who is doing what with whom have diminished our ability to make much sense of what is or isn’t important when judging a public official.

Is Mike Lowry a Brock Adams? No, he isn’t a predatory man with a long history of abusing women who came forward with their horror stories.

Is he a Bob Packwood? A Henry Cisneros? Again, the answer would seem to be no, but to a different question.

The governor isn’t as accomplished a politician as either of these men who, despite their private misjudgments, retain high marks for public service.

So, he scores lower on both the impropriety scale and the political effectiveness scale.

Where does this leave him? Stuck in a gray area, and we don’t do gray areas well in this day and age.

We want villains and heroes, Puritans or Satan.

But that’s not what we have in most public, or private lives.

Yes, the governor hugs and touches, laughs and jokes around. He’s kind of a goofy guy that way as anyone who has ever spent five minutes with him can attest.

Even at the newsconference Friday when the words “I’m sorry” might have been appropriate, he still didn’t seem to get it.

And yes, Susanne Albright might have read more into what happened that the governor intended.

She was under a great deal of stress in her job. As independent investigator Mary Alice Theiler wrote in her 50-page report about Albright’s harassment complaint against the governor,”I was struck by the number of times that other people reported conversations with Ms. Albright as attempts to be supportive and not judgmental, but which she interpreted as both corroborative of her perception that she was being harassed as well as leading her to conclude that the person talking to her had also been harassed by the governor.”

The investigator went on:”This discrepancy happened too many times for me to avoid the strong possibility that she was not accurately perceiving what was being told to her.”

The report from Theiler probably won’t end Lowry’s political career.

To his credit, the governor did call for and cooperate with an open, independent investigation.

If he takes the advice offered by the investigator that he establish workplace standards for personal conduct and take some personal training on dealing with staff, he probably can go on.

But this won’t necessarily lengthen his political career. His run as governor may well end after one term because, in the judgment of voters, he just isn’t the right politician for the times or the job.

And that, ultimately, must be the litmus test for any politician.

For Albright, this is an even more difficult time than her months working with Lowry.

Thursday she was hospitalized after an apparent suicide attempt.

Today she finds herself isolated from politics for a long time.

Still, the discussion she has provoked can help others avoid what happened here.

This case should remind men and women in every office that issues of harassment can start small and grow large if not confronted early.

Susanne Albright’s concerns about her boss clearly demonstrate the need for all businesses to establish clear pathways for women to follow when they feel uncomfortable about a workplace relationship and need someone to help them work through the problems.

For men the message from Albright is crystal clear: At work keep your hands to yourself, every time, no exceptions.