by Karen Houppert and Jennifer Gonnerman

About the authors: Karen Houppert is a staff writer and Jennifer Gonnerman is a contributor for the Village Voice weekly newspaper.

The Packwood Papers make for strange reading—and just how strange is something the mainstream press has only hinted at. The diaries released in September 1995 have the flavor of a cheap ’60s thriller (call it Advise and No Consent), with the Republican junior senator from Oregon casting himself as the swinger protagonist bragging about his sexual exploits and political oneupmanship. Bob Packwood imagines himself as a politico James Bond who surmounts every obstacle through sheer ingenuity and wit. What distinguishes this trashy tale, however, is that with his assiduous chronicle, our hero blindly engineers his own downfall. “I’d like to change...