WASHINGTON – Here we go again. The old media elite
are starting to close ranks around another Democrat
caught with his pants down.
In defending Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif, the apologists
are trotting out the same tired line – “it’s just
about sex” – used to defend President Clinton during
the impeachment hearings.
“No one can understand why [Condit] let this fester to
the point that now people speak about him as though he
is suspected of murder,” lamented ABC News
congressional correspondent Linda Douglass on Sunday’s
“This Week.” “I mean, it is very much like what
President Clinton did, in that a dalliance suddenly
becomes something that looks like – in the case of
President Clinton, he was certainly accused of
engaging in a crime that was lying under oath.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up the truck, Linda.
“Looks like a crime”? Clinton was not impeached over a
simple “dalliance” with an intern that was blown out
of proportion by overzealous prosecutors. Nor is
Condit under fire solely for having his own affair
with an intern.
Let’s get it straight. Clinton was impeached and
investigated in a criminal proceeding because he tried
to fix a court case against him.
Remember: Monica Lewinsky, a White House employee, was
a material witness in Paula Jones’ sexual-harassment
lawsuit. Clinton – a licensed attorney and former law
professor, no less – lied under oath to a judge about
his affair with Lewinsky to prevent Jones’ attorneys
from using her to help establish a pattern of his
hitting on subordinates (Jones was an Arkansas state
employee).
Clinton wasn’t just trying to cover up a sexual affair
with a White House intern. He was trying to kill a
sexual-harassment suit against him, which gave rise to
the perjury, subornation of perjury and evidence
tampering charges.
That’s how a dalliance “suddenly” became a crime.
Douglass is either too dense or too biased to have
drawn the proper connections for ABC’s viewers.
For those Clinton apologists still confused, let’s
approach it from another angle.
Say former American Spectator reporter David Brock had
never outted “Paula,” and she had never gone through
with her sexual-harassment case against Clinton. Do
you think Congress or Ken Starr would have
investigated? Of course not. There would have been no
perjury, subornation of perjury or evidence tampering.
Then it really would have been just a sex scandal. No
grounds for impeachment, no grounds for criminal
prosecution.
Part of the reason disingenuous journalists like
Douglass can get away with such revisionism is because
Republicans failed to clearly define Clinton’s illegal
acts and motives to the American people.
Listen to former Majority Leader Trent “Extra Hold”
Lott try to explain why Republicans voted to impeach
and remove Clinton: “He disgraced the office. He did
things in the Oval Office that are absolutely
intolerable. And he lied about it.”
That priggish, non-legal explanation plays right into
the hands of those who want to distort what Clinton
did as just a “personal failing” that “betrayed his
family,” and twist what Republicans did in response as
“sexual McCarthyism.”
Of course, Clinton was impeached because he
intentionally misled a judge hearing evidence in a
sexual-harassment case against him, and then proceeded
to abuse his power as president to coach subpoenaed
witnesses and hide subpoenaed evidence such as the
gifts to Lewinsky.
(Now you know why Lott is the former majority
leader. He should have stuck with cheerleading.)
In Condit’s case, Douglass can’t understand why he
would let a simple sex scandal “fester” by withholding
information about his affair from police.
Well, duh, maybe there’s more to the scandal than sex,
and maybe Condit is covering up more than an affair?
There is, after all, a young intern missing, and
possibly dead, and Condit appears to have
intentionally tried to slow the police investigation
into her recovery.
Why would a congressman go out of his way not to help
the Levy family find their daughter? He may have been
the last to have seen her. He knew her state of mind.
He knew her plans. He also knew the places and
neighborhoods they visited when they were together,
and the people she met – things no one else knew
because of the secret nature of their affair. If he
really was concerned for her safety, he could have
shared that information with the cops 10 weeks ago.
They could have already been working leads and
building suspect lists based on that information.
As with the Clinton-Lewinsky case, the Condit-Levy
case is bigger than sex. Don’t be misled.
The buried secret of the U.S. Senate
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