Condit’s prime-time lipstick trick

Remember Bill and Hillary Clinton’s 1992 “60 Minutes” Super Bowl halftime show?

He denied an affair with Gennifer Flowers. She denied being a Tammy Wynette “Stand By Your Man” wife.

Both denials turned out to be lies. But they had the acting skill to pull it off.

Flash forward nine years to Congressman Gary Condit’s “tell little” interview last night with ABC’s Connie Chung. Condit made the same Clintonian denials. They’ve already been exposed as lies. And he couldn’t pull it off Slick Willie style.

If Condit’s aim was to reassure and regain the confidence of his constituents, he failed miserably. His denials raised more questions than they answered.

There were so many denials, it’s hard to keep track of them.

There were the denials of affairs with airline stewardess Ann Marie
Smith and with a former Condit staffer/receptionist. Yet, in an
interview with Vanity Fair, he admitted to the affair with Smith. And
if there was no affair with his former staffer, why did he feel the need
to stonewall in answering questions regarding a Tag Heuer watch she gave
him and the identity of the gift-giver? And why did he need to drive to
Virginia to throw its box in a trash bin?

Condit’s claim that he needed to throw out garbage away from media snoops rings hollow. What
would the press be able to conclude from the box, if it had been
inconspicuously thrown out in Condit’s normal trash? A lot less than
they and the police – the real target of the evasion – can conclude from
his extreme efforts to conceal and throw it out in a separate locale.

There was the denial of the attempt to get Smith to sign a false affidavit denying an affair. He conveniently blamed that one on his lawyers.

Condit’s denials were not as bad as his evasions, though. There were so
many questions he didn’t answer, he looked guiltier than ever of having
something to do with missing intern Chandra Levy’s disappearance. The
Congressman’s refusal to disclose whether or not there was a sexual
relationship with Levy – and Condit’s excuse for that refusal – were ridiculous. Is there anyone left in this country who does not already believe there was a sexual relationship between the two? He admitted as much to police investigators – after multiple interviews, though he now
claims he “answered all questions from law enforcement from the very
beginning.” Condit’s excuse for not disclosing the nature of his
relationship with Ms. Levy was an alleged “personal request from the
Levy Family” that he not do so. But, in the end, this “personal
request” was neither personal, nor was it the request he wanted it to
be.

It was nothing more than the Levy parents’ appearance on another TV
broadcast, and their alleged statement that they didn’t care to know the
details of the relationship, wanting to focus on their daughter’s
whereabouts. That’s hardly the “personal request” Condit claims. Yet
another lie.

And with Condit’s evasions, we learned his new stock responses. “I’ve
been married 34 years,” was his standard multiple-refrain for every
question about sex with Chandra. He only said it about four times. Yes,
we know about your marriage, Congressman Condit. Do you?

Then there was the oft-repeated, “I’m not perfect” to the same
question. Echoes of the Clintons – again. It’s a revisit of Bill’s
Super Bowl Sunday refrain that “we’ve had some problems in our marriage.
Our marriage is not perfect.”

But where was Condit’s contrition? There were no apologies – not to his wife, nor to Chandra Levy, not to his family, nor to hers.

On the contrary, there was an insolent defiance in Condit’s voice, facial expressions and hand gestures. Aside from terse, rehearsed, deposition-style answers, Condit was extremely cold – virtually void of the emotion an innocent, compassionate man would display. Saying he didn’t love Ms. Levy and claiming not to know how she felt about him was harsh and insensitive, for someone trying to win over a TV audience. A commercial ran for “Heartburn Hotel.” More like
Heartbreak Hotel.

Moreover, Condit was belligerent and gruff. Blaming your very young,
missing lover’s family is a bad move politically. The legislator
repeatedly blamed the Levys – specifically Susan Levy – for allegedly
misunderstanding conversations she had with Condit, during which she
says he admitted an affair. How does one misunderstand that? It’s
either yes or no. It’s doubtful Mrs. Levy misunderstood that one. And,
of course, Condit’s repeated enigmatic allusion to Mrs. Levy’s “several
references about people whose names I won’t name here for reasons I
won’t go into” only raised more questions about what he was referring
to – more possible scandals and bimbo eruptions, perhaps?

While the Congressman didn’t answer most questions and raised many new
ones, he did answer one thing definitively: Gary Condit doesn’t have the Clintons’ slickness or phony dog-and-pony-show finesse to weather the storm, and he won’t last. He doesn’t even have the selling power of another famous political sex scandal interviewee – Monica Lewinsky.

When Lewinsky gave her 1999 Barbara Walters interview, she told us
nothing useful. But the show was a two-hour commercial for her lipstick
shade, Club Monaco’s “Glaze,” which subsequently sold out for months.
American women couldn’t get enough.

Luckily, Gary Condit wasn’t wearing lipstick, last night. But he was
selling something else that helps grow a lot of gardens. Is anybody
buying?