WASHINGTON – Imagine if football players found sneakier ways to hold, clip and face-mask, while referees didn’t get any better at calling such fouls. Well, that’s what’s been going on here, on the national field of politics.
Elected U.S. officials are getting better – or at least bolder – at lying, and journalists aren’t really getting any better at catching them. Problem: They’re too polite and oblique in their questioning, for starters.
Take the latest case of Rep. Gary Condit.
Borrowing a page from President Clinton’s parsing playbook, the California Democrat is redefining the word “relationship” to deny he had sex with flight attendant Anne Marie Smith or former aide Joleen McKay. (It’s noteworthy that Condit’s first lawyer used the term “relationship,” not affair, in the affidavit – another Clinton trick – that he asked Smith to sign to deny sexual involvement with Condit.)
But Condit’s not playing linguistic games with his own words. He’s just batting back what the unusually priggish press is throwing at him.
The roundabout term, “relationship,” was first offered by ABC’s Connie Chung last week, much to her chagrin. By tip-toeing around the issue, Chung allowed Condit to turn what should have been an easy “gotcha” interview into a trip to the dentist’s office.
Chung: “Why would you want [Anne Marie Smith] to say she didn’t have a relationship with you?”
Condit: “Because she didn’t.”
And regarding McKay:
Chung: “Did you have a relationship with her?”
Condit: “I did not.”
Condit, it turns out, apparently doesn’t think extramarital sex, even if it spans three years (in McKay’s account), constitutes a relationship, and therefore isn’t lying – at least not in his mind – when he denies having a “relationship.” By not asking the question directly and succinctly, Chung allowed Condit the semantical space, tight as it may be, to weasel out of telling the truth.
Better: “Did you have sex with her, yes or no? Because she says you did.”
Of course, even that’s not liar-proof. Clinton redefined what “sex” is – and even what the meaning of “is” is – so where does it end before it gets too graphic?
Answer: It ends where the politician understands the press is willing to go to get the truth. With shamelessly sleazy pols, the press may have to go a long way. But too many journalists, especially personality journalists, are not willing to roll up their sleeves and go there. Reporters are just going to have to be crass and rude if politicians are going to be as crass and shamelessly dishonest as Clinton.
Clinton tested everyone’s standard of decency – that of the public, prosecutors and even the normally salty press – in denying the obvious. In the final analysis, he survived because we all winced.
Back then, respect for the cornerstone of courtroom proceedings – truthful testimony – was at stake. But now it’s a young lady’s life.
Chung nonetheless could not get Condit to budge from his scripted non-answer answers to questions about whether he had an affair with missing intern Chandra Levy.
Condit repeated, ad nauseam: “I’ve been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I’ve made some mistakes in my life.”
He needed to be driven off message, cornered into telling more. But Chung failed to follow up effectively.
For example, Condit allowed that he and Levy were “very close.” Yet he also said he never told anyone in his family about her. Why not, if they were so close?
Condit also acknowledged that she’d been to his apartment. How many other interns have been to his apartment, if Levy was not also his mistress?
Again, Chung didn’t ask.
And if he were not guilty of any adulterous affairs, why did he volunteer that he’s “not perfect” and has “made mistakes”? Why bring that up at all in the course of the interview?
Also, Condit insisted he gave police “every detail” about their relationship.
Really? Then, what did they ask him about Levy? Did they ask him if he had sex with her? What did he tell them?
Chung didn’t challenge him on that, either.
To be fair, reporters for Vanity Fair, People, Newsweek and a local TV station didn’t put the questions to Condit any harder – and some of them had had time to learn from Chung’s mistakes.
But Chung also didn’t have her facts straight, and that allowed Condit to pull another Clinton trick – that of discrediting the entire premise of a question by pointing out the inaccuracy of a few minor details.
Chung quizzed him about ditching a watchbox in a “dumpster” far from his home on the day that police searched his home.
Condit quickly put Chung on her heels by correcting her that it was a trash can, not a dumpster, and that the box came from his office, not his home.
Chung didn’t even know, or didn’t have the presence of mind to say, that he traveled all the way across the Potomac to Alexandria to ditch the box. Nor did she name the alleged mistress, McKay, who gave him the watch.
Details, details.
To her credit, Chung eventually forced Condit to backpedal from his bogus claim that Levy’s parents asked that he not discuss details of his relationship with their daughter. He made it sound as if they’d picked up the phone and asked him to keep mum. In fact, he had to admit he only heard something to that effect from their lawyer during an interview on CNN.
But it will take closer attention to detail and sharper follow-up questions to keep the post-Clinton politician honest.
If Clinton has a legacy, it’s a legacy of lies. He stored and recalled lies like a CD-ROM, and had no more trouble, or shame, recalling lies than an honest person has in recalling the truth.
Unfortunately, Condit and other promising political leaders, including a former first lady in the Senate, appear to be extending his legacy. And that’s bad news for the public – unless, that is, media watchdogs get tougher.
Related stories:
What is a woman? The answer in Genesis 2 worked for lots of years
Nin Privitera