How Not To Rebuild A Reputation

By MICHAEL DUFFY AND NANCY GIBBS

There might have been some way for Gary Condit to have made a bigger hash of his comeback tour last week, but it's hard to see how. If the Congressman was hoping to sound contrite about his relationship with missing intern Chandra Levy, he might have tried saying he was sorry. If his handlers wanted him to appear likable, he needed first to appear human. And if he was trying to appear unjustly accused, it would have helped not to accuse everyone else. An old trial lawyer's rule holds that a defendant can get away with calling one witness a liar. Two people--maybe. More than that, and the jury will figure, rightly or wrongly, that you're the liar.

Mrs. Levy claims Condit denied to her that he had had an affair with her daughter? She must have "misunderstood the conversation," he told Connie Chung last Thursday. The police say he bobbed and weaved through the first two interrogations? "I'm puzzled by why the police chief would say that," he replied. A flight attendant claims he wanted her to lie about their affair on a false affidavit? "I'm puzzled by people who take advantage of tragedy." Chandra's aunt says he was obsessive about secrecy? "I don't know why the aunt would say that."

It sure was a strange way to launch a rehabilitation, as one of his advisers later admitted. The Levy family began firing back within an hour. Lawyer Billy Martin appeared on Nightline to shred Condit's claim that the Levys made a "specific request" that he not discuss the details of the relationship. "Ted, he's hiding," Martin said, "and I wish he would answer the question. What was his relationship with Chandra?" D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey was subtler. "One could say that he answered every question that Connie Chung asked him; he answered every question that we asked him," Ramsey noted. "Now it's up to the others to decide whether or not that's forthcoming."

Even people who had nervously stood by Condit's side for weeks were beginning to bail. After watching Condit's network-TV performance at a supporter's house in suburban St. Louis, Mo., House minority leader Dick Gephardt shook his head and said over and over to aides, "I can't believe he's not being more candid. I can't believe he's not taking responsibility." In a press conference the next day, he called Condit's evasions "disturbing and wrong."

Closer to home, where a Democratically held seat is twisting in the wind, the reaction was bleaker. Roberta Elstad, a retired Postal Service computer operator in Modesto, Calif., concluded, "It's over. I think he came out of this in worse shape than he went into it." Said Carl Kelly, a Modesto steelworker: "Let me put it to you this way: I didn't believe him before. I don't believe him now. I believe he knows something, I just don't know exactly what."

The curious thing about Condit's performance was that there seemed to be so many well-worn paths to redemption. When they heard Condit was finally ready to jump on the media barbecue last week, two of Bill Clinton's many lawyers actually sat around their offices writing the script in their heads. The drill is so routine by now that you can practically download it from meaculpa.com "I did a stupid thing, America. In an attempt to protect my family and Chandra Levy's, I kept my mouth shut when I should have gone immediately to the police. I shouldn't have waited for them to come to me. These are mistakes I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and I am deeply sorry."

But Condit has always seemed like a poor man's Clinton, a politician who lacked the instincts or talent to get himself out of trouble of his own making. Everything is eerily familiar--the long-suffering wife Carolyn Condit understudying Hillary, the still frames of a Monica look-alike, and the pol trying somehow to appease both his lawyers and his pollsters, all in the same sentence. There was even a haunting "that woman" moment when Condit declared of his wife, "I've been married for 34 years, and I intend to stay married to that woman as long as she'll have me."

It was hard for Condit to convince even sympathetic viewers of his innocence because he acted so pitiless. You needed to listen carefully to find a single expression of any appropriate feeling, whether of sympathy for the Levys or remorse for his own behavior or fear for Chandra's fate or fury at the lynching by the press. Instead the answers were measured, etched with legal constraint and word-perfect repetition, as though he didn't dare get one wrong.

That may be perfectly understandable for someone who has had his apartment ransacked by police, his DNA tested and his guilt presumed by endless hours of cable talkers, and still has federal agents on his back for possible obstruction of justice. But for those who had never quite tuned into the story until Thursday night, the manner was all wrong. An innocent man looking to salvage his reputation would be all empathy and earnestness, not defiant half-answers or the lawyerly "Don't say more than you're asked" stance, and certainly not a taut smile when asked whether you've killed a "close friend."

In the blitzkrieg of interviews that followed, Condit seemed, if anything, even more reluctant to sidle up to an apology, having failed somehow to learn the lesson that political survival means always having to say you're sorry. Pressed by Sacramento's KOVR 13-TV for some moist act of contrition to constituents who feel "betrayed," Condit bit back. "If I have hurt or offended anyone, I certainly would apologize," he said. "But I think you ought to take some responsibility in the media for all the misinformation that you guys have put out there...because you didn't set a standard for yourself. Actually, I would like to see you guys apologize to the people for doing that."

Condit's seconds lashed back at critics who suggested his "answered every question" line meant he had not volunteered answers to questions police were too squeamish to ask. In a town like Washington, police handle lawmakers with velvet gloves; they don't get the same grilling as standard boyfriend suspects. Condit's lawyer Abbe Lowell said that in the first police interview, two detectives asked Condit about his relationship with Levy. He said he'd answer if they could explain why it was relevant. "They never followed up," Lowell said. A D.C. police detective said privately he wasn't sure whether Condit is hiding something or is just a slippery politician who gives you that impression.

If Condit's political survival seems less certain with each passing week, it also seems less important. His silence magnified his significance, turning him into a hot "get," but when he subjected himself to journalistic questioning yet had nothing to say, he deflated before our eyes. Gephardt has begun to talk about taking away his seat on the House Intelligence Committee, and the way things were going, Condit might have to announce he won't run again--or resign mid-term. But even if he had admitted every detail of a torrid affair and shown all kinds of Clintonian regret, it would not have shed light on his innocence or brought authorities any closer to what really matters: finding out what happened to Chandra.

One person who understood that was a man who claimed not to have watched the interview at all. Pressed for an opinion in a news conference at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, President Bush swatted aside the gossip. "This isn't about a Congressman or a network," he said. "This is about a family that lost a daughter, and that's what I'm concerned about."

--Reported by Mark Thompson/Washington and Sean Scully/Modesto

With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington and Sean Scully/Modesto