Never Apologize, Never Explain!
Gary Condit and the GOP Media
by Tamara Baker

Sept. 30, 2002 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJP) -- I was watching the TV news the other night when I saw a little story about Chandra Levy, the Washington government worker who was missing for over a year and was finally found dead this spring in Rock Creek Park, not far from where an armed robber named Ingmar Guandique had made two attacks on young women joggers.

It turns out that the police, after having dismissed Guandique as a suspect in Levy's death, are now turning back to him, because the polygraph test that "cleared" him was taken under questionable circumstances.

You all remember Chandra Levy, right?

Her disappearance in the spring of 2001 was used by the press to draw attention away from such things as the rapidly-deteriorating Bush Economy, as well as the decision by Bush to shut down all of President Clinton's anti-terror efforts -- including Bush's ordering the two nuclear attack subs Clinton had on permanent Osama watch to stand down and cease their efforts -- a decision that would soon, literally, blow up in the Unelected One's face.

The Washington press corps, once they found out that conservative Democratic California congressman Gary Condit was one of Chandra's boyfriends, went into full attack mode -- a mode they never entered when Lori Klausutis, an aide to conservative Florida Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, was found dead in her office with multiple skull fractures.

Ironically enough, Condit, who was and may well still be a friend of Scarborough's -- they both liked to bang the Bible during the day and bang women who weren't their wives at night -- almost switched parties back in February of 2001. If he'd done so, he very likely would still be in Congress today, as the Washington press corps would have done for him what they did for Scarborough when Klausutis died: given him every benefit of every doubt.

But he didn't, and because of that, the press corps succeeded in driving him out of office for a crime that no law-enforcement official connected with the case believes he committed.

Will the new twists involving Ingmar Guandique cause the Washington press corps to apologize for ruining Gary Condit political career, if not his life? I doubt it.

The DC press corps shares a motto with Ronald Reagan: Never apologize, never explain. Let it go, and it drops down the Memory Hole.

And just think: Up until Levy's disappearance, Condit, because he was a conservative Democrat who could be counted on to stab a Clinton or Gore in the back (remember his famous "drip, drip, drip" speech?), thought he was liked by the DC press corps. He thought they would protect him, the same way they protected Joe Scarborough. The same way they protect most any Republican, especially George W. Bush.

I wonder what Gary's thinking now.