POLITICAL WRAP
August 24 , 2001

Embattled Congressman Gary Condit's interview and Jesse Helms' decision to leave the Senate highlight this week's Political Wrap.

 

Online Specials At the Capitol Media Watch July 11, 2001: Does the Condit/Levy story warrant media coverage? Aug. 22, 2001: Sen. Jesse Helms will not run for another term Sept. 12, 1997: The fight over William Weld's Mexico ambassadorship Oct. 18, 1996: A report on the 1996 race between Harvey Gantt and Jesse Helms. Jan. 28, 2000: Congress offers their thoughts on Clinton's last State of the Union address. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Congress and Shields and Gigot   The White House U.S. House of Representatives U.S. Senate Senator Jesse Helms' Office	RAY SUAREZ: Shields and Gigot with analysis of the Condit interview and other matters political; that's syndicated columnist mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Well, what do you take away from your TV watching last night, Paul?
	Condit's political damage
	PAUL GIGOT: If there was any doubt about, in the Condit team's mind about whether it was a success, I think Dick Gephardt answered the question emphatically -- calling it disturbing and wrong. His responses I didn't hear candor, I didn't hear an apology - talking about potential congressional action, from a leader of his own party in Congress -- and from a party that the leadership has been quite silent on this so far. This is, I think, suggesting that they now think that this whole story is big enough that it is potentially doing damage to the Democrats in the House and they have to distance themselves from him. So I think that if he meant to - if Congressman Condit was intending to - as I think he was -- to improve his image and maybe put this behind him, he failed miserably. RAY SUAREZ: When he was sitting down in the living room and somebody was putting a mike on him, before the first question was asked, what was the assignment? What did he have to do? PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think, first of all, he had to offer a sincere apology. He had to show his concern for the Levy family; he had to suggest that his silence was -- whatever-- he had to explain why he was silent. He had to come clean. Instead, and it looked to me like a man had been coached by his media team to maybe play off of Connie Chung, to look to be somebody who was beat up by the media -- under siege -- but instead he just didn't look like he was somebody who was telling the truth. RAY SUAREZ: Mark? MARK SHIELDS: I can't argue with Paul's analysis. I think that Dick Gephardt and the other Democratic leaders in the House had withheld judgment. They had not talked with Gary Condit. He had not been forthcoming with them. So they were hearing for the first time last night, and he was not candid. He was not contrite. I think he lost people. I think that there is no question that Gary Condit missed the golden opportunity, if there was even one, to take the air out of the story, by the very first question. I don't care what Connie Chung asked, to simply say this has been hell for them. George W. Bush, the President of the United States, on Friday sounded a lot more passionate and considerate and compassionate about the Levy's and what they're going through and this girl's fate than did Gary Condit in a full half hour on prime time Thursday night. I don't think there is any question about that. I think what I would add to that is he came across as somewhat calculating, somewhat cold, that there wasn't a human sense or element to it. And I thought that he was-- as Paul touched, he tried to cast himself as a victim. Now, if you're being badgered by one of the, you know, shock jocks or the tough prosecutors or even someone like Tim Russert who can be a very tough interviewer, that's one thing but Connie Chung didn't-- she gave a perfectly responsible and professional interview, but she didn't come across as someone who was beating him or pounding on his shoulders and head. So when he cast himself that way it came across as self-pity.
	Is Condit making it worse?
	RAY SUAREZ: Was last night a bigger deal in part because of everything that Gary Condit had done since May 1? PAUL GIGOT: Or not done. RAY SUAREZ: Or not done. PAUL GIGOT: Or not done. Sure. I think so. You know, this is really at root just a crime story, a missing person. But it involves a celebrity a member of Congress, so it has been blown up. But even that shouldn't have this enormous political impact, this enormous rating that it had, television rating. And so you think it would not affect national politics but clearly with Dick Gephardt coming out and saying what he did, he thinks it has an impact on national politics, has an impact on the party. And there it's got to be a separation or his own party is going to be damaged. MARK SHIELDS: I don't think it has right now, I don't think it has reached over that this is a Democratic Party scandal. I think most people don't know Gary Condit's party registration. There was one point at which I did feel just a little bit of, if not sympathy, then to understand his precarious political position, and that was he is being lambasted for not being forthcoming about graphic personal details of his presumably sexual relationship with Chandra Levy and he's being badgered by her parents to do so. Historically and traditionally, the man who talks about such matters is regarded as a low life. And being circumspect and even reticent at a time like that is considered - you know -- an act of discretion and consideration. So, but I don't think in any way last night he helped himself. He didn't take the air out of the story; he didn't put it to rest there. There are more stories and more questions today.
	Jesse Helms exits the Senate
	RAY SUAREZ: Let's move on to Jesse Helms who announced that he wouldn't seek reelection when his term is up. A big player leaves the stage. PAUL GIGOT: Perhaps the most important conservative politician other than Ronald Reagan over the last 30 years. RAY SUAREZ: Why do you say that? PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think in a way he was symbolic of the populist southern conservatives who rose the power over the last 30 years. He may have saved Ronald Reagan's candidacy with his efforts in the North Carolina primary. In 1976 he had been beaten by Gerry Ford, Ronald Reagan had. He needed something. He won in North Carolina. He used that to rally all the way to the convention in 1976, and it made him the player he ultimately became in 1980. He was an innovator in politics with direct mail campaigns. He was a player in the Senate with the Senate steering committee, which was a conservative group of Senators who turned the Republican Senate to the right. So he was an enormously important player, no question about it. He became Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman - did some things with UN reform and other things people said he would never want to do - never be able to do because he was such a polarizing figure. But he was certainly a significant political player. MARK SHIELDS: Two quick points: First of all Ronald Reagan would not have been president without Jesse Helms. Just to flush out to the details Paul described, 1976 he had lost to Gerry Ford. He had Ronald Reagan challenging the president of the United States in New Hampshire, Florida, and Illinois. He was $2 million in the hole. His campaign leadership was having secret negotiations preliminary with the Ford people to Reagan's getting out and endorsing Ford if Ford would help him with the $2 million deficit. If Ronald Reagan had not won North Carolina, and he wouldn't have won it without Jesse Helms, without the television buying he insisted upon -- without raising and emphasizing the Panama Canal Treaty, and Reagan's opposition to it -- we built it, we paid for it, we're not going to give it up, then Reagan would have retired from the list in 1976 as someone who hadn't won a single primary and wouldn't have been in a position for 1980. Instead, he emerged as a front-runner. That's the first thing. The second thing is that Jesse Helms proved, Ray, that in the Senate, if you don't care about your colleagues' approbation, approval, goodwill, you can be effective. Howard Metzenbaum, a liberal Democrat, proved the same thing, being willing to take on polarizing issues, make your colleagues stand up on unpleasant votes. At the same time, in spite of everything he did do, I think it has been unfair in some of the post-scripts to his career to compare him to George Wallace and to Strom Thurmond. Strom Thurmond and George Wallace were both Dixiecrats from the South and racial politics played a large part in their careers. But in each case, in Thurmond's case, he was the first Senator from the South to nominate a black to the federal court. He voted for voting rights for the District of Columbia in 1978. George Wallace in his second incarnation, he came back to win the governorship and sought and won the support from the Black Caucus and NAACP membership in Alabama. Jesse Helms was an unreconstructed segregationist and came from segregationist politics and he never really changed and part of his strength was he never changed. You always knew where he stood, and in that sense Jesse Helms, in my mind, never made the full circle that both Thurmond and Wallace did do. PAUL GIGOT: I don't know that he was an un-reconstructed segregationist at the end. I mean, I think that he did change on that. I do think, though, the one blot on his copybook, history -- is race because he was a racial polarizer - there's no question about that. He was one of those who used race and intimations of race through different issues to try to divide politically. He never was interested in 70 percent of the vote. He only cared about 51 percent of the vote. And that racial legacy lives on for the Republicans as they attempt to form a majority. And it's very difficult-- we saw with President Bush, not using any racial issues at all, got only 9 percent of the black vote. Some of that is a legacy of that polarizing racial politics that Jesse Helms practices.
	Replacing Senator "No"
	RAY SUAREZ: So does the departure of a Helms from the scene open the door down the road for the Republicans to do better? MARK SHIELDS: I think it does. I mean, in that 1976 campaign where he rescued Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan rejected the principal literature piece that the Helms people came up with, which was a Gerry Ford statement endorsing unfairly and inaccurately Ed Brooke, the only black in the United States Senate, a Republican from Massachusetts, for Vice President and saying that Ed Brooke endorsed busing. Mike Deaver, to his credit, Ronald Reagan's staff man, stood over the confiscation and the destruction, removal of all of those leaflets. That's something the Helms folk had put together. I think there is no question Jesse Helms came from a time when Republicans in the South were naturalized rather than native born. They... There were very few native born Republicans. Phil Gramm and Strom Thurmond and others had been born Democrats. And now I think you'll start to see native-born Republicans from the post-civil rights era where that will not be as important. RAY SUAREZ: So quickly, Paul, his replacement if it is a Republican will not be the same kind of politician? PAUL GIGOT: Certainly will not be. I mean, I think that for a Republican to win now in the South who is not an incumbent, you have to be a different sort. You can't be a Jesse Helms. You won't have that same backbone of support from the old former Democrats. You've got to appeal to a more suburban electorate. And if it is Mrs. Dole, Elizabeth Dole, if she runs as she seems to be indicating she will, of course, she has never been known as an ideological politician in the least. RAY SUAREZ: Fellows, thank you both.