Now, the usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is to either ignore them or to deny them without giving details. I believe we have had enough of that in the United States ...

"Checkers," the most important little cocker spaniel in American history, unwittingly saved Richard Nixon's political life. Gary Condit could have used a little cocker spaniel, when he went on Primetime Edited with Connie Chung on August 23, to try and resuscitate his political career.

I knew Dick Nixon, he was a hero of mine, and Congressman Condit, you're no Dick Nixon.

Gary Condit is one of a number of American politicians who have had a "Checkers" moment. Since Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were the most notorious of this group, presumably an historical contrast can only make Condit look good.

In 1952, young, California Republican Senator Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994) was accused of maintaining a "slush fund" of illegal campaign contributions.

General Dwight D. ("Ike") Eisenhower had just named Nixon his vice-presidential running mate in the coming election. As Supreme Allied Commander, Ike had led all of our -- and the Brits' (and the Free French forces, which amounted to General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), and de Gaulle's chauffeur and valet) -- military forces to triumph in The War. Ike felt that Nixon was the "right type" of young Republican "to capture the imagination of American youth." But Eisenhower was not wed to Nixon, and in the wake of the "slush fund" story, GOP leaders were urging the general to dump Nixon.

In 1950, Nixon, the rising, young GOP warrior, then still in the House of Representatives, had brought down the northeastern establishment's golden boy -- who just happened to be a Soviet spy -- Alger Hiss (1904-1996). Hiss, a former, high-level State Department official in the Roosevelt administration, was then the president of the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace. Hiss was convicted for perjury. (Hiss should have hanged; however, at the time of his trial, the statute of limitations for espionage had run out.) The Hiss case made Nixon a national figure, and at the same time, provided him with a lifetime supply of political enemies, on top of the ones he had already made, beating socialist representatives Jerry Voorhis (1901-1984) and Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900-1980).

Then came the Checkers speech. On September 23, 1952, Nixon took his case directly to the American people, on live TV. There was no interviewer to lob softballs or fire beanballs at him. Nixon wrote and delivered his own script.

In 1992 and 1998, charges of marital infidelity dogged Bill Clinton, threatening first his presidential candidacy, and then his administration. In both cases, HILLARY! Clinton publicly defended her husband on TV.

And now, we have Democratic California Congressman Gary Condit, who was romantically involved for five or six months with federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy, prior to her disappearance on or about May 1. While Congressman Condit has not been named a suspect by the District of Columbia police or the FBI, his suspicious behavior since early May has caused millions of Americans to suspect he had something to do with Levy's disappearance.

While growing up during the 1960s and 1970s, I was led to believe by establishment media and scholars, that Nixon's "Checkers" speech was a pathetic exercise in evading the central question of Nixon's honesty that, if anything, proved that Nixon was a crook.

The official story on Nixon's speech, is that, ignoring the question of the slush fund, the senator spoke instead of his wife, Pat's, "respectable, Republican cloth coat," and of the little dog, Checkers, that a campaign contributor had given the Nixons: "And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it."

The slush fund story had been reported by the then-socialist New York Post, and was, no doubt, payback for Nixon's having nailed Alger Hiss. If the story stuck, Ike would have had to drop Nixon, who would have been finished politically. And since only about one month remained before the election, the Democratic ticket of Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965) and Alabama senator John J. Sparkman (1899-1985) might have prevailed that November.

Reading the Checkers speech the other day, I was amazed at how much information Nixon provided. The speech provides an embarrassingly intimate look at the finances of the young senator and his wife, Pat (1912-1993), from a loan he was paying back to his father -- with interest -- to the mortgages on their modest California and Washington homes, to the rent ($80 per month) the couple had paid on their previous Virginia apartment. Nixon emphasized that, in order to avoid conflicts of interest, he had done no outside legal work since being elected to Congress in 1946.

After the humanizing, family values section on his wife's coat and the nation's most famous canine, the candidate went on the offensive. Nixon charged Gov. Stevenson with having just the sort of slush fund that Stevenson operatives had charged Nixon with having, and suggested that Sen. Sparkman was guilty of nepotism, for putting Mrs. Sparkman on the payroll, something Nixon never did with his own wife.

The Checkers speech was the most successful speech ever given by an American politician, in terms of the obstacles it had to overcome. Remember, Nixon had no bully pulpit, and no enemy to rally the country against. Having only recently entered the national spotlight, he was in danger of being exiled to the oblivion of Whittier, California.

With "Checkers," Nixon said, 'I'm one of you, a hard-working, devoted husband and family man, and I'm not a crook, though my opponents may themselves be crooks.' And amazingly, in view of the official Nixon story, and the endlessly caricatured, older, paranoid, President Nixon, millions of Americans liked the man they saw:

I am sure that you have read the charges, and you have heard it, that I, Senator Nixon, took $18,000 from a group of my supporters.

Now, was that wrong? And let me say that it was wrong. I am saying it, incidentally, that it was wrong, just not illegal, because it isn't a question of whether it was legal or illegal, that isn't enough. The question is, was it morally wrong? I say that it was morally wrong, if any of that $18,000 went to Senator Nixon, for my personal use.

I say that it was morally wrong, if it was secretly given and secretly handled.

And I say that it was morally wrong, if any of the contributors got special favors for the contributions that they made.

And to answer those questions let me say this -- not a cent of the $18,000 or any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.

It was not a secret fund....

And third, let me point out, and I want to make this particularly clear, that no contributor to this fund, no contributor to any of my campaigns, has ever received any consideration that he would not have received as an ordinary constituent.

Nixon even brought in an outside auditor, Price Waterhouse, and an outside legal team, Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, "the biggest law firm ... in Los Angeles."

I am proud to report to you tonight that this audit and legal opinion is being forwarded to General Eisenhower and I would like to read to you the opinion that was prepared by Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, based on all the pertinent laws, and statutes, together with the audit report prepared by the certified public accountants.

"It is our conclusion that Senator Nixon did not obtain any financial gain from the collection and disbursement of the funds by Dana Smith; that Senator Nixon did not violate any federal or state law by reason of the operation of the fund; and that neither the portion of the fund paid by Dana Smith directly to third persons, nor the portion paid to Senator Nixon, to reimburse him for office expenses, constituted income in a sense which was either reportable or taxable as income under income tax laws.

"Signed -- Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, by Elmo Conley."

That is not Nixon speaking, but it is an independent audit which was requested because I want the American people to know all the facts and I am not afraid of having independent people go in and check the facts, and that is exactly what they did.

In his brilliant, painstakingly researched, recent biography of the young Nixon, The Contender, historian Irwin F. Gellman explains that the political trust fund came about, when Nixon's inner circle sought to collect $20,000-25,000 per year, in contributions no smaller than $100 and no greater than $500, in order to permit the new senator, "'to continue to sell effectively to the people of California the economic and political systems which we all believe in,'" outside of electoral campaigns, and without being a vehicle for influence peddlers to "buy" the senator.

As Irwin Gellman notes, no one was paid to manage the fund, which was open to review, and which covered such expenses as "transportation and hotel expenses for trips ... over Nixon's official mileage allowance," advertisements publicizing his appearances outside of electoral campaigns, etc.

Unfortunately, some time ago, the Checkers model was superceded by a much more ominous, modern type.

Bill Clinton has been described in many ways as Nixon's spiritual son. But that connection relates mostly to the older, paranoid Nixon, not the hungry, young Californian.

Clinton had two Checkers moments. The first, in 1992, was when, during Clinton's first presidential campaign, Gennifer Flowers publicly claimed that the two had had an affair in Arkansas, where then-Gov. Clinton got her a patronage job. Gov. and Mrs. Clinton made their now famous, joint appearance on 60 Minutes, where without confessing to anything, Bill bit his lower lip, and said that he had "caused [his] family pain," and HILLARY! said she wasn't "some kind of Tammy Wynette standing by [her] man."

HILLARY! may not have endeared herself to Tammy Wynette that evening, but she won over much of the nation, including yours truly. (She looked a lot better then, especially in the modest yet sexy blue sweater she wore.) HILLARY! did protest too much, and would indeed stand by her man.

The next Checkers moment for Bill Clinton was also a HILLARY! moment. In early 1998, every day seemed to bring a new revelation about the sensitive, feminist, "I feel your pain" president who, it turned out, not only ogled, but grabbed everything in a skirt that passed his way. Bill had been caught lying under oath about Paula Jones, and would be caught lying -- "I did not have sex with woman, Miss Lewinsky" -- about Monica Lewinsky, and so many other women.

As was always the case with Bill's troubles, 1998 was time for a HILLARY! intervention.

Appearing on The Today Show, opposite "batting practice pitcher" Matt Lauer, HILLARY! hit a "home run," when she claimed that her husband's troubles were the work of "a vast, rightwing conspiracy." Upon returning to the White House that day, Mrs. Clinton reportedly exulted, "That'll teach 'em to f--k with us!"

Apparently, Gary Condit made the mistake of thinking that he could do what Bill Clinton had done. After all, the same media and feminist establishment that savaged liberal Republican Sen. Bob Packwood, bent over for Bill Clinton. What in Packwood's case was "sexual harassment," was in Clinton's case, "just sex." And Harlem fixer, Cong. Charles Rangel was making the same defenses of Condit that Clinton's defenders had once made. But Condit ignored the differences separating the two cases: Bill Clinton was not merely feminists' political ally, he was the President. To power-mad feminists, Clinton was politically immune from attack. And Bill was HILLARY'S husband. An attack on him endangered her political aspirations. In contrast, Gary Condit is just a congressman, whose wife is too traditional for contemporary feminist/media tastes. And while Monica Lewinsky was alive and well, Chandra Levy is missing and presumed dead. Gary Condit is expendable.

Perhaps Condit, recalling Matt Lauer's 1998 love-in with HILLARY!, and thinking of Connie Chung's less than major league reputation, thought that he too would get "batting practice" pitches. Instead, in what would become the finest moment in Connie Chung's career, Chung played "Roger Clemens" to Condit's helmetless "Mike Piazza."

CHUNG: Can you describe your relationship? What exactly was your relationship with Chandra Levy?

CONDIT: Well, I met Chandra … last, um, October. And we became very close. I met her in Washington, DC.

CHUNG: Very close, meaning …?

CONDIT: We had a close relationship. I liked her very much.

CHUNG: May I ask you, was it a sexual relationship?

CONDIT: Well, Connie, I've been married for 34 years, and I've not been a … a perfect man, and I've made my share of mistakes. But um, out of respect for my family, and out of a specific request from the Levy family, I think it's best that I not get into those details uh, about Chandra Levy.

CHUNG: Congressman Condit, do you recall when … it was during President Clinton's impeachment hearings, you called for, and I quote, "The public airing of every detail of his affair," saying, quote, "only when we strip away the cloak of secrecy and lay the facts on the table, can we begin to resolve this matter." Shouldn't those rules apply to yourself?

CONDIT: Well, I've watched that clip, and I've heard that quote. My view of that is it's taken out of context....

CHUNG: (Overlap) But we want to talk about you and not President Clinton.

CONDIT: (Overlap) Well, let me finish. Yeah, let me finish … because it relates to President Clinton....

CHUNG: (Overlap) We're not talking about that right now. What we're talking about is whether or not you will come forward to uh, lift this veil of suspicion that seems to have clouded you. Can you tell us … did you have a romantic relationship with Chandra Levy?

CONDIT: Well, once again, I've been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life. But out of respect for my family, out of a specific request by the Levy family, it is best that I not get into the details of the relationship.

CHUNG: Can you tell me this: Was Chandra Levy in love with you? Were you in love with her?

CONDIT: Well, I don't know that she was in love with me. She never said so. And I was not in love with her.

CHUNG: Did she want to marry you and have your child?

CONDIT: I only knew Chandra Levy for five months. And in that five months' period, we never had a discussion about a future, about children, about marriage. Any of those items never came up in that five-month period....

CONDIT: Never.

CHUNG: Did she want you to leave your wife?

CONDIT: No. I mean, I've been married for 34 years, and I intend to stay married to that woman as long as she'll have me.

CHUNG: Um, I understand what you're saying regarding being specific about the relationship. However, don't you realize that part of the reason why you're in the situation that you're in is because that there have been ambiguous or uh, evasive answers to specific questions?

CONDIT: Well, there has been no evasive, uh, answers to specific questions by me. I have, I have …

CHUNG: (Overlap) Right now there is, sir....

CHUNG: But the police department has said that you impeded the investigation.

CONDIT: That's pretty confusing. I mean, it's real confusing, because a couple days after it was reported that Chandra Levy had been missing, after her father had called me here in California, two days later I had two detectives in my house in Washington, D.C., and we have a 45-minute interview. So I answered every question, gave them every bit of the details in that interview.... the next interview, there was a new set of personnel in that interview. In the third interview, there was the Department of Justice, the … the federal prosecutor. I had to go through that interview. And then in the fourth interview…

CHUNG: Now when Mrs. Levy called you and said that her daughter was missing, and she asked you pointblank, she says, at a critical time in the investigation, as to whether or not you had an affair with her daughter, you answered, according to her, matter-of-factly, 'No.' Were you telling the truth?

CONDIT: I never lied to Mrs. Levy. Fact of the matter is that whole week I had several conversations with the Levys....

CHUNG: So when you said, "No," you were telling the truth?

CONDIT: What, what Miss, what Mrs. Levy asked me was a series of questions about a lot of things. And I'm sorry if she misunderstood uh, those conversations. But in those conversations, she made a lot of statements. My job was to console and do what I could do to be helpful. But I never lied to Mrs. Levy at all. I'm sorry if she misunderstood the conversations....

CHUNG: Congressman Condit, uh … I do not know exactly whether you did have an affair with Chandra Levy or not, because you will not answer that question. Now, when Mrs. Levy asked you if you had had an affair, she says you said no. And you are now saying that you didn't lie to her.

CONDIT: I'm saying that, yes.

CHUNG: So are you saying that she misunderstood you -

CONDIT: (Overlap) Yes.

CHUNG: - when you said no?

CONDIT: She - well, I'm not sure what com-

CHUNG: (Overlap) You should have said yes?

CONDIT: I'm not sure what conversation she was talking about.... I never lied to Mrs. Levy.

CHUNG: Well, I mean, here is a mother who is asking you a critical question about her daughter who is missing. You needed to provide her with the truth and the correct answer.

CONDIT: Correct, and I,

CHUNG: (Overlap) You didn't do that.

CONDIT: (Overlap) I told her the truth.

CHUNG: You told her that you were indeed -

CONDIT: She did not ask me that question. She made several references about people. And I'm not going to get into the names of the people, but I told Mrs. Levy the truth. I'm sorry and I regret if she misunderstood what I had to say.

And so, it went. In The Gospel According to St. Gary, the Levys lied, in saying that Condit had denied to them having had an affair with their daughter. And the police lied, in saying that Condit had taken until his third police interview, to admit having had a sexual relationship with Chandra Levy. And Chief Charles Ramsey of the D.C. Police lied, in denying that Condit's privately-administered lie detector test was valid. And Condit's own staffers lied, in denying that the congressman had an affair with Chandra Levy. (So, he had the affair?) And flight attendant Ann Marie Smith lied, in claiming to have had an affair with Condit. But the Congressman had nothing to do with the deposition his first lawyer sent to Smith, calling on her to swear that she never had an affair with Condit. (If he never had an affair with her, why deny having authorized his lawyer to draw up the affidavit that Smith refused to sign?) The biggest liar of all, was of course Chandra Levy, for telling her family that she was having an affair with Gary Condit.

As it is well-known that the District police were closely watching Condit's interview responses, it seems to me that the contradictions, evasions, and outright lies were tailored for avoiding prosecution for perjury and/or obstruction of justice. Lest I forget, Congressman Condit did deny that he had anything to do with Chandra Levy's disappearance, and insisted that he did not kill her, or have anyone else kill her.

Gary Condit could have taken the Checkers route. He could have notified the networks at the last minute that he wanted to read a prepared statement on the Chandra Levy case; they would have pre-empted prime-time programming for him, a la Al Gore, after which Condit could have walked off, refusing to answer questions. But Congressman Condit, under the advice of that brilliant legal mind, Abbe Lowell, chose a different model.

And yet, perhaps the Congressman was right, in not giving a Checkers-type speech. For that would have required that he make of his life an open book, as had Richard Nixon.

In just under fifty years, we have progressed from a senator putting up a heroic, open defense in response to frivolous yet potentially career-ending charges; to a presidential candidate and then president, engaging in cowardly, dishonest defenses when suspected of -- and indeed guilty of -- sexual misconduct while in office, obstruction of justice, and perjury; to a congressman whose idea of a defense against suspicions that he may have played a role in the disappearance of his young lover, is to refuse to answer the most basic questions, to fabricate stories, and to call everyone else, from the missing woman's parents to the media to his own staffers, liars. We have gone from a politician admitting that merely acting in a "legal" yet immoral fashion is no excuse for misconduct, to politicians who spit on legality. Such "progress" does not bode well for the Republic.

By the way, the quote I opened with may have sounded contemporary, but was in fact from Richard Nixon's "Checkers" speech.

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A Different Drummer is the New York-based web-samizdat of Nicholas Stix. An award-winning journalist, Stix provides news and commentary on the realities of race, education, and urban life that are censored by the mainstream media and education elites. His work has appeared in The (New York) Daily News; New York Post; Washington Times; Newsday; The American Enterprise; Weekly Standard; Insight; Chronicles; Ideas on Liberty; Middle American News; Academic Questions; CampusReports; and countless other publications. Read Stix' weekly column in Toogood Reports. E-Mail him your comments and feedback at Nicholas Stix

August 22, 2001

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