No hiding place for indiscreet

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 20

No hiding place for indiscreet

Presidential hopefuls in the United States must be prepared to submit to the news media microscope and the scrutiny has already obliged two Democrat candidates to withdraw from the race on < the allimportant “character question.” SIMON HOGGART, reporting from Washington for the “Observer,” London, finds that there is no hiding place for the politician who goes astray. J. J

After senator Joe Biden’s departure from the presidential race, America has been panting to see which of the remaining 13 candidates will go next For the record, here is the current Washington form. It may be slightly weaker than established fact but it’s a whole lot stronger than gossip. These are the scandals you may expect to read over the next few months.

One Republican has a mistress in the Washington area. He rents dirty videos to watch with her. Leaving her home, he was recently mugged, but it was hushed up. An important newspaper has the story and will run it when it sees the chance.

Another Republican is in the pay of a wealthy businessman who has been giving him kickbacks to promote his particular, lucrative, enterprise. . A Democrat, not Mr Gary Hart, has been having affairs with several women not his wife — one of them a fairly wellknown pop singer. The American press is now suddenly in the grip of the new morality, or the new salaciousness as its opponents suggest. The scandals listed above may or may not be revealed — two probably will, one won’t — but the candidates must now consider them in fear and trembling. Unlike the past, when John Kennedy could safely have a string of mistresses, there seems to be no hiding place. Senator

Joe Biden was unlucky; his misdemeanour was one of the mildest

Senator Biden realised the game was up last week-end when he heard about the C-SPAN tape. C-SPAN is a cable TV service for political junkies, and they were the only people with a camera at a coffee morning Mr Biden had attended earlier this year in New Hampshire. He didn’t wish to be there. His family was off on a ski-ing trip and Mr Biden had badly wanted to join them. However his aides and advisers warned him that the meeting was critical for his election chances. They were right The Delaware senator was in a foul mood anyway. Someone at the meeting asked him which law school he had attended and how well he had done. Mr Biden seemed to take this as coattrailing, and snapped back at the questioner: "I think I have a much higher IQ than you.” Then he went on to claim that he had been in the top half of his class, was the college’s outstanding political science student, and graduated with three degrees. None of this was true. Even if it

had been, Mr Biden looked painfully arrogant and nervous while saying it Perhaps the questioner was trying to rile him; the tape shows him looking smugly amused while Mr Biden raves on;

When they realised that the scene was about to reappear on network TV, Senator Biden and his aides saw that the campaign was over. The issue was not really plagiarism but fibbing. Noone would have minded lifting quotes from the British Labour Party Leader, Mr Neil Kinnock; what harmed him was stealing Mr Kinnock’s life story and pretending it was his own. Mr Biden also suffered Mr Hart’s misfortune: his crime made good television and better jokes. Joe Biden gags will be told on radio, TV, and in bars for months to come. (It’s an odd sidelight on American politics that Mr Biden was so short of his own rhetoric that he even stole Mr Kinnock’s mistake. The Labour leader’s remark that “a thousand generations” of his family had not got to university referred to a time 30,000 years ago when all our ancestors walked with their knuckles on the ground. He clearly meant ”1000 years.” It’s the kind of error British politicians, trained to produce speeches by the yard without notes, easily make. Mr Biden had less excuse.)

He pulled out just ten days after his peccadillo was discovered, believing that the longer,he staggered on, the more permanent damage would be done. He withdrew with speed and dignity, hoping he could leave the way open for a come-back — in 1996 if not 1992.

He may not be so lucky. The papers here have been full of grave and worthy articles saying that, while Mr Biden’s offences may have been less egregious than Mr Hart’s, they nevertheless raised the “character question," a phrase used in Washington when a journalist has learned something damaging about a politician but doesn’t quite know how to use it. The truth is a little more subtle. Washington is a surprisingly tight little society, and is quick to form a collective opinion about people. Mr Biden was marked down years ago as a windbag, all style and no substance, an “empty suit” in the local patois. Almost everything he did — shouting at the Secre-: tary of State, Mr George Shultz, confusing the attack on the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Robert Bork — seemed to amplify this shared view. f In effect, Washington had decided that Mr Biden didn't deserve, to run for President. After that, it was simply a matter of £ waiting for his first big mistake.

Even when he had gone, the wags wouldn’t leave him alone. "He’s still 'plagiarising,” the joke goes, “when he said ‘I quit’ he

didn’t credit Gary Hart” : > Dipping Into the same deep pool of received Washington wisdom we learn that the winner of the Democratic nomination will be Mr Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusets. Mr Dukakis is not a politician to set the blood of any Democratic activist coursing. He is competent He is regarded, for the moment anyway, as squeaky clean, having worked to end graft in one of the most corrupt states in the nation. He has also raised an enormous sum of money, between SUS 7 million and SUSB million at the last count, most of it from people in Massachusets who, if Mr Dukakis’s supporters are tb be believed, do hot expect any return for their money except the patriotic joy of seeing such a fine man in the White House. He is also dreadfully boring. According to his local paper, the “Boston Globe,” “he brings new meaning to the word ‘dull’... he has the personality of a mashed potato. People who have had dinner with Dukakis report that they have fallen asleep over the salad." Yet in lowa, where the first

crucial odcw takesplace next year, he is ranning neck-and-neck with Mr . Richard Gephart,whodomesfrom the neighbouring sfhte bfMmouri a&ead’onbe neM. He has admit-. per cent, this is a strong ■start >• ‘ ’.,*l' Meanwhile, the qae'- man everyone assumes would win if he bothered to run,<Governor as York, to Visit the Soviet Union. The trip was originally planned before he. withdrew from ‘ the race last February,and was de-: signed to improve his knowledge of foreign affairs; The visit was only a mixed success. Followed by a troupe of sceptical reporters, from Albany, Governor Cuomo made a number of sipall goofs or gaffes— for example, telling Soviet dissidents . that they would help their case by “not showing disrespect” to their Government It’s the kind of truism which American politicians do well to avoid. But this may nbt matter. As one of Mr Cuomo’s confidants said last week: “Mario isn’t running for President again — but he is ambling.” < /•' Copyright London Observer ■ Service