Keeping The Press at Bay

By Laurence Zuckerman

When Gary Hart faced the inevitable question for the first time last week, it was uttered by a fresh-faced New Hampshire high school student. "Do you think politicians have the right to deliberately mislead the public?" asked Garth Conrad. "No, I do not think they have the right," Hart began, haltingly, as the cameras rolled. "But on the other hand, the public does not have a right to know everything about everybody's personal and private life."

The frenzy of applause that followed pleased Hart. He was picking up his campaign right where he had left off -- with attacks on the news media. "The Democratic Party has found its Spiro Agnew," wrote the conservative columnist George Will last week, recalling the press bashing by the bilious Vice President. This time what failed for Hart in the spring may be his biggest political asset. "He is using journalistic jujitsu," said Mark Green, a former speechwriter and aide. "Now when the press asks Hart a prying question, it makes the audience like Hart more and the press less."

By attacking the press for its inquisitiveness, Hart sought to immunize himself against titillating new exposes. For the moment, the strategy seemed to be working. After publishing photographs of Hart dallying with Donna Rice and watching him admit his marital infidelity on Nightline, journalists were adhering to an informal prohibition against double jeopardy. Last spring the Washington Post confronted Hart with evidence of his having a long-running affair with a Washington woman. Hart withdrew and the story never ran. The Post decided not to name names, and nothing more is in the works. "I can't go out and find every woman he ever scaboozled," says Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee. "You can't ask him every day about something he has, however reluctantly, confessed to." Nevertheless, the rumors still dog Hart: last week Terry Tydings, the estranged wife of former Democratic Senator Joseph Tydings of Maryland, denied that she was the woman in the Post story.

( There is, of course, a lot more muck about Hart that could be raked. It's a dirty job, so somebody is likely to do it. Says National Enquirer President Iain Calder: "To go over the old ground would be tiresome. But we would take a story with a good angle in order to entice the reader. We are checking out phone tips actively."

But are further personal revelations relevant? A new spate of digging into Hart's sexual past would probably do little more than confirm existing doubts about his self-control, and could create a backlash of sympathy for him. That does not mean, however, that the well-documented evidence of his deceitfulness ought now to be ignored. "Lying and cheating are serious charges against anyone," says Washington Post Political Reporter James Dickenson, "and it is not sensationalist or irrelevant to examine them." Even as the public resents the intrusiveness of the press, it will continue to demand to know as much as possible about the people who seek to guide the future of the nation. Thus questions about Hart's personal morality, judgment and truthfulness will continue to be explored, and rightly so.

With reporting by Alessandra Stanley/Washington