Just What Is He Up To?

Where once penitents donned hair shirts, now they appear with their hands clenched, facing Ted Koppel on ABC’s Nightline. So it was last week with Gary Hart, as the defrocked candidate tried out his first tentative TV steps on the road to rehabilitation. That such a cathartic spectacle was inevitable did not make the show pleasant to watch. Doggedly Hart went through the rituals of redemption: he used the phrase “serious mistake” four times, “bad judgment” three times, and twice confessed his “sins.” He even acknowledged, months after it ceased to have any conceivable relevance to the public debate, that he had not always been “absolutely and totally faithful” to his wife Lee.

Koppel, for his part, behaved like a circus ringmaster determined to wring every ounce of ersatz drama out of the confrontation in the lion’s cage. He pointedly delayed asking the predictable Donna Rice questions. It was all for naught: the answers were unrevealing. Hart persisted in describing Rice as “this attractive lady whom I had only recently been introduced to.”

Hart endured this televised tribunal for one simple reason: he felt he had no choice. True, he denied the rumors that he was contemplating re-entering the presidential fray. But Hart is clearly a man tormented as he thrashes about for a suitable public role. “What I’ve realized in the last three months,” he said, “is that I can’t waste ((my)) talents, and I’ve got to figure out a way to contribute.”

Yet the cause that animated Hart’s passions during the Nightline broadcast $ is one he is singularly ill equipped to champion: the right of privacy of public officials. What Hart never addressed is the enigma that always surrounded his presidential ambitions: his stubborn refusal to understand that in a nuclear age voters are entitled to glimpse what lies within the psyche of a man who aspires to the White House.

As if Nightline were not enough of a reminder of the tawdry side of political celebrity, Donna Rice chose the day after the broadcast to unveil her ad campaign for No Excuses jeans. At almost the precise moment Hart was lunching with New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Rice was just a few miles away giggling through a brief press availability. It was a tableau beyond parody: Hart’s quest for redemption crosses Rice’s pecuniary ambitions. Her only contribution to the political dialectic was a 15-second commercial in which she boasts, “I have a lot to say. But 15 seconds? Not enough time.”

Hart began his rehabilitation road show the next evening in Philadelphia with a densely analytical address on U.S.-Soviet relations. Although the liberal audience was politely receptive, his delivery was flat, and his dovish themes echoed recent Democratic debates.

Still, Hart was undoubtedly heartened as he proved he could attract an audience that does not demand further titillation about his private life. By this weird route, he may have stumbled onto the campaign he has always dreamed of: a high-minded dialogue with the voters, devoid of ritual handshakes, insincere smiles and meddlesome aides. As he moves from disgrace toward dignity, Hart may come to relish the joy of speaking his mind with the perfect freedom of a man who has nothing left to lose.