TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/87/87cappeo.1

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                                                                                May 18, 1987

NATION

Fall from Grace


Seven days in May end with a front runner's implosion


"They kissed again, softly at first, then almost violently. He
was amazed at the passion in a woman so self-contained,
seemingly so remote. Then she broke off and walked quickly to
the chair where he had placed her coat. 'It is time,' she said.
'I must go now, quickly...'

Although he had seen no one, Connaughton sensed they had been
watched entering and leaving his apartment building. He had not
seen, in the entryway four doors up the street, the slight man
in the dark blue coat and the broad-brimmed hat."

--The Strategies of Zeus, by Gary Hart, 1987

"If I had intended a relationship with this woman, believe me--I
have written spy novels, I'm not stupid...I wouldn't have done
it this way."

--Hart's press conference last Wednesday


The destruction of a public man holds a terrible fascination.
One watches transfixed, yet ashamed, as personal dignity gives
way to political desperation and hard-won respect is replaced
by ribald laughter. It is an ugly spectacle, part Greek tragedy
and part game- show television. Character becomes fate as
hubris is defined anew. Yet the rituals of humiliation are
straight Marshall McLuhan; the medium is the message as the
cornered politician endures the prescribed sequence of televised
statements, beginning with a tight- lipped acknowledgment of
errors in judgment and ending with defiant surrender. So the
political process is purified yet again, another heretic is
hounded from public life. Some may see a rough frontier justice
in the speedy verdict. But others may notice that a less than
ennobling odor surrounding the entire affair, and wonder what
it is about modern democracy that seems to require living
victims.

For Gary Hart, the end came with breathtaking speed. As the
week began, he was the overwhelming front runner for the
Democratic presidential nomination, a Gulliver surrounded by
political Lilliputians. But then came the most harrowing public
ordeal ever endured by a modern presidential contender:  a media
trial that made George Romney's "brainwashing" and Edmund
Muskie's public tears seem almost laughable in comparison. Like
Hester Prynne, Hart stood in the public dock accused of
adultery.

Of course, the initial charges were slightly more fastidious.
A stakeout by a team of Miami Herald reporters yielded a
front-page story claiming that Hart had spend most of the
weekend with a comely blond, a part-time actress named Donna
Rice, 29, whose half-clad modeling photos soon graced newsstands
across the country. Hart was forced to concede that he had also
taken an overnight boat trip from Miami to Bimini with Rice and
two other people on a yacht called Monkey Business. But the
final blow came when a Washington Post reporter called campaign
officials midweek with evidence of a recent liaison between Hart
and a Washington woman. The threat of further revelations
prompted Hart and his plucky wife Lee to suspend campaigning in
New Hampshire and fly to Denver for the ritual hoisting of the
white flag.

Yet even in his political death throes, Hart could barely bring
himself to let go his grip on the prize that so narrowly eluded
him in 1984. Facing a mob of TV cameras last Friday morning,
Hart began boldly, "I intended, quite frankly, to come down here
this morning and read a short, carefully worded political
statement saying that I was withdrawing from the race, and then
quietly disappear from the stage. And then, after frankly
tossing and turning all night, as I have for the last three or
four nights, I woke up at four or five this morning with a
start. And I said to myself, 'Hell, no!'"

It was a stunning moment of political drama, emotionally
arresting because it seemed so palpably sincere. Hart
supporters in the room erupted in wild applause. A nation of
TV viewers thought as one: Was it possible that Hart would fight
on?  Was it possible that this political loner, this mocker of
the canons of orthodoxy, would try to ride out the scandal?  Was
it possible that Hart would offer up his candidacy in the
ultimate test of American tolerance and sense of fair play?

The answer was no. Hart had anticipated the confusion before
he faced the press, and had instructed Top Aide Bill Shore to
tell senior staffers privately that his withdrawal was complete
and unequivocal. In his statement, Hart tried to blame the
press for destroying the dialogue that he was just beginning to
conduct with the voters about his vision of the national
interest:  "If someone's able to throw up a smoke screen and
keep it there long enough, you can't get your message across.
You can't raise the money to finance a campaign, there's too
much static, and you can't communicate."

The most that the seemingly unrepentant Hart would concede was
that "I've made some mistakes...maybe big mistakes, but not bad
mistakes." Yet the facts, as ambiguous as some of them are, make
clear that Hart brought on his own downfall. Ever since he
reconciled for the second time with his wife Lee in 1982, Hart
has portrayed himself as a dutiful husband whose 28-year
marriage was strengthened by the stress of separation. But in
his private conduct, Hart challenged the moralistic conventions
of political behavior and ultimately paid the price for his
apostasy. Until the very end Hart seemed oblivious to the
reality that his actions had consequences. He denied there was
anything improper about his friendship with Donna Rice, even
though it is far from customary for 50-year-old men to spend
weekends away from their wives hanging out with comely actresses
who have appeared on Miami Vice. Hart jeopardized his
reputation for veracity by angrily denying the persistent rumors
about his womanizing. On the eve of the cruise to Bimini, Hare
even told a New York Times reporter, "If anyone wants to put a
tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored."  The interview
appeared on the day the Herald bannered the report from its
Washington stakeout.

The seven dizzying days that began with Hart confronting the
Miami reporters behind his town house and ended with his Friday
surrender produced a torrent of titillating stories. Rice, who
met with reporters in her lawyer's office in Miami, insisted
that she and the former Senator were "just pals" and volunteered
that she was "more attracted to younger men."  Lee Hart, who
played the role of long- suffering political wife with delicacy
and dignity, tried to defuse the damage by saying about her
husband's conduct:  "If it doesn't bother me, I don't think it
ought to bother anyone else."

When Hart tried to confront the escalating crisis at a
Wednesday press conference in New Hampshire, he winced visibly
as reporters asked blunt questions about whether he had ever
committed adultery. At one point Hart responded, "I don't have
to answer that." Afterward, in the car heading toward a
political dinner, Hart mused that maybe he should have said,
"Adultery is not a crime. It's a sin. And that is between me
and Lee, and me and God."  Lee Hart added supportively, "That's
exactly what I would have said."

The eagerness with which the nation embraced the scandal is
simultaneously understandable and troubling. The quest for
keyhole glimpses of presidential candidates can be seen as
merely the final step in a celebrity process that reduces
political discourse to the level of Entertainment Tonight. As
the line between movie stars and political figures has become
blurred, Americans now demand the same intimate knowledge about
their leaders that once was reserved for the romantic
entanglements of Clark Gable or Elizabeth Taylor. Rather than
wrestling with the complexities of arms control and a troubled
economy, the public tends to look for personalities they can
trust, whose judgment and integrity make them feel comfortable.

Increasingly, the press has come to take on the role of moral
custodian of the political process. "Candidates used to be
picked in smoke-filled rooms by their peers, who knew everything
about their character," explains Stephen Hess of the Brookings
Institution. But this trial by cigar smoke died with the
reforms of the 1960s, which exalted presidential primaries at
the expense of party leaders. In this void, political
reporters, with some justice, may come to see themselves as the
voters' last line of defense between canned television images
and the White House.

In his powerful and emotional valedictory, Hart charged that
the press has taken this warts-and-all mandate too far. "We're
all going to have to seriously question the system for selecting
our national leaders," he said, reading from notes he had
scribbled in the predawn hours. It "reduces the press of this
nation to hunters and presidential candidates to being hunted,
that has reporters in bushes, false and inaccurate stories
printed, photographers peeking in our windows, swarms of
helicopters hovering over our roof, and my very strong wife
close to tears because she can't even get in her own house at
night without being harassed. And then after all that,
ponderous pundits wonder in mock seriousness why some of the
best people in this country choose not to run for high office."

Hart's bitter indictment was a melange of truths (the press
stakeout of the family's Colorado home was indeed intrusive),
distortions (the Miami Herald insists none of its reporters in
Washington hid in bushes) and self-serving justifications (at
least seven Democrats-- including three Senators, a sitting
Governor, a former Governor and a respected Congressman--have
not been dissuaded from seeking the presidency). But what Hart
failed to address was the degree to which his own conduct and
statements undermined public confidence in his truthfulness.
A TIME poll conducted the night before Hart's withdrawal found
that only 35% of those surveyed tended to believe the former
Senator's story, and 47% thought he was "probably lying." By a
ratio of roughly 10 to 1, those polled said they would be more
troubled by Hart's not telling the truth than by any
extramarital sexual relations.

The dramatic skein of events that dethroned the front runner
did provide insights into Hart's often elusive character. That
intense scrutiny is an ingredient of presidential politics that
has often made Hart profoundly uncomfortable. As he conceded
ruefully in his statement of withdrawal, "I guess I've become
some kind of rare bird, some extraordinary creature that has to
be dissected by those who analyze politics to find out what
makes him tick."  But delving into the character of potential
Presidents is not a deviant form of bird watching. The next
occupant of the Oval Office could be called upon to make
decisions of war or peace, and how anyone might respond to such
pressures cannot be divined from TV commercials or position
papers.

Gary and Lee Hart first met Donna Rice at a New Year's Day
dinner party this year at the Aspen, Colo., vacation home of Don
Henley, formerly a lead singer of the Eagles. Rice, who had
dated Henley several times, was not stranger to the pampered and
permissive world of rock stars and multimillionaires. She once
dated Prince Albert of Monaco, and was reportedly a guest of
Adnan Khashoggi's daughter on his yacht. Hart's presence at the
party was equally in character; since his days as George
McGovern's 1972 campaign manager, Hart has displayed a fateful
fascination with the glitz and glitter of show business. Some
of the early rumors about Hart's extramarital conduct stem from
his longtime friendship with Warren Beatty, an actor with no
pretense to celibacy. A close friend of Hart's said, long
before last week's scandal, "Gary had times when he sort of
thought he wanted to be Warren Beatty."

If any friend could be blamed for luring Hart into political
trouble, it was Lawyer-Lobbyist William Broadhurst. A close
associate of Louisiana's flamboyant bon temps Governor Edwin
Edwards, Broadhurst chartered the yacht for the controversial
trip to Bimini. He also claims to be responsible for Rice's
coming to Washington. Broadhurst says he invited her friend
Lynn Armandt (who also sailed to Bimini) to come for an
interview for the job of majordomo of his sprawling Capitol Hill
town house, and Rice accompanied her. Broadhurst had developed
a fun-guy reputation around Capitol Hill for entertaining
lavishly. Daryl Owen, a former administrative assistant to
Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston, recalls that the town
house was a "place where parties were given almost every day or
night."

Hart's fast-blooming friendship with Broadhurst was the stuff
that every Washington power broker dreams of:  a close
association with the man who could be the next President.
Although Broadhurst had limited political contacts outside
Louisiana, he often traveled with Hart on forays through the
SOuth. On a Friday night in early March, Hart and Broadhurst
were relaxing on a yacht in Miami harbor after a fund-raising
dinner. As Rice tells it, she wandered aboard by chance and
encountered Hart. She told the former Senator, "You probably
don't remember, but I met you as Aspen."  Hart admits he asked
for Rice's phone number, and the next day, she says, he called
to invite her to accompany him and Broadhurst on a daylong boat
trip.

Hart's original account of the boat trip was troublesomely
vague. In response to questions, Hart claimed that Broadhurst
had invited "two or three friends" to join them. Their
destination was Bimini, 50 miles from Miami, where Broadhurst's
own boat had undergone repairs. Both Hart and Rice insisted the
only reason the party stayed overnight in Bimini was that the
customs office was closed. But the Miami Herald reported that
Monkey Business cleared Bahamian customs on arriving, shortly
before dusk. And according to Bahamian authorities, American
pleasure boats are not required to clear customs upon departure.
The sleeping arrangements on Bimini prompted more questions
than a TV quiz show. Both Rice and Hart maintained that they
slept on separate boats, and that the two men spent the night
on Broadhurst's.

The trip was only mentioned in passing in the initial Miami
Herald story. But the image of two married men on an overnight
boat trip to Bimini with two attractive young women did as much
to damage Hart's credibility as the Herald's original charges.
In the weeks after Bimini, both Hart and Rice acknowledge, they
talked six or seven times by phone. Hart at first characterized
the conversations as "casual, political" and later claimed they
were primarily to discuss the bit-part actress's fund-raising
efforts in the entertainment industry. The schedule for the
Washington weekend was ostensibly for Hart, Broadhurst and two
women to have dinner together on Friday and Saturday nights.
Even though Lee Hart was home in Colorado, the exhausted
candidate had flown from Iowa to Washington for the weekend.
But in making his social plans, Hart never figured on a stakeout
by the Miami Herald.

Even now, after the collapse of the Hart campaign, there is
still no coherent account of that Washington weekend that is not
subject to bitter contradiction. Judging from the stories of
Hart, Broadhurst and Rice, there were enough comings and goings
from the candidate's Capitol Hill town house to satisfy a French
farceur. But the Herald's initial story, rushed into print to
make the late Sunday editions, contended that Hart and his date
were spied entering the house alone late on Friday night and
were not seen again until they emerged through the rear door on
Saturday evening. Not until a day later, after the story had
roared through the political community, did the Herald reporters
conceded they had not kept consistent watch on the rear alleyway
exit until almost dawn Saturday.

The Hart camp's occasionally inconsistent challenge of the
Herald's story begins with the assertion that Rice returned to
the candidate's town house for just 15 minutes late Friday night
to retrieve an address book. In this version, Rice left through
the alley exit to spend the night at Broadhurst's nearby home,
where she shared a king- size bed with Armandt. Far more
perplexing is Hart's unshakable insistence that the group
entered and left through the front door of the town house on two
separate occasions on Saturday afternoon. During that period the
Herald had as many as four reporters and a photographer watching
both exists. Hart and his friends contend that they spent much
of Saturday afternoon driving around Alexandria, Va.

In hindsight it is hard to believe that a lustrous political
career could hang on such prosaic details. Moreover, the
Herald's stakeout would have been infinitely more difficult at
a later stage in the campaign, when Hart would have warranted
Secret Service protection. In short, for want of a lookout a
presidential campaign was lost. It ultimately made little
difference that hart told Herald reporters Saturday night, "I
have no personal relationship with the woman you are following."

Could Hart have survived the original story and the almost
inevitable discovery of the details of the Bimini trip?
Probably not. Hart's cool, cerebral style left him without the
reservoir of intense supporters that has allowed other
politicians to ride out more serious scandals. His towering
strength in the polls was in part a reflection of his high name
recognition and the weakness of his opposition. With no sizable
assets of his own and still saddled with $1.3 million in debts
from his 1984 race, Hart found raising money to be a chore even
at the best of times. Moreover, from the beginning, many party
leaders were looking for an excuse to block his maverick
candidacy. As a key state chairman said late last week, "Hart
always struck me as a time bomb. The name change, the age, the
stories of womanizing--who knows what might have been next?
Thank God it came to a head now, instead of after he had the
nomination."

But Hart had one asset that was never mobilized until it was
too late:  the spunky loyalty of his wife. Lee Hart was one of
the first people the candidate phoned when learned of the Herald
story late Saturday night. Her friend Sally Henkel recalls that
Lee's immediate reaction was "concern with the story and the
journalistic ethics involved."  According to another friend who
was with her during the early days of the ordeal, she never
expressed any anger or disappointment in her husband. Other
visitors to the house on Troublesome Gulch Road expected her to
behave like a woman scorned. But she never faltered in her
insistence that she believed her husband "because he just can't
lie."

The textbook on political-damage control requires the
candidate's wife to fly immediately to conform her beleaguered
husband. But for three long days Lee Hart remained silent in
the house in Colorado, as campaign officials relayed word that
she was suffering from a sinus infection.  Political insiders
regarded that story with the same skepticism that
Kremlinologists apply to news that the Soviet leader has a cold.
But in this case the illness was genuine. Not only was the
candidate's wife unable to fly, but her left eye was badly
swollen. The eye was so inflamed that at one point she joked
that she dare not appear in public in support of her husband
because "then they'll say he was a wife beater as well."

When Lee Hart finally arrived in New Hampshire Wednesday
afternoon, her husband took ten minutes off to go to her hotel
room. His first words to her:  "Hi, babe."  At dinner that
night, campaign officials discussed buying 30 minutes of TV time
to get Hart's story across to the voters. But all such plans
died with the news of the Washington Post's potential bombshell.
Hart conceded the inevitable when he told Bill Shore early
Thursday morning, "Let's go home."  On the charter flight back
to Denver, Hart sat by himself and read the Tolstoy novel
Resurrection. Perhaps the intense spiritual faith of Tolstoy's
later years provided comfort. Perhaps Hart wanted to remind
himself that he still had a life outside politics. But there
would be no resurrections for Hart's political career, at least
not in 1988. Hart was a candidate who dared to be different,
who demanded that the political world accept him on his own
terms or not at all. And in the end he found himself alone.

--By Walter Shapiro.  Reported by Robert Ajemian/Boston and Dan
Goodgame and Alessandra   Stanley/Denver, with other bureaus

---------------------------------------------------------- The
Mourning After

May 25, 1987

Hart apologizes to his followers

At no point in the uproar that led to his withdrawal from the
1988 presidential campaign had Gary Hart given way to contrition
and remorse, as he did during last week's lull after the storm.
"I take full responsibility for what I did and the big mistakes
I made," he said. Although Hart had quit the race "angry and
defiant" over headlines about the weekend he spent with Miami
Model Donna Rice, he was now less willing to shift the blame:
"The news media made mistakes, but it was wrong of me to make
it seem like it was all their fault. I brought this on myself."

Hart's remarks were more meaningful because they were uttered
not for the benefit of the press but for 15 senior staffers at
his Denver headquarters. "I realize that I've hurt people and
let all of you down, and I apologize," he told his aides during
a two-hour farewell meeting in the cramped corner office of
Campaign Manager William Dixon. "There are a lost of idealistic
23-year-old kids out there that I have hurt, and I want you to
tell them that I'm sorry and that they should not get
discouraged and should keep working for what they believe."

Hart, his wife Lee and their children spent most of the week at
their stone-and-log cabin in Kittredge, Colo., 25 miles west of
Denver. The man who had been the Democratic front runner just
three days earlier stayed out of view of reporters even as he
began work for the law firm of Davis, Graham & Stubbs. Hart
joined the group as a part- time associate last January, mainly
to bring in new business. He spent part of every day last week
at the firm's 48th-floor downtown offices, which have commanding
views of the Rocky Mountains. Associates say Hart will receive
a salary in the "low six figures" for expanding the firm's work
in such areas as foreign trade and international law; he is
expected to begin traveling to Asia and Europe.

Hart's personal financial situation is not precarious, say
close colleagues, but he has so little accumulated wealth that
with two children in college, he needed to begin work
immediately. Said Dixon:  "Like the rest of us, he can't afford
to interrupt that income stream. He can't just take a year off
and write novels."  The author of two novels already, Hart does
hope to start another one in his spare time.

Nor can the shuttered campaign ignore its financial problems.
It still owes $1.2 million from the 1984 presidential race.
(Although nearly $2 million had been raised for the 1988 race,
only a small surplus is expected to remain after bills are
paid.)  Hart's organization has asked the Federal Election
Commission for permission to pay down the old debt with an
estimated $1.1 million in federal matching funds that Hart will
request for the 1988 effort. But he may no longer qualify for
this money:  the agency is supposed to allot matching funds only
to candidates actively seeking the presidency.

Although a few Hart staffers will stay through the summer to
pay bills and cancel various leases and contracts, most are
exploring new paths. Campaign Manager Dixon, 45, was going home
to Madison, Wis., to practice law. Many of the aides are
expected to sign on with other Democratic candidates, who were
quick to come courting. Former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt
sent a recruiter to Denver, and Illinois Senator Paul Simon took
Hart's entire 14-member Iowa campaign staff to breakfast.
Delaware Senator Joe Biden phoned Hart's Iowa coordinator,
Teresa Vilmain, to make a personal pitch for her services. She
was not immediately persuaded, and asked, "How can I go back to
Iowa and tel all those people I sold on Gary Hart, 'Oh, now I've
got another candidate--try this one'?"  In Denver, last week
Deputy Political Director Joe Trippi waved a clutch of pink
phone messages in the air and joked, "This is like career day
in college."

The candidate who may have the best chance to latch on to Hart's
top hands is Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, whose
positions on promoting high-tech industries and education are
similar to Hart's. Dukakis aides invited Hart's Denver-based
political director, Paul Tully, and others to see him in action
in Iowa. But Hart's people were not rushing to new assignments.
Most were, in Tully's word, still in "concussion" from their
hero's sudden fall. Explained Deputy Campaign Manager John
Emerson:  "All of us have sacrificed time and money and moved
from our homes to work for the one candidate we believed in.
That kind of commitment isn't easily transferable."

--By Frank Trippett.  Reported by Dan Goodgame/Denver