Sex, Politics: Still Looks Like Business as Usual

Two guys--congressional staffers--liked to play a little game. When a fresh batch of interns arrived for their stint of photocopying, snaring politicians’ signatures for petitions and other clerical tasks, Guy A would send one of the young women to pick up a package at Guy B’s office.

Only the package would never be quite ready.

The young woman would wait, mill around the office and finally be given an envelope to return.

The contents?

A scorecard rating her looks.

Many Washington stories are told only under the cloak of secrecy--with a squirm and the clearing of a throat and a reminder of “you didn’t hear this from me.”

Double that when it comes to sex and politics.

It is a topic almost no one on Capitol Hill or in the White House will talk about on the record, if only because, as one Republican staffer said, Washington is “a pretty big glass house.”

That truth has been sharply in focus during what one local alternative newspaper has dubbed the “Summer of Chandra.” While the story of Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old intern from California and her local congressman, Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres), has a tragic twist--she has vanished--their affair has shocked few inside-the-Beltway veterans.

Concerns about sexual relationships like the one Condit reportedly acknowledged having with Levy prompted Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) on Friday to ask the House Ethics Committee to “strictly prohibit inappropriate relationships between members of Congress and interns.”

“He’s not trying to legislate morality here,” said McInnis’ spokesman, Blain Rethmeier, who noted that a recent survey indicated that almost 70% of Americans would not want their daughters to take a Washington internship. “Lawyers and doctors and people in the military all have a code of conduct about relationships between subordinates and superiors.”

In few places is the opportunity for interaction between young apprentices and those in positions of power greater than in Washington. Trainees come from around the nation to take prestigious slots in the offices of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, the 100 senators, the White House, private firms and numerous federal agencies--from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where Levy worked, to the National Institutes of Health.

One clearinghouse for Washington internships estimates that as many as 20,000 interns are in the city this summer, the peak season for the jobs.

And though the nation’s capital is a center of policy and power, a mecca for wonks and workaholics, few in the post-Monica S. Lewinsky world are under the impression that it is a sexless place.

It never has been.

The thousands of interns and well-scrubbed twentysomething entry-level staffers who turn over every few months constitute what veteran Hill staffers call “the flesh.”

“Every three months they’re gone and we have a new batch. ‘Hey! New batch of interns! High five!’ ” said one Republican aide, who has worked on the Hill for nearly a decade.

For anyone with an eye for detail, they are instantly spotted. Young women in Easter-egg-pastel linen shifts, matching jackets, often accented with a string of pearls. Young men in khakis and ties with workaday shirts.

“Like lambs to the slaughter,” said one former intern who is now an influential West Coast-based lobbyist. More than two decades ago, newly arrived to town, she quit after a week in the office of a prominent--and married--East Coast congressman. On the first day, her boss caressed her hair. By her fifth and final day, she recalled, he invited her to a reception, then stretched out in the back seat of the car she was driving and propositioned her.

It is a town of long nights. Of hitting happy hour after nearly each workday until crashing all day Sunday--with only the very most dedicated stirring to watch the morning political talk shows. Of elected officials far from their homes and families. Of college-age students parachuting into a temporary life, working for a few heady months on the nation’s business. The motto of many: Work hard, party harder.

“It’s like all the best parts of college . . . because you know you don’t have to see most of these people next semester,” said one former intern, now in his 30s, who stayed on in Washington as a Hill staffer and then went to work for a lobbying firm.

Kym Spell--who worked on the Hill for Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) and is a veteran of Democrat Al Gore’s presidential campaign and the successful bid for the Senate by John Edwards (D-N.C.)--said the Hill has the same combustible ingredients of a Hollywood movie set.

“Young, single people who are incredibly ambitious and have a thirst for power,” said Spell, who now works in the private sector in New York. “You throw them together with people who have power and then give them ridiculous work days that start at 8 a.m. and go until 9 or 10 o’clock at night where they sit around all day watching CNN and C-SPAN. Politics and politicians become your entire universe.”

A surprising number of people who set policy here volunteer the same Washington-Hollywood comparison. And like the stars, Washington power players come with entourages: Staffers who schedule them, drive them, feed them--sometimes even tell them what they should think. In Washington, elected officials aren’t just public servants, they’re celebrities.

With one important difference: The same behavior, extramarital and otherwise, that lands entertainment-world stars on the cover of People magazine can get lawmakers voted out of office. If they get caught.

During President Clinton’s impeachment--the apex of the scandal over the then-president’s relationship with former White House intern Lewinsky--a “scorched earth” campaign funded by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt exposed the current and past indiscretions of several top Republicans.

Perhaps most dramatically, the effort led to the resignation of Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who had been poised to assume the job of speaker of the House from Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) but resigned after admitting that he had committed adultery. Gingrich, who quit his seat saying he had lost the confidence of his caucus, acknowledged later that he had been having a long-term affair with a staff member whom he married after divorcing his second wife.

But even after those exposes, and now the Levy/Condit revelations, some in Washington say it’s still business as usual.

“I guarantee you there are members out there . . . who haven’t even put on the brakes--not even to have a cooling-off period,” said one Republican congressional aide, who was shocked not long ago to watch a young female co-worker fend off the advances of a member of California’s delegation who was twice her age and married.

Still, even in a town where the subtext of many encounters is “what can you do for me,” not all of the dating scene is tawdry.

“There’s a real pecking order here. It’s like the military, where you know everyone else’s rank,” said Michael Mershon, now the spokesman for Rep. James P. McGovern (D-Mass.). He met his bride in 1996 when they were both working in low-level jobs for Democratic senators. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m a staff assistant, she’s a staff assistant, natch.’ ”

In Mershon’s case it was the post-Republican Revolution reduction in the office budgets for Democrats that led to marriage. With less money for supplies, his office traded access to its water cooler for the use of the copy machine in his future wife’s office.

On occasion, newcomers and veterans say the atmosphere starts to feel like a fraternity party. One example: a particular street corner near the Capitol that is popular among some men on the Hill because of all the attractive young women who walk by each day.

The wife of one Democratic member of Congress was so concerned that the Hill lifestyle would lead to trouble that she forbade her husband to rent an apartment, said one of his former staffers in whom the wife confided.

An apartment would seem too much like a swinging bachelor pad, she reasoned, while a house would remind him he was a married man with a family.

Interns, too, are far from home but with a different dilemma: grappling with newfound independence while figuring out how to form adult relationships.

At a forum on the college dating scene sponsored last week by the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, a roomful of interns vented about relationships to Dr. Drew Pinsky, who is best-known for hosting the MTV program “Loveline.”

At one point, a young woman stood up and said she had a hard time understanding the affair between Levy and Condit. Why, she asked, do older men pursue young women and why do young women go along?

“I can’t answer that,” Pinsky said. “But I can say it is never right for older men or older women to take advantage of their relationship with subordinates. Holding boundaries is one of the responsibilities adults have to younger people.”