Condit Tried in Court of Public Opinion

Re “Condit Dares Foes to Bring Up Levy,” Dec. 11: If Rep. Gary Condit wants us to presume him innocent until he has been proven guilty, we’d better hurry up and charge him with a crime.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is a cherished evidentiary standard for determining legal guilt in a court of law, but in any other context it’s nothing more than an empty cliche. In the court of public opinion, anyone who acts like he has something to hide and refuses to cooperate with a criminal investigation is, as he probably should be, presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Condit may have gotten a little confused in the 1990s, when he saw his fellow Democrat, Bill Clinton, beat rap after rap while suffering no apparent political consequences whatsoever. What Condit seems to have forgotten is that the Clinton exception only works for sitting presidents.

All the Democrats who worked tirelessly to clear “their” president would not have lifted a finger to help Clinton if the same charges had been leveled in Arkansas a few years earlier.

Jeff Bishop

Culver City

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I’m baffled by your editorial demand that Condit withdraw his candidacy for reelection (“Just Say No, Gary,” Dec. 11). You base the demand on Condit’s relationship with Chandra Levy, on the continuing mystery as to her disappearance and on Condit’s uncooperative public behavior regarding the entire matter.

In other such personal failures of elected officials, including the conspicuous one of President Clinton, you have rightly opposed their removal based just on behavior relating to the incidents and not affecting their job performance. Here, however, you mention Condit’s seven-term experience but give no hint as to the quality of his job performance in all that time. You also mention the police interrogations about the disappearance without explaining that the police do not consider him a suspect. You pretty much hang your case on Condit’s current taciturnity and defiant attitude toward the media.

You mention the Edward Kennedy-Mary Jo Kopechne incident and Kennedy’s successful reelection to the Senate (despite his less-than-admirable performance in that tragedy). Wouldn’t you agree that Sen. Kennedy’s job performance in the ensuing years has been good? We were wise then, discriminating between job performance and personal failures. Shouldn’t we keep that in mind with regard to Condit?

Dewey Wasser

Thousand Oaks

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Good for The Times. Condit is guilty of contempt of the media and disrespect for reporters. You have rightly decided that this disqualifies him from being a congressman; none of this “innocent until proven guilty” nonsense.

Bill O’Donnell

Oceanside