It looked like Lucca Brazzi, Don Corleone’s trusted torpedo, and the Munchkins.
A beefy fellow in a tight sports jacket, who appeared to have just exited the set of “The Sopranos,” ambled into a cramped hotel room last week. He was leading in Gary Bauer, a diminutive Republican presidential candidate, and his equally mini wife and three children.
An awaiting assemblage of more than 50 journalists, somehow eschewing both a House hearing on NASA’s X-33 reusable launch vehicle program and Sen. Rod Grams’ (R-Minn.) speech to the National Roofing Contractors Association, was poised to go for the zipper, if not the kill, in a rather odd event.
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“So, you here to ask him about health care?” an august member of the Capital Media Hierarchy had declared 10 minutes earlier as I entered a room redolent with melodramatic expectation.
Heaven forbid, of course, that one should ask a presidential candidate about health care when the issue at hand on this drizzly capital morning was sex–or at least rumors about sex.
Or perhaps it was rumors about a hug or a peck. Or petting. Or having the audacity to meet with a woman behind close doors. I hadn’t a clue.
“Who is this guy Gary Bauer, anyway?” said a television cameraman prior to the event called by the Christian conservative candidate.
Bauer, 52, is former head of the Family Research Council. Sammy Sosa will hit 80 homers before Bauer wins the Republican nomination he seeks. But he has exhibited strength in the early going, notably among Christian Coalition types.
He had called a news conference to deny a rumor precious few on the planet, besides one Ralph Z. Hallow, had heard. It concerned Bauer’s alleged relations with a woman he ultimately would not name, not to forget his chiding a rival campaign for calumny in spreading the rumor but declining to name it, too.
“Over the last five or six weeks we have been subjected to a brutal rumor and character assassination campaign,” Bauer said. “The rumors are disgusting, outrageous, evil and sick.”
He indicated that he had shared these rumors with his family, that he had been faithfully married for 27 years and had never violated his marital vows. This still left open the matter of what the heck he was alluding to.
CNN reporter Bruce Morton asked the opening, and an obvious, question: If Bauer was all in a huff about a New York tabloid’s gossip column item, which never mentioned a candidate’s name, was he not giving visibility to the rumor by beckoning this esteemed crowd?
“I’ve felt like I was boxing a ghost,” Bauer said. His point was that he had been frustrated for weeks by the rumors, which he would not detail.
Name of the woman?
He wouldn’t say.
Names of the “political operatives” spreading the ghastly innuendo?
He wouldn’t say.
At this point, the august figure of Ralph Z. Hallow, the reporter-as-advocate, rustled with unease as he stood only a few feet away from the podium.
Hallow is a gregarious, 60-ish reporter for the Washington Times, a conservative bastion that only rarely draws sharp distinctions between its editorial and news pages. To that extent, Hallow is Mr. Washington Times, unabashed about his views, perceiving himself to be a player in right-leaning political circles.
Known as “Z” to colleagues, he occasionally breaks stories and is not wary of proclaiming interviews as “exclusive,” which he just did after one with somnolent GOP candidate Steve Forbes.
And, no surprise, Z, who sports a hairstyle of salt-and-pepper, Brillo-like tight curls a la Art Garfunkel, exhibited a faux prosecutorial zeal in firing question after redundant question at Bauer, though at one point he swore, “Gary, I’m not comfortable doing this.”
Had any of Bauer’s own aides mentioned that they thought Bauer’s behavior with “any campaign aide was inappropriate?”
Did anybody come up to Bauer and mention inappropriate behavior, in particular his being seen “frequently” with one female aide?
Didn’t Bauer feel he could go to his political rival who was allegedly spreading such rumors (Steve Forbes) and talk to him “man to man?”
Might Bauer have been arrogant in not recognizing certain “perceptions” around the office?
Did his recently departed personal secretary at any point “say to you, `I wish you wouldn’t behave this way with this woman?’ “
Of course, being a gentleman, Hallow did pause to catch his breath, allowing other reporters, ranging from ones for the Washington Post to the on-line magazine Slate.com, to fire away too. But he didn’t pause for long.
Had any departed campaign official indicated that “you were making them uncomfortable with a woman on your campaign staff?”
Throughout, Hallow stood tall, holding a tape recorder in one hand, while his other cupped his chin, acting quite frustrated.
For sure, he might well have been since Bauer, having opened the door to all such questions, didn’t directly and unequivocally respond to a good many.
He simply wouldn’t answer some and, as the session dragged on for about 45 minutes, all one could be sure of was that there was some 26-year-old aide named Melissa. Bauer seemed to confirm that, yes, he had met with her behind closed doors, but that was in the context of saying that he met with all his staff behind closed doors at some point or another.
For those uninitiated in the Christian right, one learned that some consider it beyond the pale for a married man to ever meet behind closed doors with a single woman.
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“Billy Graham won’t do it. James Dobson won’t do it,” a reporter said, referring to the famous evangelist and the broadcaster who heads the successful Focus on the Family organization.
“I’m not a minister. I’m not a pastor,” Bauer responded.
This gathering was downhill fast, in the fashion of any of Kevin Costner’s last seven or eight movies. As it dragged toward a conclusion, Bauer was still being asked if he considered his behavior with the woman “flirtatious.”
He had had “no physical contact with anybody in my campaign,” he shot back.
Finally, a staffer proclaimed that there was time for just one more question. Having been clearly egged on by the member of the Capital Media Hierarchy, my caricature as Contrarian was at stake. I had to act:
Would Bauer like to take an hour or so to respond to Bill Bradley’s new health-care plan?
He laughed, showing the relief of a man who just had a huge boil lanced.
He then discussed the plan, winding up with his view that patients should be able to sue HMOs.
“Is that not the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?” the Z Man said to the Washington Post reporter as they met out in the hallway.
For sure, that seemed a tad ironic coming from the man whose queries dominated the session. But it did not stop him from calling the session “surreal” in his next day story.
By coincidence, the Christian Coalition’s big annual meeting started a few days later. Friday’s speakers included Texas Gov. George Bush and Bauer, who pointedly made sure his wife introduced him.
Carol Bauer talked of the family’s “living hell” as she too denied the rumors during a curious 10-minute address.
Very strange. Bauer decided not to say a word about the matter, sending out his wife to defend him.
Hmmm. I suspect I know what the real Lucca Brazzi would have thought.
Wimp.
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.