On My Mind: Men Behaving Badly

July 15 -- What was he thinking? California Congressman Gary Condit — one of the first Democrats to chastise President Clinton for his sexual indiscretions with a young female intern, turns out to have engaged in the same immoral, anti-family behavior for which he so piously denounced the president.

Condit is not only an admitted liar, but while police say he is not a suspect, some wonder if he had something to do with the disappearance of his intern lover, 24-year-old Chandra Levy. Since April, the young woman, who lived in the congressman's Modesto, Calif., district, has not been seen nor heard from.

I pray no harm has come to Ms. Levy, but what concerns me most is why so many men of supposed intelligence and accomplishment can be so stupid about — not affairs of the heart — but their lust for sex.

I have lived in Washington, D.C., since post-Watergate 1974, when it was no longer media practice to ignore politicians' private lives. That year Arkansas' Wilbur Mills, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, was caught speeding by police. In his car was a stripper known as Fanne Foxe or "The Argentine Firecracker." She jumped out of the car and police fished her out of the Tidal Basin. It was scandalous, but after all the negative publicity Mills still couldn't leave Foxe alone. He later blamed it on a drinking problem. He didn't seek re-election, because he knew he would lose.

A couple of years later, Rep. Wayne Hays, chair of the House Administration Committee, put blonde and buxom Elizabeth Ray on staff as a secretary. She later admitted she couldn't file, type or answer phones, but was paid $14,000 a year to have sex with Hays. He was forced to resign.

Is It Love, Or Cheap Lust?

Why don't they learn? There is a long list of Congressmen who have allowed sex to ruin their congressional careers and most likely their marriages — some for having sex with other men, or soliciting teenage boys; some for having sex with underage girls, or prostitutes; and some were even charged with sexual assault.