The Democratic congressman

from California, Gary Condit, is in a heap of trouble. After lying about

his relationship with intern and graduate student Chandra Levy, the lawmaker

has apparently finally admitted to a 10-month-long affair. All this only

after the attractive Levy has been missing for nearly three months. And

if all this were not enough, a flight attendant has alleged that she has

had a long-standing affair with Condit and a minister has charged that

Condit acted improperly toward his daughter.

Senator Trent Lott and Congressman

Bob Barr, both Republicans, have called for Condit to resign, and even

some Democrats seem loathe to line up solidly behind the congressman.

For his part, Condit has met several times with the police, has opened

his apartment to scrutiny, has submitted a DNA sample, and has taken a

carefully worded, private, polygraph examination. The police continue

to say, officially, that Condit is not a suspect in Levy's disappearance.

Ironically, Condit's web page

is still advertising for interns. The paragraph encouraging young people

to contact the congressman's office reads, "Whether interning in

Modesto, Merced, or Washington D.C., working in one of Rep. Condit's offices

can be an extremely rewarding experience. Typical duties of interns can

range from assisting with phone's to researching legislative projects."

There is even a link on Condit's web page to the National Center for Missing

and Exploited Children.

It is certainly too early to

assume that Condit had anything to do with Levy's mysterious disappearance

but it is not too early to question Condit's ability and fitness to serve.

If the Clinton/Lewinski scandal proved anything, it demonstrated that

people in power need to be in control of their own sexual appetites. While

many Clinton supporters screamed that the Clinton debacle was only about

sex, the truth is that it was about moral fitness to lead.

An individual who will break

sacred covenant vows, such as marriage vows, on a consistent basis, will,

it can be assumed, break other vows and betray other sacred trusts as

well. For the most part, people operate in patterns, in established habits.

A spouse beater will continue to abuse his wife unless there is some sort

of significant intervention. A person who tells small lies will eventually

concoct large lies. A police officer who consistently betrays his marriage

oath will likely eventually break the oath he took when he was sworn in

as a cop.

Can Gary Condit govern effectively

now that the whole world knows that he has betrayed the trust of his wife

and that he has engaged in a pattern of deception? Can Condit be trusted

now that it is clear that he could not be trusted to behave responsibly

toward a young woman who signed on to help his office achieve important

goals? Can Condit be trusted in other matters after having lied or misled

Chandra Levy's grieving parents?

There are those who would howl

and protest that Condit's sex life doesn't matter. But those people are

dead wrong. It does matter when it reveals a pattern of unfaithfulness,

unreliability, deception, abuse of power, and betrayal. And this all assumes

that Congressman Condit had nothing to do with Levy's disappearance. The

lesson of Bill Clinton is that, in the end, character did matter. Condit

failed to learn that lesson and is now paying the price for his moral

lapses in the media and in his family.

One journalist declared that,

if every senator and congressman who had mistresses had to resign, there

wouldn't be enough legislators left to govern. Perhaps that would be a

good thing if the people who replaced them were men and women who understood

that character matters, that promises are not meant to be broken, that

vows made to God are sacred, and that people who abuse their position

of trust will not be tolerated.

The voters failed to hold former

President Clinton accountable for his moral misjudgments while in office.

Time will tell if the voters in California's 18th Congressional District

will make the same mistake.

[David Epps is rector of Christ

the King Charismatic Episcopal Church in Peachtree City. He may be contacted

at [email protected] or at www.ChristTheKingCEC.com.]

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