Gotta have Hart

National Review, July 17, 1987 by James Oberg

Gotta Have Hart

BEWITCHED, BOTHERED, and bewildered--that's Moscow's reaction to Gary Hart's sudden fall from electoral grace, for what Moscow papers delicately referred to (always in quotes) as his "marital infidelity.' From the tone of Soviet media coverage, Hart might well be the pride of Kazakhstan rather than Denver. In the first official Soviet dispatch on the subject (Pravda, May 9) TASS called the charges against Hart a political vendetta: "The press, radio, and television shamelessly smacked their lips over discredited rumors and conjecture about his personal life, striving at any cost to compromise Hart.' As a result of the harassment campaign, according to another TASS dispatch, "Hart's popularity started to decline and all donations to his election fund were stopped.' Cui bono? asked the Soviet press agency. Easy: "Those who want to divert public attention from the real scandal --the U.S. secret arms sales to Iran and the unlawful aid to the Contras.'

Vitaly Gan, Pravda's special correspondentin Washington, concurred: "The skillfully whipped-up scandal over Hart has now filled the television screens and newspapers, pretty well crowding out the investigations [that] have begun in Congress into the Administration's really dirty affair, known as "Iran-Contragate.'' Gan concluded, "There is open rejoicing in the Republican camp. Hart was regarded as a real and very serious rival capable of attracting the voters, who were increasingly turning away from the "Reagan Revolution.''

Moscow's handling of the Democrats'Hartache was consistent with a new and little-remarked tendency in the Soviet media's American coverage: dabbling in partisan politics (see "What the Soviets Think about American Liberals,' by Dinesh D'Souza, NR, Jan. 30). In Soviet news reports, American political figures are either corrupt (i.e., Republicans) or progressive --pure in heart, mind, and body (i.e., Democrats). With friends like these, do the Democrats need enemics?