History, it seems in truth, repeats itself, first as farce and then as tragedy. It was not long ago that the Democratic Congressman from California's 18th district was advising then President Bill Clinton. Get it all out into the public domain, and out fast, Gary Condit told him. To do anything else would be to defy the first law of Washington politics, a law so familiar since Watergate that it scarcely needs to be spelled out - it's the cover-up that will get you.
Condit said the drip, drip, drip of media stories could only hurt the president. "Only when we strip away the cloak of secrecy and lay the facts on the table can we begin to resolve this matter honestly and openly," he said as the Monica Lewinsky scandal developed.
Condit was one of the few Democrats to vote to open an impeachment inquiry into Clinton, though he eventually voted against impeachment. Then it was all about a young, ambitious, female intern from California in a secret affair. Now too. Her name, Chandra Levy, and she has been missing since May 1st, now presumed by most to be dead.
Last time it was about a known serial philanderer. Now, that previously unknown side of Gary Condit's character is emerging slowly. Drip, drip, drip. But he is better at giving advice than taking it.
Then, the most at stake was the reputation of a president; now, perhaps the life of a young woman. Few outside the inner circle of Washington politics had until recently even heard of Gary Condit. Then, in May, as details emerged of the life of the disappeared Levy, rumours began to circulate that she had been having a secret affair with Condit, whose picture was found beside her bed.
Condit joined California state senator Diane Feinstein in offering a reward for news of Levy, a constituent - his contribution was $10,000 - and issued statements denying that the 24-year-old was anything more than a "good friend". But Levy had confided to family members about the relationship, and they became increasingly angry at what they saw as the congressman's evasions.
Against the advice of friends and colleagues, Condit held out for two full months, only coming clean after a Levy aunt had gone public about the relationship and an air hostess, Anne Marie Smith, told journalists that Condit and his lawyers had asked her to sign an affidavit denying that she also had an affair with the congressman, an affair that ended only after she read about the Levy disappearance.
To add to his woes, a Modesto Pentecostalist minister, the Rev Otis Thomas, has alleged in the Washington Post that Condit had an affair five years ago with his then 18-year-old daughter.
While some doubts remain about that relationship and the police still insist he is not a suspect in the Levy disappearance, Condit's previously unblemished reputation is now severely dented, a reality that his offer to allow a police search of his Washington flat and to provide a DNA sample has done little to dispel. Two-thirds of respondents in a national poll were reported to believe on Thursday that he is directly implicated in the disappearance.
Now he is in discussions with police about submitting to a lie-detector test.
Will the real Gary Condit please stand up? Silver-haired, trim and handsome, known as Mr Blow Dry for his bouffant hairstyle, Condit (53) is the golden boy who could do no wrong. But this teetotaller is also a child of the 60s whose passions include rock 'n' roll and a Harley Davidson which he uses to get around the constituency. (A New York Daily News story alleges he has connections with the Hell's Angels, an allegation which the police are interested in.)
Although virtually unknown nationally, he has been until recently hugely popular in his conservative, religious, rural district of central California, the northern San Joaquin Valley, whose main claim to fame is the Gallo winery, one of his main campaign contributors.
In 29 years as a career politician with no independent means, he has never lost an election in a constituency that votes Republican in presidentials. George Bush got 52 per cent here, while Condit romped home with an unassailable 67 per cent.
The son of a Baptist minister in Oklahoma, and raised on a dairy farm, Condit canned tomatoes, worked as a tool-and-die machinist, and sold paint to pay his way through California State University at Stanislaus. He had moved to California after high school. At 19 he married his childhood sweetheart, Carolyn, and they had two sons, Chad (33) and Cadee (25). In recent times she has been chronically ill with blinding headaches and has stayed home while he travelled to Washington every week.
By 26, two years out of college, he was the Mayor of Ceres, a city of 32,000 close to Modesto; by 34, a state assembly man. He entered Congress in 1989 and has served seven terms. Unassailable until now. But the sharks have begun to circle, Democratic contenders as well as Republican, to contest a seat in November 2002 that had seemed so secure.
As the Modesto Bee points out, "There's no bridge with Gary Condit's name on it, or highway or any other public works project." A quiet but diligent legislator, Condit was never one for the pork barrel, the stuff of US politics.
He voted against Clinton's economic package in 1993, insisting: "I wasn't elected to Congress to trade our nation's future for a road or military base, a bridge or agricultural project in the Central Valley."
His success is largely the product of slow, patient work on the ground through personal contacts. There are flowers from him at funerals, congratulatory notes to constituents, and he listens to their problems. He is a good listener.
A long-time friend, Paul Warda, told the Bee how the congressman has been known to get up in the middle of the night to unblock a constituent's storm drain and how he would put a table out in the street and sit there talking to passers-by. It pays.
Each October, he holds a fundraiser called Condit Country that as many as 5,000 guests pay $30 a head to attend - local elected officials from both parties ladle out the food.
Politically, he is on the right of the party: anti-abortion and pro-prayer-in-schools, a prominent member of the so-called Blue Dog group of 32 conservative Democrats which supported President Bush's tax-cut plans, and he has frequently crossed party lines to vote. (Blue Dog is an ironic reference to the south's long-time description of a party loyalist as one who would vote for a yellow dog if it were on the ballot as a Democrat.) His office features a blue flag emblazoned with the word "independence".
In Washington, he speaks on the floor of the House rarely, preferring to influence decisions behind the scenes, and has been an important though little-known broker between the parties under the Bush administration. He was at lunch in the White House the day Chandra Levy was last seen.
House Republicans identify Condit as the first Democrat they would contact on any issue on which they needed minority support. "His effectiveness comes from his trustworthiness, as much as anything," Congressman Rob Portman of Ohio, who chairs the Republican leadership, told the Washington Post. "There are members who are just as moderate or conservative as Gary who are more partisan and more difficult for us to work with as Republicans."
And within the state he is a close friend and ally of Governor Gray Davis, for whom both his children work.
But the name of Condit is now inextricably linked to that of Chandra Levy and will remain so whether or not he is ultimately implicated in the disappearance. That is a shadow that even the most charmed, charming and talented of politicians would find difficult to shake off.