Where once penitents donned hair shirts, now they appear with their hands clenched, facing Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline. So it was last week with Gary Hart, as the defrocked candidate tried out his first tentative TV steps on the road to rehabilitation. That such a cathartic spectacle was inevitable did not make the show pleasant to watch. Doggedly Hart went through the rituals of redemption: he used the phrase "serious mistake" four times, "bad judgment" three times, and twice confessed his "sins." He even acknowledged, months after it ceased to have any conceivable relevance to the public debate, that he...
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