Gary Hart was the presumed Democratic presidential candidate in the spring of 1987 when the Miami Herald reported that rumors of his 鈥渨omanizing鈥 were true. The ensuing scandal over his extramarital affair with a woman named Donna Rice ended his candidacy. Yet according to , a journalist who , the real story was bigger than just one affair鈥攊t was about Hart鈥檚 fundamental character, and whether a man like him should be president.
黄瓜视频直播 of Hart鈥檚 affairs had circulated long before his scandal broke in the spring of 1987 (those weeks are in the new film The Front Runner, starring Hugh Jackman as Hart). The rumors had trailed him the first time he campaigned to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 1984, and even stretched back to his time as the national campaign director for George McGovern鈥檚 1972 presidential bid.
鈥淭he wife of a very prominent Duke political scientist told me that he would just take every one of the college girls who volunteered [at the McGovern campaign] to bed,鈥 Sheehy says. 鈥淎nd the next day, she would be hanging on her chance to talk to him, and he would walk right past her as if he鈥檇 never seen her before. He did that over and over and over again.鈥
Hart also sexually harassed at least one female reporter. When journalist Patricia O鈥橞rien went to his hotel room to interview him during his 1984 campaign, he greeted her in a short bathrobe, when she asked him to put some clothes on, Richard Ben Cramer reported in his book, What It Takes: The Way to the White House.
Hart wasn鈥檛 discreet about his affairs, either, according to Sheehy. At one point during his 1984 campaign when the media was focused on him as a major contender, a 鈥渧eteran political mistress he鈥檇 been seeing since 1982 was startled to have him turn up on her Washington doorstep,鈥 for Vanity Fair in September 1988. 鈥淪he could see the Secret Service van parked right down the street. Hart stayed the night and blithely walked out her front door the next morning.鈥
Covering both of his presidential campaigns in the 鈥80s, Sheehy caught him in several lies; not just about his affairs, but also seemingly unimportant details like whether he played varsity sports in high school. When reporters asked the Democratic candidate for president whether he had ever committed adultery in the spring of 1987, he not only denied it, but challenged them to prove it.
鈥淔ollow me around,鈥 him saying just a few weeks after he declared his candidacy. 鈥淚 don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored.鈥
Whether or not he was being sarcastic, as he later claimed, it was a bad move. 鈥淲hy would a man who鈥檚 running for the presidency of the United States challenge a reporter to follow him to see if he was an adulterer, when he was an adulterer?鈥 Sheehy asks. 鈥淗e had to get caught.鈥
And indeed, he did. Shortly after making the remark, Hart 鈥渃anceled his plans for the weekend and he invited Donna Rice to fly up and stay with him at his house, where obviously he would be seen in Washington,鈥 Sheehy says. Journalists from the Miami Herald were already staked out near his D.C. house thanks to a tip they鈥檇 received that he was sleeping with Rice.
After the on his affair, surfaced showing Rice sitting on Hart鈥檚 lap while he wore a T-shirt reading 鈥淢onkey Business Crew,鈥 referring to the name of the yacht they鈥檇 partied on. The ensuing scandal prompted Hart to drop out of the race. The next year, Michael Dukakis became the Democratic nominee and lost the general election to George H.W. Bush.
This wasn鈥檛 the first sex scandal to feature prominently in an American presidential campaign. When Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828, opponents dug up his marriage records to paint him as an adulterer in the press, as his wife鈥檚 first marriage had not been fully dissolved when they eloped.
In 1884, the Buffalo Evening Telegraph revealed that presidential candidate Grover Cleveland had fathered a son out of wedlock. The woman involved said Cleveland had raped her and tried to bury the story by placing her son in an orphanage and sending her to a mental institution. Despite this, Cleveland became the only U.S. president to hold two non-consecutive terms.
The Hart scandal wasn鈥檛 even the first time in modern politics that reporting on a politician鈥檚 personal life had thwarted a presidential campaign. A decade and a half before, journalists reported that Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern鈥檚 first vice presidential candidate in 1972, had previously been hospitalized for depression and received electroshock therapy. McGovern quickly dumped Eagleton, and his poor handling of the affair may have affected the landslide by which Richard Nixon won reelection.
With few exceptions, however, male reporters in the 20th century generally protected male politicians by not reporting on their affairs, or anything else that seemed 鈥減ersonal.鈥 In this case, however, Hart "was the one who set up himself to get caught,鈥 Sheehy says.
In the press, 鈥淸the affair] was only treated as a superficial issue: an extramarital affair with one woman that he had just been on a boat with,鈥 she says. 鈥淎s if that was the only time and the only way in which Gary Hart showed that he was unfit to be a president.鈥
Yet far from being irrelevant to the campaign, Hart鈥檚 affairs and his general character were something that voters really cared about, says , a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, voters鈥 attitudes toward Hart before and after the scandal.
鈥淧eople who really preferred him over other Democratic candidates just turned against him,鈥 she says.
In the decade after Hart鈥檚 scandal, Bill Clinton faced his own questions about extramarital affairs, as well as sexual harassment and. However, Sheehy doesn鈥檛 think Hart鈥檚 scandal made news organizations more willing to report on sex scandals. If anything, Hart鈥檚 attacks on the press鈥攊ncluding direct attacks on Sheehy herself鈥攎ade reporters more cautious.
鈥淢any newspapers were weary of being called guilty of 鈥榞otcha journalism,鈥欌 she says.
During the Gary Hart scandal, the importance of evaluating the character of presidential candidates became clear. 鈥淲e almost elected a compulsive sexual predator as president in 1988,鈥 says Sheehy, 鈥渂ut we didn鈥檛 because he got himself caught.鈥