Trying to reconcile the political and the personal, columnist George Will wrote that Bill Clinton was not the worst president we have had, but that he was the worst person to have been president.
Historians will make careers of parsing Will’s sentence. And, Clinton has lots of competitors. Andrew Jackson and Warren G. Harding come to mind. Long ago, Americans didn’t seem to mind bounders in office, but for a few decades, campaign rhetoric has emphasized personal qualities, even over policy, in those we elect. Yet we repeatedly elect jerks.
Of the 13 presidents during my lifetime, five might pass a squeaky-clean test. That means eight (62 percent) leap over the bounder bar. That seems much higher than the proportion of folks walking down the street whom you might call scumbags.
This is not about what presidents have achieved in office. It is about how they have behaved when cameras were not in the room.
Sex has been the biggest pratfall, by far. Politics is the pursuit of power, and there remains an element of power in sexual relationships. Even if it’s only the swagger of teen-aged males (chronologically or developmentally), bragging to other 16-year-olds.
Look at this list of six presidents generally known to have been philanderers.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (with Lucy Mercer), Dwight D. Eisenhower (Kay Summersby), John F. Kennedy (Marilyn Monroe, et al), Lyndon B. Johnson (“I had more women by accident than [JFK] had on purpose”), George H.W. Bush (Jennifer Fitzgerald, an aide whom he appointed to the State Department), Bill Clinton (Gennifer Flowers, et al).
Two who don’t pass muster as squeaky clean are Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Nixon, so far as we know, kept his pants on. His major personal failing, other than a keen sense of paranoia — who’s to say paranoia is bad in a president? — was that he opened his pocket for rich buddies to deposit slush funds for his use. Of course, he greatly bolstered his rap sheet after being elected. But no sex.
Reports about George W. Bush have him involved in sexual affairs before and after he entered the White House. One accuser committed suicide after filing a lawsuit and a criminal complaint against him. Reports of an affair with Condoleezza Rice while he was president have been ignored by the Bush family.
Bush II had a spotty life as a scion of a privileged family before he got into politics, including a conviction (1976) in Maine for drunk driving and charges filed over campus capers and Christmas-tree theft, both of which were dismissed. I’m disregarding other stuff about him, including sex, on some of the clickbait sites as untrustworthy.
So far as we know, five presidents since 1933 managed to keep their pants zipped. Harry S. Truman, Gerald W. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan and Barack Obama. Reminder, this is not judgment on the policies of any of these five. Just the observation that apparently their personal lives were pretty clean.
Even here, though, there are whispers. Reagan was accused of rape but no charges were filed. Maybe Hollywood’s casting couch casts a softer sheen on rape accusations. Less-than-reputable websites will tell you that Obama visited gay bathhouses in Chicago, that Ford had an affair with an East German (female) spy, etc. None of these whispers climbs to the level of credibility. Maybe the Bush II accusations belong in this category, too.
(I have a guideline for the truthfulness of websites. The more clickbait on a website, the less reliable the site. The websites where I saw the Reagan and Obama allegations each had more than a dozen clickbait links.)
Roosevelt carried on with Mercer for years. His wife and cousin Eleanor Roosevelt was said to be fully aware and not a bit happy about it, but unwilling to dump him. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton aped FDR and Eleanor. Kennedy apparently overcame a back injury suffered in World War II to jump into bed with every woman his cronies could round up. Johnson was just about the randiest guy in South Texas. Or the randiest we know much about. Both Bushes were more discrete.
Some temper the Eisenhower accusation, saying he was impotent, and that the affair with Summersby was platonic. Maybe just cuddling and spooning?
All these guys had help from the (heavily male) press corps in keeping their dalliances secret. Reporters now say they knew of the philandering by Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson but kept it quiet because it was not the mood of the times to tell tales out of school. My, how things have changed. Nowadays, people can’t wait for the school bell to ring so they can start tattling.
And, reporters said, they didn’t see how a president’s performance in bed affected his performance in the oval office.
Still, stuff will out. In time, a reporter somewhere emerges with the patience and the will to keep digging until she finds some records (hotel or restaurant reservations, e.g.) or someone who isn’t afraid to dish dirt on a former boss or buddy. Can you say “scoop?”
Johnson joined Nixon and Bush II, and perhaps others, as an other-than-sexual offender, too. “Landslide Lyndon” made it to the U. S. Senate in 1948 in a runoff, after he had trailed by 20,000 votes in the primary. Even the night of the runoff, he was 2,119 votes behind when San Antonio, which had voted 2-1 for his opponent in the primary, sent in its votes. Johnson finished the count up by 87.
One possible positive consequence — I’ll withhold judgment on whether it’s positive — of the rise of the alt-media is that they are forcing mainstream news organizations to consider all reports of big-time politicians doing bad things. In a better media world, we would have enough reporters with enough time to check out these rumblings before the sleazebags dumped them onto the internet.
But we don’t live in a better media world. The alt-media, lacking credentials, standards and even jobs — the owner of at least one “fake news” site admitted that he earns a living sitting in his man cave, making up fake stories and selling ad space on his website (while mommy cooks supper for him upstairs?) — are everywhere, just a click away.
As to the one who is to take office on Jan. 20, the less said the better. He may turn out to be able to run the government. After all, it is already in bankruptcy, and he knows plenty about that. On every personal score, bounder, jerk, scumbag. He’ll fit right in.
By way of disclosure, Bob Neal covered the Truman library and residence as a reporter for The Kansas City Star, 1966-69 and 1971.
Only to say that I look forward to reading Bob Neal’s commentaries and I have yet to be disappointed.
That last paragraph…perfect!
I worked for a Senator from 1983 to 1985 (Larry Pressler, R-SD). Learned a lot. Learned that I could not live or work in Washington DC, I couldn’t put my heart into the “political game,” and the lack of ethical standards were distasteful. There were some good guys. While most Senators would disdain talk with the staff of other Senators, one guy always struck up a conversation with me, even though my Senator was from the other party. He was a young dark haired guy from Delaware named Joe Biden. I always liked him. I was shocked by the importance of power and influence, and left deciding to give up the life of a politician that I had thought I wanted, and instead become a teacher. From what I can tell, things have gotten worse rather than better. Since then I vote less by ideology, more by whether or not I think the candidate is ethical. The last election was rather depressing for me.