WASHINGTON — American scandals such as Teapot Dome and Watergate, grave as they were, lacked the sauciness of British sex scandals involving the likes of John Profumo, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. Or so the lore went.
The Americans have caught up; Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina is the latest example.
Here is my personal list of the top 10 sex scandals in U.S. politics over the last generation:
1. Bill Clinton. The venue, the Oval Office, catapults the Monica Lewinsky affair to the top.
There were two important lessons, one unfortunate, the other instructive. The first is that if Mr. Clinton hadn’t lied initially about his relations with Ms. Lewinsky, he may well have been forced out of office. The second is that his adversaries overreacted. The Republican effort to impeach the president for lying about sex offended voters more than Mr. Clinton’s conduct.
2. Laura Foreman and Buddy Cianfrani. In 1977, Ms. Foreman was the dazzling diva of The New York Times, a sparkling writer and presence.
Then it was revealed that while previously covering politics for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Ms. Foreman had slept with Henry J. (Buddy) Cianfrani, a mob-connected South Philadelphia Democratic boss.
Ms. Foreman was fired and Mr. Cianfrani was convicted for racketeering and sent to prison. End of story, except not. When he was released, he married Ms. Foreman and they lived happily for 22 years until he died. They moved to the Washington suburbs, where, Mr. Cianfrani once told me, the neighborhood was full of FBI agents.
3. Wilbur D. Mills. From the late 1950s through the early ’70s, as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, he was the most powerful member of Congress; U.S. presidents and corporate chiefs pandered to him. Part of the Mills mystique was that he eschewed the social scene, spending evenings with his wife reading tax laws.
Then in 1974, while secretly sneaking out with a stripper whose stage name was Fanne Foxe, known as the “Argentine Firecracker,” they were caught after a night of drinking. Ms. Foxe jumped into Washington’s Tidal Basin to try to flee the scene, and Mr. Mills soon left Congress. Before he died in 1992, he was an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
4. Gary Hart. In 1987, the Colorado senator was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, an early favorite to win the White House. Acting on a tip, The Miami Herald tailed him for a weekend and caught him in a tryst with a model, Donna Rice.
This was one of the first times the American media uncovered a sex scandal, and it ruined Mr. Hart’s candidacy. One myth is that the Rice investigation was sparked by Mr. Hart’s challenge to journalists to follow him to dispel rumors about his personal life.
In fact, the Miami Herald had been on the story for some time, and Mr. Hart’s challenge actually appeared in The New York Times on the same day as the Herald exposé.
5. Mr. Sanford. The South Carolina governor, a favorite of his party’s conservative wing, was incommunicado over Father’s Day weekend last month; he was soon forced to acknowledge he had gone to see his lover, leaving behind his wife of 20 years and four sons. In nonstop interviews since, Mr. Sanford has left little doubt he’s in love with his mistress — “my soulmate” — and has said he’s trying to fall back in love with his wife.
He’s using a familiar refrain for politicians: the God card. In every explanation, he works in the deity. Encouraged by his wife, he says he once took his “spiritual adviser” to meet the other woman and discuss the relationship.
6. Wayne Hays. The Ohio Democrat was, in my view, one of the biggest bullies in Congress in the 1970s, intimidating lawmakers and staff members alike as chairman of the House Administration Committee. Then Elizabeth Ray, a woman hired to be a secretary and receptionist, confessed to The Washington Post that her real raison d’être was to provide sexual favors to the congressman. “I can’t type, I can’t file, I can’t even answer the phone,” she said. The scandal forced Mr. Hays out of Congress.
7. Newt Gingrich. In 1980, the then-congressman from Georgia handed his wife divorce papers. She was in the hospital recuperating from cancer surgery.
Mr. Gingrich shortly remarried. Eighteen years later, he led the effort to impeach Mr. Clinton for lying about sexual dalliances even as Mr. Gingrich was having an affair with a House aide. Today she’s his third wife, and he’s a possible candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
8. John W. and Rita Jenrette. The South Carolina Democrat and his wife claimed that in the late 1970s they made love on the steps leading to the House side of the Capitol. They stopped, they said, when they saw House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill walking toward them.
The congressman was later convicted of taking bribes and sent to prison. Tourists are still shown the Jenrette site on the House steps, though a few insiders doubt the story. Mr. O’Neill almost always rode the elevator.
9. Larry E. Craig. The “pro-family” Idaho senator was apprehended in a Minneapolis airport men’s room in 2007 and accused of soliciting sex from another man. Mr. Craig pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, though he later insisted he was innocent and attempted to withdraw the plea. He left office in January, at the end of his third term.
10. Eliot L. Spitzer and David Vitter. Both Mr. Spitzer, who as attorney general and governor of New York was a moral crusader against illicit activities, and Mr. Vitter, a self-styled “family values” senator from Louisiana, were caught using prostitutes. Today, according to a recent survey, Mr. Spitzer is more popular in New York than is Gov. David A. Paterson, who succeeded him when he was forced to resign. Mr. Vitter is favored to retain his Senate seat.
Breaking Sports Video
