By Gary Topping–
Recently it seems that we are getting almost weekly new allegations regarding our President’s shaky commitment to the institution of marriage. All are still in the early stages of investigation and litigation, so we know nothing for sure yet, but I thought in the interim that a timely topic might be a look back at the history of presidential philandering in order to help us understand just how alarmed we should be by the phenomenon.
That history begins with Thomas Jefferson, who had a now widely known and DNA-substantiated affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. There is much to admire about our third President, as the primary inventor of American democracy, but his record as a slaveholder is deplorable. For most of his life he owned some 200-300 slaves and was known to hand out brutal treatment to them on occasion. He neglected to emancipate them upon his death as other Founding Fathers did. The best that can be said about the Hemings affair is that it did not involve marital infidelity, for Jefferson was a widower, but the fact that she was his slave means that by definition the relationship was not consensual.
In 1874, ten years before he first ran for President, Grover Cleveland had an affair with a widow that may have produced in illegitimate son. The parentage was uncertain because it turned out that the woman was promiscuous and had been sleeping with other men at the time of her pregnancy. Cleveland was otherwise a very upright man and assumed financial support for the boy on the chance that he might be his. Like the Jefferson case, this one did not involve marital infidelity, for Cleveland had not yet been married.
Warren G. Harding had an affair with a young woman named Nan Britton, who had had a crush on him since she was in high school. The liaison continued into his presidency, where they had trysts in, of all places, the presidential coat closet, and it produced a daughter. Harding did have a wife.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had a long-time affair with Lucy Mercer, his wife’s social secretary. The affair largely ruined his marriage to Eleanor, turning it into mostly a business and political relationship.
Dwight Eisenhower is alleged to have had a pre-presidential affair, like Cleveland, with one of his wartime aides. Evidence is inconclusive, but even if true, it had no effect on his political career, nor apparently on his marriage.
Jacqueline Kennedy’s marriage to JFK often took a back seat to innumerable affairs with almost any woman who passed across his field of vision.
Bill Clinton’s marriage to Hillary survived his affair with Monica Lewinski and an untold number of others, though it almost brought down his presidency.
How important was all this? I have two answers.
The first is: not very. Slavery was a black mark on Jefferson’s life, but if we can put it off into a corner somewhere, his greatness as an American and a President is solidly established.
The Republicans tried to resurrect the stale news of Cleveland’s affair when he finally ran for President in 1884, but it made no headway with voters:
“Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa”? the Republicans chanted.
“Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha,” the Democrats responded.
Harding’s presidency was doomed to disaster even if Nan Britton had never lived. She was the least of his problems.
Contrariwise, FDR’s presidency was not in the least tarnished by Lucy Mercer. Even if his marital bed had gone cold, his partnership with Eleanor deepened his concern for poor people and minorities, whom he included in his New Deal programs.
Kennedy’s brief presidency was a qualified success that bore more promise than achievement. His many affairs, most of which were unknown to the public, probably had a negative effect on his presidency only in that, as claimed by journalist Seymour Hirsch, they caused huge distractions for his staff who had to keep hiding them from Jackie.
The Clinton years were good ones for the country, with peace, prosperity and a balanced budget. The Clintons themselves seem always to be teetering on the brink of scandal, if not actually over the edge, yet they accomplished good things.
My other answer is that presidential philandering and other moral turpitude is very important. The French are said to roll their eyes and snicker when a President’s sexual transgressions are revealed; they see this all the time and accept it. Well, we don’t. Ever since the time of the Puritans we have seen America as a special place, a redemptive force in world history. Even if our presidents can lead effectively despite their transgressions, we expect more of them than just that. We want them to challenge us to be better as a people and as a country, to inspire our idealism and our willingness to sacrifice.
So yes, Presidential morality is important.
