This week, along with most Americans, I have politics on the brain. It's a big week for America, and the ushering in of a new president got me thinking about our previous ones. Barack Obama is joining an interesting collection of men by taking office. I didn't actually realize how interesting our presidents were, however, until I started doing a little research into presidential sex scandals. We all remember Bill Clinton's infamous fiasco, but he's just one in a long series of presidents who dealt with public concern and speculation regarding their sex lives. Sex scandals endure the test of time, reach across party lines and affect popular and unpopular presidents alike. I am simultaneously a bit disappointed and quite proud to say that sex scandals seem to be one of the most dependable and unchanging aspects of American politics.
Some of our most popular presidents were fans of extramarital affairs. Many people were surprised when Hillary Clinton stayed with Bill after the Lewinsky scandal, but what about Eleanor Roosevelt, who stayed with Franklin despite discovering his affair with her secretary, Lucy Mercer, in 1918? The couple discussed divorce, but eventually decided to stay together when FDR promised to end the affair. However, when he died in 1945, Lucy was with him. Dwight Eisenhower is also speculated to have had an affair with Kay Summersby, a woman who chauffeured him during World War II and later became his secretary. Summersby wrote a not-so-subtle memoir called "Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower" from her deathbed, and rumors circulated that Eisenhower asked permission from a high-ranking military official to leave his wife and marry Summersby. Unfortunately for him, it was apparently a no-go. JFK also allegedly engaged in affairs with a long list of glamorous women, including Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickinson.
More than one president has faced scrutiny regarding his sexual orientation. Abe Lincoln has been speculated by many a historian to have had intimate relationships with men. Though at this point many of the facts are left to the interpretation of historians, apparently Lincoln's relationships with women were tumultuous at best, and he seemed to form close, lasting bonds with the men in his life. James Buchanan also faced extensive public scrutiny about his sexual orientation. Though he was at one point engaged to a woman, she died before they were married and he spent fifteen years living with William Rufus King. Though it has never been proven that the two shared a sexual relationship, many of their contemporaries openly mocked the couple, referring to King as "Buchanan's wife," "Buchanan's better half," or "Aunt Fancy," according to historian James W. Loewen.
Presidents have also shelled out quite a bit of money because of scandalous sexual behavior. One of Warren Harding's alleged mistresses, Carrie Philips, blackmailed the GOP for a large sum of money when Harding ran for president. Grover Cleveland's 1884 bid for president was marked by the discovery that he had been paying child support for a child he had fathered out of wedlock. In fact, his political rivals frequently taunted him with the chant: "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" (After he won they creatively added, "Gone to the White House ha ha ha").
Presidential sex scandals don't have to be particularly salacious. Even Woodrow Wilson's engagement became a scandal when he was president. He and Edith Galt had begun dating shortly after his first wife's death and had only been together for a matter of months before the proposal, which led some people to infer that the two had been having an affair or even that Wilson had murdered his wife.
Seeing list after list of the most public and popular presidential sex scandals made me realize how strong the union between sex and politics is in the United States. People love sex scandals, and they love to make assertions and speculations about the sex lives of their leaders. Sex enjoys the unique position (no pun intended) of being simultaneously an agent for moral judgment and popular entertainment. People can call you a "bad person" for taking bribes or embezzling, but the Starr Reports wouldn't be nearly as exciting if they rendered in painstaking detail the process of forging a signature on a check or accepting a handful of hundred dollar bills. As much as people might call sex scandals reprehensible, vulgar or disgusting, they're also an integral part of American political culture and have been since its beginning. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that, but I do know one thing: I still can't get over how all of these men had enough time to have interesting sex lives. I thought that the President of the United States had actual work to do.