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All the president's women — and men

[ Posted On: 2007-08-15 ]

With the myopia of hindsight, it might be imagined that Bill Clinton was the first American president who could not keep his zip up. But Bill was only treading a well-trodden path.

The first president, George Washington, set a dizzying standard that few presidents have come close to equalling with the 'Washerwoman Kate Affair.' While the father of the nation was busy fighting the British during the War of Independence he had a congressman procuring for him young women to administer the comforts of love.

Among the congressman's hand picked comforters was Kate, who was not a washerwoman herself, but the washerwoman's daughter.

Washington, says the World's Greatest Sex and Scandal, had a reputation as a serial womanizer. His first lover was an Indian squaw. He went on to have a long affair with the wife of his best friend. During the War of Independence, he took an active inter-est in the daughters of the household wherever he was bil-leted.

Much of this was known at the time and used in the propaganda war. Rumours were spread that Washington had many mistresses, both black and white. Since he had no legitimate children it was even said that Washington was a woman in drag. Washington himself fondly imagined that he might one day start a family if his wife Martha died and he had a new young wife.

And, according to the distinguished historian, Arnold Toynbee, Washington died of pneumonia after catching a chill in the unheated slave huts during a passionate encounter with a black woman.

Slave girlfriend

Thomas Jefferson, who became the third president of the United States, fathered a second family with his slave girl, Sally Hemings.

When his father -in -law died, Jefferson inherited the old man's slaves. One of them, Sally Hemings, was, in fact, Jefferson's half sister -in -law. After Jefferson's wife died, he was sent to Paris, where he enjoyed an affair with the artist, Maria Cosway, and a number of other married women. When Jefferson's daughter, Mary, came to Paris, 14 year old Sally travelled with her as her companion. It was there that the affair began.

When Jefferson was recalled to the USA, he urged Sally to stay in France as a free woman. But she returned with him to Virginia, as a slave. She was already pregnant and went on to bear him five children. This was no secret. When Jefferson entered the White House in 1801, his former friend, the rabble rousing Scots journalist James Callender, rounded on him in the Richmond Recorder. First, he revealed Jefferson's youthful indiscretion with a married woman. When that did nothing to dent Jefferson's credibility Callender attacked Jefferson's ongoing relationship with his 'black Venus.'

He wrote that, in Virginia, Jefferson maintained his 'black wench and her mulatto litter.' He kept another 'Congo harem' in the White House, it was said.

Jefferson went about his business and weathered the storm. He went through with the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States at a stroke and opening its expansion to the west. Callender died drunk, in penury. After Jefferson's death, Sally and her children were freed.

Gay president

During the 1828 election, it was revealed that Andrew Jackson (seventh president, 1829-37) had married bigamously. His wife's divorce had not been finalized when they were wed. Jackson was a lawyer; he should have checked. The press had a field day. Although Jackson won the election, his wife Rachel died of shame before he entered the White House.

President John Tyler's (10th president, 1841-45) wife, however, died after he entered the White House. Within months Tyler was wooing the 'Rose of Long Island' Julia Gardiner, a model who advertised soap. Tyler fought off a challenge for her hand from his sons and they married. Tyler was 54; Julia was 24. During his honeymoon, the press pitied the President his 'arduous duties' and urged him to take rest — from the cares of office. The couple had seven children.

Gossip concerning the President's homosexuality was rife during James Buchanan's (15th president, 1857-61) tenure of office in the late 1850s. His roommate in Washington was William Rufus Dc Vane King, Vice President under Franklin Pierce (1853-1857).

King was variously known as 'Mrs Vice President,' 'Miss Nancy,' Buchanan's 'better half,' 'Mrs B' and 'Auntie Fancy.' And smirking references were made to 'Mr Buchanan and wife.'

James Carfield (20th president, 1881) also seems to have had a gay affair before joining one of the many 19th century sects in America that encouraged free love. His political career survived an affair with an 18 year old journalist on the New York Times and, during the 1880 election, the allegation that he had slept with a prostitute in New Orleans.

He was shot four months after taking office and died, leaving his widow to defend his reputation. During the 1884 election, Grover Cleveland (22nd president, 1885-89) was forced to admit that he had fathered an illegitimate child. He was also a draft dodger, having paid a young Polish immigrant $150 to fight in the Civil War in his stead.

Cleveland won the election because his Republican opponent, James G Blaine, was even more corrupt. Then the 49 year old Cleveland went on to marry his 20 year-old ward while in office.

The press pursued them on their honeymoon, watching the couple through telescopes, while editorials speculated on what a man of Cleveland's age and girth could be doing with a pretty young thing.

Scurrilous pamphlets alleging 'bestial practises' lost Cleveland the 1880 election. But he returned to the White House, with his popular young wife, in 1885. They had five children.

Presidential orgies

The lugubrious President Woodrow Wilson (28th president, 1913-21) was a serial adulterer. His first wife died while he was in office and Wilson began pursuing a wealthy widow, Mrs Galt. When he asked her for her hand in marriage, Washington gossips quipped that Mrs Gait was so shocked she fell out of bed.

The affair hit the rocks when one of Wilson's former amoretti published his love letters.

More trouble ensued when the Washington Post made one of the greatest typos in history. When President Wilson presented his fiancee at their first formal engagement, the Post reported: 'The President spent much of the evening entering Mrs Gait.' It meant to say 'entertaining Mrs Gait.'

Warren Harding could just about qualify as America's first — and only black president. He had a Jamaican grand-father. His racial origins, which he never denied, were a major issue in the 1920 election.

This helped distract attention from his compulsive womanizing. His wife caught him in flagrante delicto with a young woman in the coat closet in the Oval Office. Had he not died after two years in office, he would almost certainly have been brought down by the drunken orgies he attended with chorus girls in a house on H street.

Died in the arms of his lover

Franklin Roosevelt (32nd president, 1933-45) sailed closer to the wind than any president in history. Always a ladies' man, during World War I when he was Secretary of the Navy, he seduced his wife's social secretary.

When Eleanor found out, she said she would stick by him, provided he gave up his mistress. He said he would. This was a lie and he continued seeing her for the rest of his life. Roosevelt took this accommodation with his wife as carte blanche to take other lovers.

But when Eleanor took a lover, threatening his chances in the 1932 election, he got one of his own mistresses to seduce his wife's lover, in order to prevent a politically devastating divorce.

By the time Roosevelt entered the White House, Eleanor had turned lesbian. The press made veiled references to Eleanor's strange 'companion,' the cigar -smoking, Bourbon swilling AP reporter, Lorena Hickok, whose sexual proclivities were no secret. However, during the Depression and then the War, Roosevelt was seen as America's saviour. The press were happy to keep quiet about the Roosevelts' sex lives, just as they made no mention of the fact that the President was wheelchair -bound as the result of polio.

During the crucial days of World War II, Roosevelt and his mistress lived uneasily in one wing of the White House, while Eleanor and her lesbian lover occupied the other. Roosevelt hated his wife's sapphic liaison but there was nothing he could do about it.

One sex scandal did rock the Roosevelt White House, however. Under Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, Roosevelt's envoy to Hitler, Mussolini and then Churchill, was entrapped propositioning a Pullman porter. Roosevelt tried to hush up the affair, but J. Edgar Hoover leaked it, forcing Welles from office.

Roosevelt died in the arms of his lover at their retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia. She packed and fled before he was cold, leaving Roosevelt's reputation untarnished.

Press covered up

President Dwight Eisenhower's (34th, 1953-61) wartime affair with his army driver, Kay Summersby, was well known by the press. They were often photographed together in wartime Britain and on trips to North Africa, but when he returned to the USA to pursue his political career, he abandoned her.

She hinted at the affair in her 1948 book, Eisenhower Was My Boss. And when he ran for office in 1953, she threat-ened to spill the beans to Look magazine. The affair caused a lot of sniggering during the election, but it was only in her autobiography, Past Forgetting My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1972, that she revealed the full details of the affair.

John F Kennedy's prodigious sex life is now well known. He always sailed close to the wind. During World War II, Kennedy was kicked out of US Navy Intelligence when the FBI taped him in a hotel room with Danish beauty queen, Ingrid Arvad, a known Nazi sympathizer who, J Edgar Hoover claimed, was a former mistress of Hitler. Kennedy was transferred to the Pacific where he became a war hero.

His behaviour was extraordinarily reckless. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world hovered on the brink of nuclear war, JFK was in the cabinet room in the White House discussing whether to press the button when a pretty young secretary came in. Kennedy turned to his Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, and said: 'Bob, get me her name and her phone number. We may avert war tonight.'

As with Roosevelt, the press covered up for him. Plenty of hints were made about his affair with Marilyn Monroe and the others. A Newsweek reporter walked into Kennedy's hideaway in Palm Springs during the 1960 election to find actress Angie Dickinson relaxing on Kennedy's bed. Nothing was published.

Even more scandalous stories were hidden away. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, was a divorcee when he married Jackie. He had married Florida socialite Dune Malcolm in 1947. Kennedy also had daily reports of the Profumo scandal delivered to the Oval Office, marked for his eyes only. He had been involved with some prostitutes in London and was frightened that he might become embroiled.

Lyndon Johnson was even more blatant. He flaunted his infidelity in front of the press, even boasting that he had celebrated signing the equal rights legislation into law by having sex with a black girl in the Oval Office.

"I had more women by accident than Kennedy had on purpose," he bragged memorably.

In fact, Johnson had only got into the White House because of sexual blackmail. As a senator in Washington, he had lived next door to FBI boss, J. Edgar Hoover, and had borrowed FBI files as his bedtime reading. He knew about Kennedy's wartime affair with Ingrid Arvad.

When Johnson lost the Democratic nomination to Kennedy at the 1960 convention in Los Angeles, Kennedy was not going to put him on the ticket as his running mate. Johnson went to see Kennedy and threatened not only to ruin his clean living image but also to lose him the Jewish vote. Kennedy capitulated.

'Lyndon, I'm 43 years old,' Kennedy said. 'I am not going to die in office, so the vice presidency doesn't mean a thing.'

Johnson said: 'I looked it up. One in four presidents dies in office. I'm a gambling man, and this is the only chance I've got.'

Alongside his general promiscuity, Johnson maintained a second family in Texas and he had regular sex sessions in the Oval Office with a female reporter from the Washington Star.

When Johnson stepped down, JFK's brother Robert Kennedy ran for the presidency. It was only after he was gunned down in a Los Angeles hotel during the primaries that it was revealed that he, too, had had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, after his brother had finished with her.

President filmed having sex

Lyndon Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, was so deeply mired in the political sleaze of Watergate that his sexual misdemeanours were overlooked except by his archenemy, J Edgar Hoover. Before he became president, Nixon had been filmed by British Intelligence having sex with a young Chinese woman in Hong Kong. She was thought to be a Communist agent.

The pictures came into Hoover's hands, which explains why Nixon could never sack him — although he tried twice. Nixon's Chinese woman turned up in the USA for his inauguration. She settled in California, not far from Nixon's home in San Clemente.

President Jimmy Carter caused a scandal by not having sex. During the 1976 election campaign, he told Playboy magazine: "I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." Bill Clinton would probably not think that that counted.

Ronald Reagan lived the feckless life of a Hollywood movie star. While planning to marry the pregnant Nancy, he forced his attentions on 19 year old Selene Walters, whom he picked up in a Hollywood night club.

"They would call it date rape today," Walters told the author Kitty Kelly. Butter would not melt in his First Lady's mouth either. In the White House, Nancy Reagan masterminded the 'Just Say No' campaign. But Spy magazine said that when she was an actress, she gave the 'best head in Hollywood.'

During the 1988 election, it was alleged that George Bush had had a longterm affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald, an aide on his vice presidential staff. The allegation came from US Ambassador, Louis Fields, who had arranged private accommodation for Bush and Fitzgerald on a trip in 1984. He claimed 'first hand knowledge of the affair.'

In the 1988 election, the rules were changed, thanks to Democrat hopeful Gary Hart. He was a youthful candidate in the JFK mould. A young Republican voter summed up the situation, when she said: 'My heart is for Bush, but my bush is for Hart.'

Hart made a fateful mistake though. When he was accused of having an extramarital affair, he challenged the press to catch him out. And catch him they did. Reporters from the Miami Herald spotted 29 year old jeans model, Donna Rice, creeping out of Hart's Washington town house one morning when Hart's wife Lee was away.

Later they were pictured fooling around on a yacht aptly called Monkey Business: Hart abandoned his campaign.

Hart's legacy was that the media dropped their self-imposed restrictions on reporting on the private lives of presidents and presidential candidates, which had been in operation since Franklin Roosevelt's administration. If it had not been for Gary Hart, there would have been no Zippergate. No one would ever have heard of Monica Lewinsky, that stained dress or her novel way of enjoying a cigar.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

Article — Courtesy of World's Greatest Sex and Scandal, Agencies and Google.

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