Abstract
Gary Hart’s involvement with Donna Rice and his mishandling of the media firestorm following its revelation perhaps made it possible for Bill Clinton to get away with his bad behavior with respect to extramarital relations. Short summaries of the events surrounding Hart’s political demise and Clinton’s slide to impeachment help to identify these behaviors as scandals and make note of the many ways in which each contributed to our pop culture.
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Notes
- 1.
A related problem would eventually emerge for Hillary Clinton once she became Secretary of State and for the second time sought her party’s nomination for president. Here, I refer to the multiple sets of allegations against her regarding the Obama Administration’s actions to the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi , Libya and her use of a private email server for both personal and government business (see Chapter 7).
- 2.
Where the 1992 campaign brought us bimbo eruptions, the Monica Lewinsky “affair” brought us a less-violent alternative to “the smoking gun” —the infamous “blue dress.” Though this alternative is more likely to be applied to a scandal involving inappropriate sexual relations than any other.
- 3.
The field also included New York Mayor John Lindsay , Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm , and Indiana Senator Birch Bayh to name just a few.
- 4.
Recall a famous line from the movie All the President’s Men when Deep Throat tells Bob Woodward , “They wanted to run against McGovern. Look who they’re running against.”
- 5.
At a fund-raiser in California , Hart was caught on an open mic saying that while his wife was in California, he “was stuck in New Jersey .”
- 6.
As some of Hart’s defenders have alleged.
- 7.
Some have argued that even though Hart has said he was sincere in his reentry as an attempt to guide the soul of the Party, his reentry was, instead, necessitated by large debt and need to more fully qualify for federal matching funds to help defray some of that debt. His quick suspension of his campaign had shut down his eligibility for such funds.
- 8.
It has been suggested that Wright’s role in the lives of the Clintons, personally and professionally, was portrayed by the character Libby Holden in Joe Klein’s book, published as “anonymous,” Primary Colors , which in the movie by the same name was played by Kathy Bates .
- 9.
A few weeks later, under continued criticism for having used the Tammy Wynette line, Hillary Clinton seemed to double down and said, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.”
- 10.
This is the civil lawsuit brought by Paula Jones alleging Clinton sexually harassed her, and the final Supreme Court decision required Clinton to give a deposition in spite of his legal team’s argument that sitting Presidents should not be inconvenienced by such matters.
- 11.
Though not at the level of a scandal as we’ve been using in this discussion, that reference about not inhaling became a small part of pop culture whenever people would want to make light of the extent to which they may or may not have used pot.
- 12.
She was making far more as an attorney at a private law firm in Little Rock than Bill could ever hope to make as governor.
- 13.
They were not the subjects of the investigation.
- 14.
Nixon is not included in this count since his impeachment never got out of the House Judiciary Committee to be considered by the full House as had the articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton .
- 15.
This was behavior that would end up on display as part of Donald Trump’s defense against his “pussy grabbing” tape recorded conversation with TV host Billy Bush when it was released just weeks before the election of 2016. Trump held a press event with many of these women and tried to place them in his guest box at one the debates so Hillary Clinton would have to watch them throughout the debate.
- 16.
Sheehy attributes this language to a “former staffer close to Clinton.”
- 17.
This was the Tenure of Office Act, which would require a president to get the approval of Congress before firing any member of his administration who had been confirmed by the Senate. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the Supreme Court ruled that such restrictions on executive action violated the separation of powers doctrine.
- 18.
In late June of 2018, Stephen Colbert actually found and played a clip of the joke on his show in response to Trump’s assertion, at a rally in Colbert’s home state of South Carolina that Colbert lacked the talent of Johnny Carson (Rivers 2018).
- 19.
Certainly, a case could be made for “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” getting the most pop culture treatment. However, it lacks an ability to go beyond the specifics of the case.
References
Bai, Matt. 2014. All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Dionne, E. J. 1987. “Gary Hart the Elusive Front-Runner.” The New York Times, May 3, p. SM28.
Morganthau, Tom. 1982. “Why Kennedy Withdrew from 1984 Race.” Newsweek, December 12. Retrieved on July 22, 2018 from: https://www.newsweek.com/why-kennedy-withdrew-1984-race-207040.
Rivers, Eileen. 2018. “Stephen Colbert Brings Back Johnny Carson and More in Response to Donald Trump.” USA Today, June 27. Retrieved on July 17, 2018 from: https://www.usatoday.com/videos/opinion/2018/06/27/colbert-brings-back-johnny-carson-and-more-response-trump/738850002/.
Twombly, Jim. 2013. The Progression of the American Presidency: Individuals, Empire, and Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Twombly, J. (2019). From Monkey Business to Monicagate: Hijinks on the High Seas, Whitewater, a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, and the Rise of Fox News. In: Political Scandal and American Pop Culture. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01340-0_4
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