Many politicians have had affairs
Something of a mystery has always surrounded President Calvin Coolidge’s decision a year or so out from the election of 1928, when he famously declared, “I do not choose to run not” for another four years in the White House.
One juicy bit of speculation is that he was upset that his wife, the First Lady, was carrying on with a Secret Service agent.
Yes, Donald Trump did not invent the presidential sex scandal.
It seems Grace Coolidge and her Secret Service agent-protector managed to get themselves lost, going missing for several hours, while Calvin waited with growing impatience back at the presidential retreat in the Black Hills of North Dakota.
The newspapers — well, it was principally the president’s hometown Boston papers — had a high old time, writing coyly, “Johnny Fritz, Mrs. Coolidge new bodyguard, is not as striking a figure as Jim Haley, relieved and sent back to Washington to take up a different line of work.”
Now, this was around the same time that news first broke that Coolidge’s late and not so great predecessor, Warren Harding, had fathered a baby with his mistress Nan while living in the White House with Florence, his wife.
Harding’s ill-begotten fatherhood wasn’t widely credited at the time. The young woman in question, Nan Britton -like Harding, a small town Ohioian — was portrayed as gold-digger and worst.
It was only in the last several years that presidential paternity was firmly established. DNA testing was done on one of Britton’s descendants. Baby Elizabeth Ann was his, all right.
According to Nan, whose book about the affair was an underground sensation in the Roaring Twenties, the couple coupled in all sorts of unlikely places, including a White House cloakroom.
Harding was recently named the “horniest” chief executive in presidential history by a Washington publication. The designation is well deserved. Warren G. was a womanizer of the first-order. A cache of his letters to his longtime love Carrie Fulton Phillips was unveiled just a few years ago by the Library of Congress.
He composed poetry, in praise of Ms. Phillips’ “perfect thighs/When they hold me in paradise.” You get the idea.
Harding was forthright about his shortcomings. “It’s a good thing I’m not a woman,” he said. “I would always be pregnant. I can’t say no.”
Harding was a Republican. But randinesss is bipartisan. It was said of Democrat Gary Hart that one reason he was running for president a second time (1988) was that he wanted to date again.
Hart then got himself caught snuggling up to a woman who was not his wife, on a boat, after telling reporters to please follow him. Presumably, he wanted America to know he was not a cheater.
By the way, the 20th century’s presidential cheater-in-chief, Richard Nixon, never, as far as anyone knows, strayed from wife Pat. He told a friend that he was no “swordsman.” Confirmed.
Franklin Roosevelt resides at the top of the list of all-time great presidents. He did pretty good in the romance department, too. He had women friends galore, though owing to his paralysis, a result of polio at the age of 39, there remains a question what he was physically capable of.
Bad back and all, by now we know just what John Kennedy was capable of.
“He maneuvered on me swiftly and unexpectedly,” recalled one JFK conquest, a 19-year-old White House intern named Mimi Beardsley Alford, “and with such authority and strength, that short of screaming, I doubt I could have done anything to thwart his intentions.”
Alford wrote these words in 2012 in a recounting of details of the Kennedy White House that has not been seriously disputed. Looking back from the vantage point of half a century, Mimi refused to utter the “r” word to describe what happened that first time between her and the president.
“I wouldn’t call it non-consensual,” she wrote.
She confessed she adored JFK — the avatar of mid-century American greatness.
There is no question Kennedy was a hound dog; Bill Clinton, too.
That brings us to Donald Trump, whose bus-ride sex talk with celebrity interviewer Billy Bush was caught on tape. Donald the predator ruined himself. His incessant digging has only made the hole deeper.
“Mad Men” Trump has no business doing business in 2016. The world has passed him by.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.