The most important midterm election in half a century, and MD is writing about Hart?
118
Very ugly to learn that Pres. Bush (sr) played a role in bringing off this smear of a worthy candidate, Gary Hart.
Can the Republicans win if they don't suppress the vote, rely on Willie Horton/caravan racism, set up opponents to destroy them, and making unconstitutional, secret deals with foreign powers (for example, Reagan's contacting the Iranians holding hostages in a bid to defeat Carter, or Nixon's promising the N. Vietnamese a better deal under him than Pres. Johnson) ?
98
When Al Franken went, I told a friend, "Liberals cave in and resign, and conservatives dig their heels in and stay. We will be left with randy, holier-than-thou conservatives, and there goes the country."
So indeed we are left with bible-thumping, womanizing neo-fascists, and we are in great trouble.
A pox on everyone, including MeToo, whose zealous pursuit of evil-doers has achieved some truly dubious results.
144
The fourth estate has served us very poorly over the years. The fact is there has been a lot of false news, let alone completely destructive priorities in our supposed "free" press, not so free after all.
Our media have been just about completely commandeered by what sells, and especially what sells to the sensation of the moment. So Trumpsky, evil as he is, has put his finger on yet another elephant in the room people seem determined to avoid confronting at all cost.
37
All I know is that we, as Democrats, are snakebit. When we lose, we lose, and when we win, we lose. When do we ever get to win?
Republicans seem to win even when they lose! Or am I getting paranoid?
71
Can't resist.Just this, Madam, looking at the homes of some of the founding fathers, Mount Vernon, Monticello, etc. one does get the impression that despite the anti-English tone of the era, there was something akin to emulative behavior occurring among those founders. In Europe, because of space, in Russia because of proclivity to development of a mien towards democratic thinking, lots of high-rises, as far as the eye can see in metropolitan areas. How this country got where it is is on the backs of more or less slaves. Trump built, or had built, only for the moneyed class. Do you think that Prince Charles played polo wearing Lucchesse boots? Everything is completely askew because of notions of expansion and a lot of lies about everything, which enables the concentration of capital by the rich. He says that there would have been no incursion into Iraq. I know different. U.S. Naval Intelligence told me so: "We're going to go into Iraq, depose Saddam Hussein, and take their oil, because we're going to need it to fight a war with China twenty years hence." That was in 1983-1984. Coupled with this was a haughty song and dance about the parallels between the Bushes and the Adamses. Why obsess? Can't fight City Hall.
7
Mr. Hart is too hard on himself. It was Bill Clinton who cost Gore the election.
Just maybe, we have Trump to thank for something. Although he will certainly try, it's inconceivable that Trump could pull off accusing an opponent of rolling in the hay.
13
Well someone certainly thinks highly of himself.
32
@Daryl
" I had only one talent and it wasn’t traditional politics — I could see farther ahead than anybody.’’
That alone, and a dime , would have gotten him a cup of coffee. It isn't just what one see ahead--if indeed one really can--but what one can do about it; what one wants to do about it, and the resources one has to do what one wants to do about it.
15
You sure that's Gary Hart?
I would have sworn it was Keith Richards!
40
It is and was hypocritical and arbitrary who gets a pass and who does not these days, the moving finger and bingo. Trump's example I will be the exception because his support is not based on what is good for the country or his character as President or personally.
"Matt Bai, the Yahoo columnist who helped write the new Hart movie based on his book, “All the Truth Is Out,’’ posits that Hart’s exile “cost us something” as a nation."
Probably. We as a nation lost a lot with the departure of Al Franken a decent responsible Senator who was pressured to leave without even looking into the nature or veracity of the complaints and lack of consideration and support peers, Democrat probably fearful of not being able to make their case against Trump. What happened?
58
@Potter
This is why the Democrats lost: "his support is not based on what is good for the country. "
Of course it is, Potter. But the Progressives don't want to talk about what is good for the country; they want to talk about anything else--what is good for the migrant minor alien; what is good for "our allies"; what is good for minorities, what is good for Iran, what is good for Palestinians. These are the issues that the Progressive wants to talk about, mainly because he is terrified to grapple with the mainstays of Trump's agenda. He knows in his secret heart that it is precisely because Trump's agenda is unassailable from the perspective of what is good for the country that he avoids that subject by many means. Call the immigration policy "racist" and you don't have to talk about what illegal immigration costs this nation [FAIR.org].
13
If you are expecting nuance and thoughtfulness in the current era, you are utterly disconnected from reality.
It’s a strange juxtaposition to be simultaneous in the throws of a desperately overdue #metoo movement while also have backslid into a period of non-existent attention spans and an utter lack of sophistication in dealing with issues of the moment.
16
What if, what if, what if?
Just imagine that...
What is the point of this?
Gary Hart and his affair with Donna Rice are way, way down the list of reasons we have Trump.
33
@Dave T.
Our choices were Hillary Clinton, who needs no introduction, and Donald Trump. What Hart did was drive good competent men and women out of public life because they and their families wanted no part of a 24-hour press digging into their private current and past lives.
23
This type of article is important for understanding what went wrong. The article suggests that if Hart had won the presidency in 1988, the Middle East Holocaust, the World Trade Center attacks and the looming climate catastrophe would have been avoided.
Considering the preventable disasters, catastrophes and atrocities in the history books -- are they the result of human error or a design flaw? If these could have been prevented only by having certain persons in power, which didn't happen, that would suggest a design flaw in the system. While the government benefits the rich and powerful, and the rulers who serve them, can we fix the design flaw to prevent harm to ourselves and others, especially the climate catastrophe threatening humanity?
18
@Fatima K
Absolutely. We can do away with rule by man-- man-made laws -- and submit all our decisions to a god.
The righteous puritanical indignation voiced by Hart’s critics was as phony as a $3 bill, as these beacons of morality have completely set aside all morality in the face of a president, who is not only a famous adulterer, but a trades in racist conspiracy theories and uses his office to enrich himself. Gary Hart is not a perfect human being, but he had an intellectual curiosity, studied all the issues in depth and offered an intelligent and thoughtful vision for the United States. Now we have a functional illiterate who went bankrupt running a casino and stiffed his employees and contractors, who runs the nation with the aid of his son-in-law, a 30-something realtor whose idea of vetting potential cabinet officers is looking them up on Google.
56
@Eve Galewitz
I find it remarkable how this functionally illiterate president has managed to accomplish so much, and how all the functional literates in this nation have managed not to have read one thing about them. I find it remarkable that these same literates have no clue about business risk, both by the casino owners and by those who decide to take on the risk of providing them services. Prior bankrupcies are public record. All bankrupcies are approved by laws that democrats never sought to change even though they do not understand capitalism or risk. It is also remarkable how well this administration has been able to function, with a staff selected by a 30-something. He must have been a prodigy.
9
Maureen is probably right not to believe Hart when he says he doesn't blame the press.
Maybe she feels guilty. The press was wrong.
The press played with this (non)issue of the Hart-Rice affair and wouldn't let go. Then when it snowballed to the point where history is actually changed, and a good candidate unfairly sidelined, the press claims "we're not responsible."
The irony is, of course, that the press has now created an environment where people will do what they long should have, ignore irrelevant issues unrelated to the candidate's positions. But it happened with Trump's Access-Hollywood tape.
That, Maureen, could work as an operational definition for "unintended consequences."
18
It's a good time for all of us to take a long look in the mirror. Especially- no, not just "you". Me too. What kind of a nation do we want, for our selves, our children, and for the world as a whole?
17
@flyinointment
I, for one, don't have to look in the mirror; I look at Trump's agenda and see what kind of a nation I want for myself, my children, their children,and the world as a whole.
6
Like many American's I've been mulling the upcoming mid-term election. I do not like Trump. I think I've made that clear in earlier commentary. But here's what I ultimately think about him; as well as our current situation juxtaposed against the overall American experience of late.
He is Narcissus; and he has released the American Id into lunacy. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess, but the American Lunatic is on the loose all across our land. From shootings inside sacred spaces to the slaughter of innocence in our schools, none are safe.
Our leaders try to get us to rage against the "invasion" of a malicious outsider while ignoring the Barbarian that is assaulting us from within. Wherein are the keepers and cagers capable of corralling this lunacy? Where are the leaders to stand against it and keep the center safe? Where?
If they exist within your local groups vote them into the roles currently being held by those proven inept for the job. And if they don't, well...good luck to you; and God help us all.
48
@John
Same old, same old narrative, yet it failed in 2016 and it will fail again. Why? Because it is lunacy to believe a "nation" can have open borders and survive; it is lunacy to believe that a strong leader is not preferable to a weaker one and that a stronger military is more preventative of war that could instantly destroy us than a weaker one. It is lunacy to imagine that this nation's blacks, women and hispanics are not bouyed by the booming economy and job opportunities; it is lunacy to think that our revised trade deals are not fairer all around and better for our citiens; it is lunacy to believe that everyone in the world who sneaks in here should have the same rights as citizens; it is lunacy to think that we would be better off using a standard of innocent until anyone accuses you, and on and on and on.
11
Great read Maureen, Looking back how history would have changed with a Hart presidency is convincing. However from another perspective and scale, how the world would have changed with a Gore presidency. Climate change would be a national priority, no senseless, endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.....an intelligent, competent, trustworthy leader and human being as president.....
Can we turn back the clock, not just one hour but 18 years ?
28
@Paul Robillar
What is the evidence that if we make climate change a national priority and other nations do not, that it would make enough difference to the climate? We know it would set us back economically and that we would lose all those gains enjoyed today by working minorities.
6
Hart's actions were lame compared to those of Trump but he gets vilified and Trump is elected president. The problem would appear to lie more with the voters than with the politicians.
18
@Clark Landrum:
There is also nearly 30 years between the two "actions"....
1
You can argue until the cows come home about the worthiness of most American Presidents — good and bad. But there is little debate that Trump is without question the worst President in our history. Why? Not due to his unsavory character or his race-baiting demagoguery.
It’s because he has willfully failed to carry out the duties of the Office of the President. Of this, there can be no reasonable doubt. All the rest is distraction.
45
@PaulB67
"But there is little debate that Trump is without question the worst President in our history. " Wow, Paul, you must stay inside your political bubble 100% of the time to even imagine anything so astonishingly incorrect.
4
Considering Dowd's and public comments, it baffles me as to who would ever truly want to run for president. We want a saint to run for this office? We want someone who is human to run for this office? Any person running for president, is going to be criticized by everyone! Trump is just an example of the worst of all of us. I can't think of one president who didn't have many faults of some kind. Running for president is getting really scary!
14
Didn’t Hart tell the press to follow him? Why wasn’t he able to predict the results of that?
18
@Max
Yes, he documented his activities. Seemed like there was some unconscious self-sabotage.
5
Lee Atwater was one of the ‘fathers’ of underhanded and dirty - even toxic - campaign attacks. Now it has been reported that Gary Hart’s downfall was a Atwater set-up. There have been too many imitators of Atwater since, leading to our teetering democracy and current lack of civility. Lee Atwater was also an early partner with Paul Manafort.
Lee Atwater died of brain cancer at age 40. Karma? But the fruit of that cancerous brain is still diminishing our country.
34
With no disrespect intended towards Ms. Dowd, I suspect enough Americans are already quite nauseated by the meta-cognitive delusions that are direct products of a cynical marketing scheme which depends almost entirely on solipsism.
The only moment that is ever occurring is the present. Very little is accomplished by allowing oneself to be consumed by regret over what might have been.
3
@ubique Some of us regret the philosophy courses we took that went to our heads.
5
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved into the White House. That same year, Eleanor Roosevelt moved into a row house at 20 East 11th Street, New York, as a plaque on the building informs us. FDR had his girlfriend in Washington; Eleanor had her girl friend in Manhattan.
In those days, the press knew not to talk about people's sex lives.
8
@George Jochnowitz:
Have you read the three part biograpy of Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Weisen Cook? She is very open and non judgmental about Mrs Roosevelt's POSSIBLE (never proven or documented fully) friendships with a few women, long after her marriage with FDR had broken down after she learned of his ongoing affair with her secretary and friend, Lucy Mercer.
FDR, as Eleanor raised their five children, did have an affair, but was not promiscuous.
Its very hard 80 years later to attempt people under totally different situations and in a different era.
Yes, the press never "dug" for this "dirt" on either of these people, even though the Republicans of that time hated FDR as much as the Republicans of this era hated Obama.
7
@George Jochnowitz
The press may still have known when it came to First Ladies, George, even as it attacked the sex lives of presidents themselves. Sometimes these things are related.
American leaders with insignificant flaws can be counted on ... three fingers. You name them. As citizens we simply have to weigh the flaws against the virtues and remember that, "there but for the grace of God" go I. Democratic processes can still help us winnow out the worst. Let's hope that happens on Tuesday.
8
Since we are running alternative history through the way back machine consider the following. What if Gerald Ford won the the 1976 election? He did come close -- 297 electoral votes (Carter) vs. 240 (Ford). Ford would have presided over stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis, rising gas prices etc. In other words a clear path to the election of a Democrat in 1980. It is likely we would have never have experienced a presidency, and ultimately neither Bush, no Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and onlyan associate justice Renquist.
8
I intended to write -- .. we would never have experienced a Reagan presidency...
8
@Paul No, Ford would have dealt with the economy better; he would have ended the Iran hostage crisis right away with a show of force such as we witness today under Trump. No clear pattern for a Democrat presidency would have followed.
I am still waiting for a good analysis of the correlation of American Psyche and American Body Politic--especially one which explains the whole process in few simple paragraphs!
Does the public too see the need for it?!
Ms. Dowd, do you have foibles and have you had indiscretions? Care to unload? How about the Sulzburgers? Any of them. Hillary Clinton? What sort of marriage does she have? Any insights? Gary Hart might have become President, but the odds were against him getting to the finish line. Predicting that there will be violence and disruption in the future doesn't make someone a seer. Oh, and I rather like Gary Hart. And I'm a lifelong Democrat, at least until now. I voted for Hillary Clinton, and now wish she would go away, along with other members of her immediate family. Forever. John Roberts for President. Or Steven Chu. Or Robert Gates. Or David Petraeus. Or somebody smart, ethical, and knowledgeable about the threats and challenges that confront the United States and the world. I thank you for this forum, as I step down from my soapbox.
6
@Barry:
Ethical? Petraeus? The guy who gave his mistress access to classified information? That Petraeus?
26
There are times when it does not matter whether a majority or a minority of people have the commanding ruling voice. If the ruling voice is indecent and immoral, selfish and sadistic....then the ruling few or the many......are totally wrong.
What's the difference between a Christian and an atheist.....and the difference between separation of church and state?
Blessed be those that believe in His name: who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
@manoflamancha:
Not being rude, but no idea of what you're trying to say.
10
Maureen brings up a weighty conundrum that has troubled me for a long time: Can a person with what I consider a significant weakness in their character be trusted with the leadership of our country? If one betrays the most important person in their life, how will they view their loyalty to millions of perfect strangers when they make decisions affecting their very lives and well being?
On the face of it I could answer my own questions easily, if only I haven't agreed with so many of the decisions made by Eisenhower, Jack Kennedy, and LBJ, (all adulterers, though I was young and unaware of it at the time). Then came Bill Clinton, whose policies too, seemed sound to me, but whose faulty character was brought to light, while in office, for the whole world to see. I was troubled, I wanted my country to be led by the very best of the best; I wanted an honorable president... but wasn't he doing a good job just the same?
Maybe one day I'll reach a conclusion on whether it's possible to be immoral in significant ways and still be a great leader, but that won't be accomplished while the current person is in office. His lack of honor so colors everything he says and does that I'm unable to separate the man from any of his policies.
I know politics is a dirty business and that it's hard to be a truly good person and rise to the top, but I look for people with basic decency to come along again; we've saw it in just this last president; let's make sure of it in the next.
84
@woodswoman
Re your question, Can a person with what I consider a significant weakness in their character be trusted with the leadership of our country? I believe we each have an intellectual character and a sexual character, and never the twain shall meet. The real issue is what kind of sexual character does one have: rapacious, carnal, exploitive, consensual, or loving?
9
@robert3butler:
Consensual sex with another adult, we need to "get over it".
7
@woodswoman:
Maybe we should stop being "puritans" and allow adults to have consensual sex with other adults, without that totally coloring how we see their abilities, attributes, ethics, etc.....
A poster here mentioned David Patreus as person they would like to see as president. I responded: "David Patreus, the guy who gave his mistress access to classified information?" My main point was not so much that he had a mistress, but that he gave her the access to eight books of classified information.
In an era when 50% or more of all marriages end in divorce, shouldn't we have less concern with the bedroom occupations of our "leaders"?
15
I remember the '88 campaign. Hart has no one to blame but himself. His character flaw is hubris, and it still comes through, even in this brief piece.
21
It's the same now as it ever was. GOP voters don't care about infidelity and lying from their leaders, they just use that as a political tool. It is only democratic voters that think their candidates have to be saints. Democratic voters think that perfection exists and they will accept nothing else. Of course, in reality, it doesn't exist. The right, like Maureen, knows this and pummels them with the imperfections in their candidates every time, and they never learn. Gary Hart would have been a good president. Michael Dukakis would have been a good president. Howard Dean would have been a good president. But they weren't perfect, so the democrats stayed home. The GOP's loyal voters are a minority of Americans, but they control the country. So when will the democrats learn? Probably never.
20
A very different outcome if Hart had been a supporter of the religious right, blubbed on TV, and then pleaded for America to punish the sin not the sinner. His mistake was having the courage of his political convictions. There are far worse things to be guilty of.
9
Gary Hart was a stuffed shirt. Stuffed full of himself. Don't remember any of his ideas. I only remember him talking about himself. Sorry. He just had no recognizable spark.
9
PatrickatNYTimes. No need to be facetious young man, there is recent history, past history, as well as a host of such referrals. We can go all the way back to Richard Nixon and his ilk if you like. Or even Herbert Hoover, another ineffective person. Seems to me analyzing Presidential histories most GOPs in the White House have been either scandal ridden or disastrous one way or another. Today we have a person whose lifestyle alone is thoroughly distasteful engaging in wrecking every accomplishment of his predecessor out of nothing but sheer spite. The present Republication Party bears absolutely no resemblance to its founder Abraham Lincoln more's the pity.
19
“I could see farther ahead than anybody” and he warned about 9/11 on September 6, 2001.
Well, he does have an ego, but he couldn’t see far enough ahead to know that his behavior while campaigning for president was risky? And warning about some kind of terrorist event happening five days before the planes crashed into the World Trade Center was no better (in fact, a lot less insightful) than Roosevelt knowing that the Japanese were going to attack, somewhere sometime.
Given that the U.S. had already suffered terrorists attacks, remember Oklahoma and the car bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993, Hart’s warning was more hindsight than foresight.
4
Seems that everyone but politicos understand you can't have your cake and eat it too.
7
Maureen writes about media and public reactions to extramarital affairs, "The standards remain subjective, inconsistently applied and partisan." True, but also the #MeToo movement has intervened. If not for it, Americans might have "grown up" and become more "European" in their view of politicians' sex escapades. But powerful men taking advantage of young women's vulnerabilities has now complicated the issue greatly and for the good. Remember Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the married promiscuous French politician who allegedly assaulted a chamber maid? This is a mature, "European"-style approach to sex that our culture will likely now spurn. And from Bill Cosby onward, we've seen it's not only European, but as American as apple pie.
3
Well, there is a difference between a man accused of womanizing and a sexual predator. Clinton and Trump, and perhaps old man Bush would fall into the latter category. FDR, LBJ, Ike, and Hart would be in the former. I don't know about JFK, he was pretty sleazy. In the broadest sense, no one knows if Hart would have been elected. It is highly probable that 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq would have never happened if Al Gore had become President. And as a final thought, a Barack Obama comes along maybe once in a hundred years.
17
Wow. It takes a huge ego to run for President, but an even bigger one to think that an individual, alone, would have had such a dramatically positive impact on the world. Imagine if I had become President......
Hart was probably capable, as are MANY out there. We had 8 years of a man convinced that he descended from the heavens to transform America. Yes, Obama. And he played the divisiveness to his political advantage and splintered the country. And no- while some may be racist, it was not, in most cases, because of his race. It was his ego that thought he could transform the country and that he was absolutely right.
We need less people like Hart and Obama who are convinced that they are the answer. The President is not the answer. The President should be a uniter and let the people answer the questions of what is right. We did not have that with Obama, and sure as heck don't have it now.
6
@Ny Surgeon " We had 8 years of a man convinced that he descended from the heavens to transform America."
Any citation for this lie? I don't ever recall him making any statement close to this.
12
@Ny Surgeon,
Obama, divisive?
6
This guy thinks so highly of himself. Clearly, he believes he has a first rate mind, great ability to predict the future. If only people listened to him....
“Always keep one thing in mind: 9/11 could have been prevented.”
And this is when the obvious question immediately comes to mind. So, what exactly did he propose in his report in January in 2001, that would have prevented the Islamic terrorist attack in 9/11? He is ready to tell us, Mareen Dowd is on the edge of her seat.... Now we will hear the truth... But nothing comes. No explanation. No detailed plann emerges. It’s just an unsubstantiated claim designed to inflame people, not inform them.
6
With health care/ "pre-existing conditions" now the current rage on warring pre-election TV ads, one thing is certain: whether Hart was president or the Bushes, the health care system would still be run for the benefit of the large insurance companies who have co-opted politicians of both major parties.
Hart as president would have done what every other president has done -- early on met with leaders of Corporate America, particularly the auto makers, and heard how "skyrocketing" health care costs had to be curbed by taking away patients' freedom of choice to preserve America's global competitiveness. Detroit may have taken a back seat to Silicon Valley in some areas, but not in its influence on making if hard for doctors and patients to make decisions without third party interference.
5
If I had invested in the struggling young computer company called Apple back when it was proposing computers for personal use(the idea!) I would be having my personal secretary dashing off a response to Ms. Dowd's "what could'a happened" column. But I did not and my personal secretary left me for a preacher man.
7
and didn't the press pile on...!
and did anyone in the corps, including the NYT take the trouble to examine that?...looks like the same is happening with trump...today he's on the fire for giving advantages to big companies complicit in the financial crises that was born and raised in past (democrat) administrations....no trump voter here but one certain that the ship, now listing to starboard, is no better off than when its list was to port...the keel, a free and fair press, serves no one if its bent either way.
1
Comparing all these philanderers you mention in this commentary to trump:
Is like comparing Ghandi to Mickey Sabbath!
Speaking of which -Who does he remind you of here in Roth's description of him?
“I can’t really tell objectively how sorry I should feel for myself. I don’t give the same credibility to my being that other people give to theirs. Everything feels acted.”
“Everything is acted.”
“Whatever. With me there’s some glue missing, something fundamental to everyone else that I don’t have. My life never seems real to me.”
― Philip Roth, Sabbath's Theater
1
Maureen Dowd's column reads well but is ultimately unconvincing. In the 30 years since Gary Hart's failed attempt to be president of the USA, he has actual accomplishments have been meager--and true evidence of the man's abilities.
6
A world historical event occurred in "seven days in May" 1987.
The November 1988 election fell very near the 25th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The Democratic Party had positioned itself to run as its nominee for president the 51 year old Colorado US Senator Gary Hart, who bore a not-superficial resemblance to JFK, and to mobilize the electorate for what amounted to a restoration of the Kennedy legacy. (Hart had served as a young attorney in RFK's Justice Department.)
Hart planned to mobilize hundreds of thousands-to-millions of non-conservatives drawn primarily from his own Silent Generation and the more idealistic oriented members of the baby-boom generation to serve as volunteers in a presidential campaign which was to have been a historic showdown with our conservative opponents for the hearts, minds and souls of our fellow Americans following two toxic terms of Reagan-Bush extreme conservatism.
The campaign also promised to coincide with the end of the US-USSR Cold War in an orderly rational manner and to have created “a better world" (in media mogul Ted Turner's phrase). Hart had held crucial meetings with USSR general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in December of 1986 and issued an invitation to Mr. Gorbachev to attend Hart's inauguration should he have won and been sworn-in on January 20, 1989. Peaceable US-USSR (and post-USSR) relations for the 21st-century would've been set.
We got a media-Hart "flame war" instead.
4
Hart elides how he made sure everyone knew he had a squeeze for any given night. Droit de seigneur throughout his campaign.
4
This discusses an important issue, but, unfortunately does not define it.
One facet involves America's adolescent ideas of romance, love and sex. Another circles the nexus of the license the MSM took from Watergate to turn a pitiless and unrestricted regard on every aspect of the lives of public figures, along with Murdock's coarsening and commercialization of 'journalism.'
The Hart events certainly provide data for such a discussion.
Then you say this: We have not reached any consensus on the issue, except that most strategists know better than to publicly trash the women at the center of such scandals.
I believe your column may have been hacked; this lacks your usual grounding. Surely Professor Christine Blasey Ford would suggest otherwise.
2
Dear Maureen-thanks for sharing a fairy tail that wags the tail of the dog of politics. My question to you is if Mr. Hart thought of himself as so pivotal to the order of the world, why did he make such a gross faux pas with regards to his frisky male narcissism? Shouldn't he have had the ability to look to the future and see what his Eros consequences of dalliances would be? It always baffles me what clouded thinking egoists have.
14
Ms. Clinton was an unfortunate candidate for the presidency in '16, one of the few people who could lose to Donald Trump. Ms. Dowd pointed this out, while still promoting her over her opponent. The election result proved Ms. Dowd to be correct in her assessment. Her ongoing vilification by the normally thoughtful, intellegent, commentators does not bode well for the ability of the Democratic Party to deal realistically with the challenges facing it, and by extension given the nature of the other political party, for the country itself.
We're playing hardball politics here, not attending a cat show.
Politics is about what's possible, not what ought to be, no matter how pretty it might be to think so.
4
"The adultery story enhanced the sense that he was an enigma, a story line that developed when the press learned that he had changed his name from Hartpence and fudged his age by a year."
"I had only one talent and it wasn’t traditional politics — I could see farther ahead than anybody.’’
So maybe what goes on in Colorado should stay in Colorado.
And Hart still wonders why he could not overcome the scandal and be elected president? Evidently, to him, it was "history's fault."
“'sans moi, le deluge' grandiosity" (perfect description)
Although Hart is not the only politician suffering from this affliction, it appears to be a significant contributor to the kinds of people who self-select themselves into politics.
A friend of my says, this is the problem with politics and lots of executive and boss positions--the wrong kinds of ego-obsessed people go into politics or lust after some job.
The best people, she says, are the ones who don't want a high office but must be recruited heavily by others to agree to be considered for the office--and then they secretly hope they don't get the position.
4
Maureen, let’s look forward!
4
Gary Hart still wonders what might have been, 'cause it WASN'T HIM.
4
In the retrospectoscope, it's easy to change history; If only it had been me, if only I had taken the other path, everything would be different. In reality, Hart showed, by his easy surrender that he did not have the guts to do the job. The same could be said of Al Franken. Doing a very good job as Senator, he couldn't outrun his comedic personality which earned him a spanking by Gillibrand and he had to run home to Mama. Both could have said simply, I deny it and faced the fury of the press with head held high. Neither did and that act speaks for itself. As is said, If you can't the stand heat, stay out of the kitchen and don't try to rewrite history with a series of what-ifs.
11
Between the Hart-Rice setup and the Willie Horton ad, there aren't words for the damage that Lee Atwater did to us -- and to many other people around the world.
9
Hart didn't win the election. The hypothesis is counter factual. Lee Atwater pulled a Nixonesque dirty trick that changed the election and brought a weaker candidate to the nomination. Short of proving Atwater's trick, Bush who had other dirty tricks that he was a part of, Bush was going to win the 88 election. The Democrats were still in the same boat as the Labor party in the UK- unelectable to the highest office. Dick Cheney was Sec of Defense because John Tower was denied confirmation.
3
Bimbo eruptions and the unraveling of America? Methinks Maureen has a soft spot for craggy looks and expensive boots.
9
Two of the best parts of this Column from Ms. Dowd are: 1. Gary Hart and Clint Eastwood both have very similar facial features. Clint could play the part of Gary in a movie and Gary could play the part, or role, of Clint.
Point Number 2 is that I enjoyed and appreciated the mention of The Fort restaurant. It is good to read, and see, that some things do stay in business and remain the same decade after decade.
When I moved to Denver back in 1972, The Fort was one of the first Colorado restaurants at which I dined. And no doubt I sampled some of the famous "game." (Back in 1972 the game was probably more gamier than the refined game served today.
After all that has changed, it is reassuring to know that Maureen is following along on some of the same trails which, I, myself, have trod.
6
Started researching Gary Hart and came across this quote from a 2014 NY Times article:
But earlier, in New Hampshire, he had spoken of how Plato’s mistrust of passion had impressed him. “There are those in politics who substitute emotion and passion for substance, content and what I would generally call governance,” he said. “Who, because they don’t know where the country ought to be going or how to get there, rely more heavily on their ability to stir up people’s emotions.”
Certainly relevant to today!
28
How quaint the Hart "scandal" seems now. At least no politician will ever again be ruined because s/he has a questionable past. Not after Trump. Both parties have lost the right to be outraged anymore by the sexual activity of a candidate. In fact, there's almost nothing that will disqualify a candidate for office now. We can never object to behavior once called unacceptable, because we've accepted it all from Trump. It's not that the bar has been lowered, it's that there is no longer a bar.
29
@Ms. Pea
I would like to think you are right but it might be that no Republican will be disqualified for office after Trump.
Those same evangelical voters who support Trump would never accept that behavior in Obama.
5
No use worrying about what might have been now. But going forward, the media has an enormous responsibility. It needs to stop running after every shiny but meaningless piece of oppo research that gets whispered to it or made up by a pundit or a president. Instead, the media needs to put politicians to the Hart test: how knowledgeable is the candidate about the things a president needs to know (I.e. history, the constitution, norms, economics, trade policy, treaties, immigrant contributions to the USA, climate change science, what is or is not a dog whistle, etc). How plausible and fact-based is the candidate’s vision of the future? How much self control — whether in terms of bombs one throws or who one sleeps with — does a candidate have? If a candidate can pass the Hart test, he or she can be considered qualified to be president.
6
Maybe there was a reason you did not become the President.
9
But the problem with sex is that people get married and vow fidelity, and then when they break the vow, automatically they are immoral. Yet it does seem right to be with a single person and have children; and be faithful. It's a pretty picture, there's nothing like it when it works out. However, freedom to have an encounter outside the marriage seems right too -- and fuggedaboudit, people need it, life demands it. This is also connected to how long we live and how early the sex drive is manifesting -- people are going to have sex lives stretching over three-quarters of a century. Surely that requires a new social dispensation. Pre-marriage, marriage, post-marriage. It's what is happening anyway, isn't it? Let´s organize this essential human area and take morality away from the prudes, for Heaven's sake! And make a new common sense.
10
Maybe some like your view. Maybe some do not.
Prudes? Yes, and parents have children. The bar is higher for them. If you cannot honor that standard, don’t have kids.
2
@pedroshaio Antropologist Margaret Mead beat you to it.
2
"Before Hart, we had F.D.R., L.B.J. and J.F.K., who did not suffer politically for dalliances because the mostly male press corps had a bro-code and a blind eye."
The bro-code was a small part of it, but while FDR and JFK's philandering were largely whispered about as gossip, what changed was the monetizing of professional journalism--follow the money.
In the old days, it might have been considered "bad taste" for "journalists" to engage in gossip. We had gossip columnists and movie magazines for that.
But somewhere along the way when the business modeled became the boiler plate for running every organization from companies selling stuff, to schools, health care, and the media, it was all about the money and the bottom line.
Newsrooms used to be largely left alone to produce what they considered to be professional journalism (Ed Murrow style) Then the executives were told to bring in more revenue, lowly business manager became CFOs, the executive offices began to care and meddle in what news organizations wrote and said. The goal became not high quality journalism, but to increase sales, advertising revenue, and market share.
How to do that? Look at what was selling. Sleazy tabloid newspapers at checkout counters, gossipy movie magazines. Paparazzi darting around taking compromising photos to sell to the media.
The Hart scandal was one of the first to be let loose
SO, here we are now $$$: tabloid news, TV, Internet; a tabloid president, junk politics—not you NYT
13
Wow, so we cannot change the past....get over it and help the country move forward
VOTE
8
He's still better looking than most of today's politicians isn't he?
4
Today in self-serving nonsense, another white man felled by his sense of indomitable privilege and proclivity for hot young blondes, expresses regret--not for himself, mind you, but for the loss 'we' all endured by not having him as president.
23
Democrats have famously been hobbled for too long by having consciences, whereas Republicans have not. At the center of The GOP’s craven political philosophy is the belief that the end justifies the means, enabling crookedness and lies to spawn both their choices of presidential candidates and the political strategies that elect them. Enabling everything is an antiquated election system that favors an agrarian, anti-information mindset put in place to placate slaveholders and kept in place because of race. I personally don’t see a way we can elect the best presidential candidates, such as an Eric Garcetti, or anyone from, say, California, with the Electoral College albatross hanging around our necks. Nor can I see a way to elect them if the press continually tries to prove its moral bonafides by trashing imperfect Democratic candidates because they do have consciences and giving a pass to GOP candidates like Trump who would admittedly prove tougher to take on.
16
Don't you give them a pass either.
You don't think them a Grand Old Party. So why do you keep calling them one?
Strip them of their imputed grandeur.
Just call them by their name.
Do I ask too much?
1
@Lorem
Using GOP is just a writing technique to avoid using the word Republican too often. Often when I use “GOP,” I add “-ers” on the end, coarsening the word a little for those, like me, who do not like that party in any way.
1
Another good man could have really made a positive contribution and the fool on the hill would have landed in jail.
Where are the real profiles in courage ? Now when now there is a draft dodger nazi sympathizer in our White House saying all these dispicable lies over and over again.
Gary: just a cool old philandering cowboy intellectual know it all with expensive boots.
America don’t look for real courage from this old dem. And Ms. Dowd isn’t helping either.
America ,our only real profiles in courage and truth can only come from us ,the voter citizens.
America use your vote to save our democracy NOW.
8
I think the guy who could have changed history was the boring Al Gore. WE could have changed history if we'd just voted. I think Hart is likely a fine fellow, and I know that it takes quite a bit of confidence in one's self to run for a job as big as the President of the U.S. But I didn't love him, not in this article, which is quite different from acknowledging that he was sunk by dirty tricks. I found him more like John Edwards and less like Gore and Kerry, both of whom served their country. Despite the privilege conveyed by their wealth and the protections it may have afforded Gore in particular: they served in the active military during the war.
19
@wanda
Gore wrote for Stars and Stripes in the military and never came close to combat. No revisionist history please.
2
@AG
I thought the definition of "serving in the military" was "serving in the military." I didn't know those serving in the military, who don't see combat, aren't serving in the military.
Thanks for clearing that up.
7
In the middle of troops being sent to borders and polls (WI), we pause to look back at--Gary Hart?
To the present: The most radical Democratic act has not been support of healthcare--something the GOP now embraces--it is the absolute rejection by party candidates of PAC and corporate funding from special interests, after being told over and over PAC-corp money is necessary to win.
12
@Walter Rhett
Well said.
1
At least she admits that she lives in a fantasy alternative reality. We got here due to corrupt and incompetent leadership that insisted that the US was no longer capable of being the country many remember. Trump promised to change that, and mostly he is delivering. Where he is not congress won't pass the correct laws. Answer is more Republicans in the congress who will vote for the policies they support and forget Tweets and style.
2
@vulcanalex I fear you are serious!!!!!!
6
@vulcanalex
I say respectfully: If the Lee Atwaters of this world stop the heinous smears, we'll stop tweeting.
4
@vulcanalex
I've said it before, the bill is coming.
$80,000 per taxpayer on our federal debt credit card.
If you don't know this, then you aren't doing your homework.
People talk about their rights but we also have responsibilities and one is to be an informed citizen.
And when Wall St. realizes the deficit is out of control, we might get another recession.
By that time Trump will be gone and a Democrat will be in office to clean up the Republican mess.
Again.
Just like Clinton cleaned up after Reagan and Obama cleaned up after W Bush.
In the meantime, Ryan and McConnell are already talking about cuts to Social Security and Medicare since after cutting taxes for the billionaire class, we won't have enough for our parents who paid into the system for 50 years.
10
Do not fail to mention that the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate even AFTER Bush was elected. In fact, they controlled the Senate with 55 seats. Many of the Republicans could have easily been moved to vote with Dems, like Durenberger ( MN) and Chaffee (RI), Roth (DE), etc. Pres. Hart could have signed significant legislation.
3
Democrats do not practice (at least so far) the cut throat disrespectful of the process politics that republicans have been - changing quotas and quorums, refusing to consider SC nominations, etc.
When Democrats are in the majority, the system of checks and balances works as designed. When republicans take power they overturn the game board and behave ruthlessly, threatening the entire system.
That is why, for the good of the entire country, so many conservative republicans are lately urging their own to vote blue.
1
@Ben K
You cannot be serious. Democrats believe in a tyranny of the majority. The tax policies advocated by mainstream democrats demean the efforts of those who work hard and generate great livings for themselves by redistributing it to those who do not. And until that rhetoric stops, the Republicans will continue to rule.
2
"There's nothing wrong with my character". Apparently self-awareness is not one of Mr. Hart's strong suits. Remember it wasn't just that reporters were skulking in bushes trying to play gotcha -- Mr. Hart dared them to follow him and catch him inamorata. They did and he did.
This was a giant of narcissism who may not have pursued the same actions as Presidents did, but rest assured, he would have pursued his own follies and dragged the country along with him.
16
Hart was smart, insightful, respectful of talented people and would have made a very good President.
The fact that he failed to gain the nomination in 1988 when it was his to have provides a lesson for Democratic candidates now and for the future. It is that they must be and appear to be morally upright. Bill Clinton's failed second term was largely because of his sexual predation with an intern, though an adult. And this happened as the leaders of the GOP condemnation team were engaged in infidelity on a massive scale.
The upright life of Barack Obama is an example of how he was never vulnerable because of his personal relationships.
The Republican Party and its media subsidiaries, such as Fox Cable News and radio personalities such as Limbaugh, are addicted to personal scandals. While their candidates and Office Holders at the highest level have so many scandals, their base includes so many hypocrites, cash-driven Evangelicals and paid political hit-men such as Atwater and Stone, that a Democratic candidate must both be and appear morally pure lest their aspirations be dashed as happened to Hart.
Fortunately, I think all the visible Democratic candidates for President in 2020 have taken that lesson to heart.
13
All presidents change history! Some for the better - some for the worse. It's your opinion which.
3
The American people forget that our candidates and presidents are human beings. (Well, Nixon was an anomaly). They dwell in a fantasy world of purity and wholesomeness. The populace swoons with admiration over a candidate's children, and ignores the coupling that made the children possible.
Take our sanctimonious VP Pence as an example. The man glows in the dark. He achieved the highest office in Indiana where the people think that any sexual position, other than missionary, is a perversion. It is impossible to picture Pence in the sensual act of procreation. Try it. His scrubbed holiness and neatly manicured head need only a robe and halo to compete the image of chaste sainthood. Quite a contrast with his boss--Saints and Sinners comes to mind.
Hmm, does anyone think if Pence were the presidential candidate, he would have chosen Trump as his running mate?
15
@FJG Of course not, but Pence did not even run and he would have lost to corrupt Clinton.
3
Both Maureen Dowd and Ross Douthat fill out their columns today with hypotheticals while we wait to see how brazenly the right wing will try to steal elections (and our democracy) on Tuesday.
19
@gwr
Well said.
2
It is grandiosity. Gary Hart was/is a smart guy, but he's seven feet tall only in his own mind and perhaps among a few of his admirers. He self-destructed for a reason. He was never a Mt. Rushmore figure in the making.
W. wasn't elected president; Gore was. That stolen election was what led to Trump; the implosion of Gary Hart 30 years ago is hard to connect with the present political environment. To say that if Hart had been elected in '88 (by no means a certainty) the Gulf War and 9/11 wouldn't have happened, and climate change would've been dealt with, is idle speculation that lacks any factual basis.
Let's live in the present instead of romanticizing a guy who never actually accomplished much in life.
15
@Jon Harrison A "smart guy" would not have done the stupid thing he did. He is "stupid" and as usual arrogant.
10
We have lost our way. Overwhelmingly our political leadership is errant. Failed political vision and egregious ethical lapses have degraded our Nation. Trump, an abysmally incompetent, self serving bigot is now at the helm. Who will defy the demands of the ultra wealthy and their industries? Like Hart we are all morally compromised as the product of an evolutionary process that awarded brutal savages for their dominance. Violence and heartless triumph is in our DNA. Trump simply adds profound hatred and dishonesty crafted well before by Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. We are but beasts, all of us, in a jungle transformed by astonishing advances in science yet have failed to create a democracy that fosters the involvement of us all in communities responsive to the needs of each person for safety, security, peace, equal opportunity, protection of the vulnerable, education and health care for our children as essential components of a just and vibrant society. We should and could be a collaborative community guided by the needs of each citizen yet, Utopia will never be ours. Instead, conflict manifest in utterly destructive warfare will lead to extinction that clearly awaits humanity. Who will lead? Many hearken back to Christ as the hope for us all. Yet, even with His message of love and compassion religions and religious leaders have fallen into hate filled conflict and predatory conduct including even its priesthood. Can we face the abyss? Can we find a leader who will save us?
1
Trump and the Brain-less and Ball-less Presidency.
Gary Hart and the Clinton Presidency is the more apt and accurate party political and governing experience comparison. Trump is a Yankee real estate wealth heir and reality TV star.
2
What an ego. As big now as was his libido. Pass.
8
If you take the parallel time idea logically enough, then WE are existing in a parallel time relative to the one where he was elected. I cannot also help but notice the irony that in changing his name from "Hartpence" to "Hart," along with President Trump, we have VP Pence. Maybe he should have kept his birth name and spared us of this other Pence.
3
Oh please. Don’t trot out Gary Hart as a woulda coulda shoulda with a lot of whataboutism thrown in. We have more to worry about right now.
21
The difference between JFK, Clinton, Hart and Trump is the fact that their relationships were consensual. No one put a gun to Ms Rice's head and made her fly from Miami to DC. Ms Lewinsky was an adult woman and not a 14 year old victim. Nobody twisted Marilyn's arm to 'hang out' with JFK or Lucy Mercer with FDR. They hurt their wives not the Republic. Trump is different. His night with the porno star was cruel to Melania at home with a new baby. But when you hear Trump bragging about grabbing Women's genitals without consent it is vastly different. Many women like sleeping with power or rock stars but not being assaulted. When I was younger I had a dalliance with married man. It was his choice and my choice and his wife didn't mind. But I once had a man put his hand up the back of my skirt and grab me while walking up stairs and he was going down. It was an awful experience.
Yes the might have beens. I go back to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Had it not happened I think there would have been no Nixon and on it goes. I also don't think he cheated on Ethel.
12
@amp,
There is actually a published note from one of the Kennedy women to Marilyn Monroe saying the family knew that she and Robert were "an item", and inviting her to come with him sometime to a gathering.
1
"After Hart, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump got through frenzies about sexual transgressions by enduring the ridicule, enlisting their wives to defend them on TV, and attacking their accusers."
You cannot compare a consensual dalliance with the behavior of a chronic aggressor who publicly boasts about grabbing unwilling female strangers by their genitalia. Don't even put them in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence.
And yes, Hart is correct. Had Bush and Chaney paid a lick of attention, or worse not been willfully ignorant, 9/11 could have been averted. So had the Supreme Court not stolen the election, history might similarly have been altered. And with Gore at the helm, climate change would have been addressed earlier and more proactively, which in the bigger picture is the overwhelming force that will overshadow the petty interactions of groups of humans.
8
So much rubbish. If's cannot be used to judge history. How does Gary Hart even know he would have been elected? Hilary was already moving her furniture into the White House and look what happened. Bernie Sanders and any socialist would be the end of America as we know it.
8
@Henry Tobias
Bernie Sanders grew to such popularity for just such a reason. There are many of us who want an end to America as it has come to be. We see the place that Bernie tells us is possible and we long for it.
2
@woodswoman
You want to end America as it has become? You do not have a place in America. America has done very well. What Bernie wants is an America where people are free to not work, while those who do support them. That is the death of the America we have become, the America we were, and the America we will be. Hello Venezuela north.
2
Life turns on a dime, small events bare monumental results. 500 uncounted votes in Florida, followed by Bush V Gore gave us the wrath of dirty Dick Cheney. Howard Dean howling at the moon ended his political career. A mere 70,000 votes swung three states to Trump and now we are on the verge of Fascism and the end of our fragile democracy. And, of course your Gary Hart story. Little things can change lives and the course of history. Voting is the biggest thing you can do so, VOTE!
8
Hart’s a pompous fraud. He has zero bearing on history except for his lousy judgement and thinking with his smaller head. He got exactly what he deserved. He’s a nothing....
13
Literally yesterday's news. Who cares?
9
Ms Dowd is a much better writer when she is not ridiculing someone or trying to be funny by being snide and superior. This was a refreshing change. Perhaps she has learned from her decades long career of attacking HRC that words do matter.
6
Sounds like Hart is a bitter old survivalist. He trashed his marriage and political ambitions for sex. No pity for him and his ilk.
12
The one thing that stands out about Hart’s supposed prescience is the first attack on the World Trade Center was Feb 1993, a long 8 1/2 years before 9/11 and Hart’s prediction. As for neither Bush becoming president, that is hubris.
2
Back up a second.
Donna Rice is a Republican and "doesn't want to talk about it" in a column full of suggestion that she was part of a plot to take down a Democrat? And you're fine with her answer, won't hound her to death the way you did him?
Shame on you. "Leave me alone" is not an acceptable answer to a real journalist.
What you and the rest of the New York Times do is give Republicans passes. We see it every day.
Stop it.
Don't blame Gary Hart.
We know who is really to blame.
STOP giving Republicans PASSES! You give them hall passes all day and then wring your hands about it.
7
Lighten up Nancy. The closest Donna Rice came to being involved over the last 30 years with politics, other than an affair with Senator Hart, was being in a Kurt Russell and Stephen Segal movie about the Secretary of Defense ordering fighters to shoot down an airliner. Once people wash their hands of politics and take many long showers to remove crud of that profession, we do give them a pass.
I read this, and I come out the bottom not knowing more than I started with. Somehow, it feels like Mo had the same problem. There was nothing to really sink anything but a passing, mild snark into. It's kind of like our times. There are big things to think about --- in 50 years, we will have seen a cascading and ongoing series of environmental and human calamities that will make today's crises of starvation, refugee caravans and genocide seem mild. Hell's fire, we can't solve much of anything because the only folks stepping up to the leadership podium are demagogues and morons. On one hand, if you yell and act tough, one group of folks will follow you; if you appeal to reason and decency, no one will listen for long. We are heading toward a future where only loud and evil sells!
The Gary Hart moral: Real humans of any sex-- and there are more than two-- best keep their pants on. The morality cops are waiting in the proverbial bushes. Granted we shouldn't abide abuses of power in private or public affairs, but sexual finger waving is so much easier than grappling with thornier issues of right and wrong or real and false. Not to diminish real wrongs; they happen every second somewhere, but this sort of issue is like our proverbial fiddle; we'll play it while the world burns.
2
Sure, a lot of Washington politicians used to "chase girls" and many still do. Those who are caught get drummed out of office -- unless their names are Clinton or Trump. I recall that House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills had to step down after a drunken fling with stripper Fanne Foxe, who tried to get away from police by jumping into the Tidal Basin. Al Franken's sin was mild in comparison and may have been a paid hit job by women associated with Fox News. And Hart's political demise was equally a hit job engineered by Lee Atwater. Politics is a dirty game and getting dirtier by the minute.
4
Nice tour of the past, in which mistakes were made by the press, but no one actually bears any blame.
It would be nicer, and more persuasive, if the writer included her own participation in slut shaming, such as when she wrote in the Times that Joyce Maynard was a "predator" for writing a memoir about her relationship as a very young woman with a much older J.D. Salinger, who pursued her inappropriately -- by today's standards, or, if you will, by any civilized standard -- and then tossed her aside when he lost interest in her.
6
@csp123
What mistakes by the press are you talking about? Gary Hart dared the press to follow him and that's exactly what they did. His behavior in the midst of a presidential campaign was stupefyingly arrogant. If he was that smug before even becoming President what would he have been like if he had actually been elected. He brought himself down. The press just let us know who he really was.
3
Wow that was a huge amount of space for a giant “who cares”.
You’re kidding me right. Ms. Dowd, you have been called a lightweight when it comes to being an Op-Ed columnist. This is why. Did you just want a vacation in Colorado? This is what you felt your final pre-midterm column should be about? What MIGHT have happened or not if, if, if, if...
Ms. Dowd, if my grandmother had, well let’s just say, a male anatomy, she would have been my grandfather. If Hoard Stern hadn’t interviewed Trump so many times... If the NY Post hadn’ Run so many stories... if Jen Bush had been more exciting... if Hillary hadn’t been so hated... yada yada yada.
I’m sorry but what a waste of time.
Oh, and by the way, it sounds to me like Hart is still lying. Yes he was an egregious philanderer.
Just sayin’
9
"I had only one talent and it wasn’t traditional politics — I could see farther ahead than anybody.’’ So far ahead he couldn't see the Lee Atwater and Donna Rice Do Gary Hart show, nor it's aftermath. Now he's off the grid and wearing thousand-dollar boots, so maybe his tremendous vision will give him a few extra years of self-deluding what-ifs.
11
If Gary Hart truly could see the future of political and social evolution, he would have been so focused on his mission to become President that he never would have had his Donna Rice moment.
There are millions of invisible alternative realities for everyone, and they're all just twitches of imagination. Kind of like thoughts or prayers they mean nothing except to the person whose having them.
The real problem with Gary Hart and Donna Rice is the country they lived in. Who anyone decides to love is their own business.
Given the optics of 30 years ago, Gary Hart wasn't visionary enough to either not have his affair, or handle the press when he did. How can anyone give him credit for being so much brighter in the political world?
5
He dared the reporters to tail him. Don't forget that.
4
For those who in NH volunteered for his first campaign, the possibility of his winning the presidency still resonates. A stay at home young mother joined his campaign before I did. A young stay at home mom myself, I welcomed Jeanne Shaheen into our home for coffee and good conversation about what was powerful about this man--telling it straight, no frills, stern face on a billboard cowboy who knew his stuff, no waffling, smiles rare but infectious. Another mother on the campaign was working as a landscaper at the time. She went on to become mayor of Ashville NC. Other of our friends went on to start up international hunger foundations, become major sponsors to national public media. Other like me just went back to mothering, to teaching, and also to hoping.
I'm not a notable person myself but will canvass 6 hours on Maine's remote gravel roads for someone who is a decent alternative to the congressman we've been stuck with--a no nothing, tell nothing man whose every response in a debate begins with "You radical Socialist." Like the President Gore we never had, Gary Hart would indeed have changed things for the better.
7
All politicians have one thing in common-Gigantic, Immeasurable Egos. The differences between the good and bad ones are their levels of intelligence, compassion and empathy.
Mr. Hart has the necessary ego, but I'm not sure what else he has. To think that he alone is responsible for this nightmare that is today's politics and he alone could have saved the world if we had only been smart enough to support him is Donald Trumpish.
7
Dabbling in anachronistic thought-experiments, I see.
The revelation we do not need a historical comparison to see is that Moral Majority Christian “values” have always been a mask for racist interests. It took con man tRump to set the record straight.
Now we know.
7
In 1997 I ran into Donald Trump at Balthazar Restaurant in NYC, he was enjoying the evening with a heavily made up, dyed blonde with very large implants. The woman was not Marla Maples his wife of the moment. There was no press, no one cared. I'm still in utter disbelief that women with daughters, granddaughter, nieces, etc. voted for this sleazy, blowhard. Ladies, vote on the 6th like you children's lives depend upon it, because they do.
As our Italian agent once said "the wolf he never become a lamb".
24
Maureen, your work always attracts attention, but let's face it. If you had written two articles, this one and another entitled My Naked Romp in Central Park, which do you think we'd go for first?
Sex, our favorite biological imperative, always grabs the headlines. Unfortunately, it has been weaponized in politics. Some people get away with their serial dalliances. Nobody was surprised that JFK could handle the Cuban Missile Crisis, but how could he resist Marilyn Monroe? Donald Trump is the farthest thing you could imagine from JFK, both in character and desirability, so how could he resist a willing sex worker?
The big problem is that everyone knows women are powerful. Religious fanatics fear them and want to control them. Men who try to use them often find they're being used right back. Take that, male ego.
In politics, unlike Gary Hart, Mata Hari's legacy lives on.
12
How about a column by you, Ms Dowd - where you reflect on your part in vilifying Secretary Clinton. Sadly, I don't see it happening any time as that requires humility and self reflection.
28
I really can't stand this kind of "what if" narrative. If a bull had breasts he'd be a cow. Too laborious to read.
15
Future-past, future-present? Gary Hart is the Rosetta Stone of where we are! His only crime was being a founding member of the Church Committee at a time when GHW was head of the CIA.
2
As an outsider who reveres democracy I apologize for suggesting the US Constitution does not help democracy. It allowed slavery to exist 100 years and then 500 million died for what? a Jim Crow version of government. Your Constitution elects a President even with a minority that practically guarantees him four years. The candidate who looses the election does not become a stronghold of the opposition but seems to disappear into oblivion. This dictates that the Constition’s 7500 words are the opposition. The NYT commentators show how this opposition has been mangled to be supportive of authoritarian government and destroy democracy . Amounting to a cry in the wilderness.
5
@willans: But, you’re, like, in Argentina, man! Are you proposing that we adopt YOUR constitution? I’m thinking motes and beams here.
2
Woulda, shoulda, coulda. Yawn.
11
Very dearMs.Dowd:
If Hart had won in ’88, would Dick Cheney have finished his career with a golden parachute at Halliburton instead of a dark plunge into deranged global domination.
Previews (yours comment in mary dowd todays column) now,mine¨s , (if my grand mother had a tire, she might have been a bycicle.)
Any how. Ms. Dowd, your point of view possess great imaginative retroscope into the world of expectancy.congrats. yours,aev.
1
Wow, what a necessary column to be printed two days before voting in this important election. You are so out of touch it is sad.
15
"Sans moi le deluge" is fine but the usual or 'correct' expression is slightly less egotistic.It is : "apres moi le deluge."
8
Aside from Hart's respective merits and demerits, this column by Ms. Dowd is unusual, a change in seriousness. Without boring people, I don't buy all your logic here, Ms. Dowd. But you are now making a case for your position in an adult manner. Keep it up.
2
Hart fit that hip, cool Kennedy-esque feel that democrat elites long for - just look at the money being dumped on Beto in Texas and you can see this longing hasn't changed. In the end he was self-centered, made bad choices and seems to look down on everyone else (including Obama) as his intellectual inferiors.
3
Remember, Hart panicked because of the likes of Dowd and the left-wing purists and scandal mongers. These are the ones who brought down Al Franken - an article for Dowd down the line, say in 10 or 20 years? And they persist, no pun intended. And they drive away the qualified and talented in favor of the robotic and incompetent. Yes we need to get the vote out and get the Democrats back in office. All public offices. Once that's done, we need to stop this puritanical nonsense.
10
What possible difference does it make what Gary Hart thinks?
14
"Hart said, the 30-year-old outrage fresh in his voice. “I mean, everybody knew Ben Bradlee and Jack Kennedy chased girls.”" No, Gary, that is just the point. We didn't know any such thing. What we now know is that they had the clout and the dough to buy the press. Evidently, you didn't. JFK had the bucks not only to buy the girls, as you call them, but enough to spread about town. Bradlee was one of his boys. Robert wrecked the careers of those who didn't obey. You, on the other hand, knew more than anyone else in America, but not more than my mother. She had your number and so did most women who saw you standing there on TV with your pants down. What wrecked you and your superiority complex was the absurdity of a grown man believing he could fool everyone all of the time. But don't fret. You have one disciple: William Jefferson Clinton.
4
Enigmatic? Nonsense. Egotistical and adulterous is what he was.
But the Dems do love their glamor boys. Oh, they'd have saved the world if it hadn't been for their enigmatic nature. JFK cheating on Jackie, invading Cuba, authorizing the assassination of the president of Vietnam, and setting us up for a war that killed millions. Bill Clinton fooling around with young interns in the Oval Office and then lying to us with a straight face when caught. John Edwards cheating on his sick wife and fathering a child with his mistress.
Hating Trump is fine. But wondering what-if about Hart? Ridiculous, Ms Dowd.
4
Great OP slogan for 2020: Vote for the ugly guy - it's important!
Everything supposedly unprecedented about Gary Hart was not in any way unprecedented.
1) In 1960, political eons before Gary Hart's presidential runs in which he touted his supposedly "new Ideas" (which were wonderfully satirized in 1984 by Walter Mondale, who in the course of asking for specifics about his new ideas, exclaimed, "Where's the beef.") Daniel Bell wrote, in "The End of Ideology," that old labor v. business ideological disputes were less important and that the issue wasn't left v right but simply getting good managers.
2) In 1967, in "The New Industrial State, John Kenneth Galbraith, said that ideologies of the old smoke stack industries were becoming extinct or at least irrelevant and that the Us and USSR were "converging" in their economic theories as both nations were adopting the idea of a mixed economy.
3) Finally, the pollution of politics with sexual gossip, slander and scandal did not start with Gary Hart. Unfortunately most people can't look more than a few decades into the past.
In any event, When John F Kennedy's grandfather (who was mayor of Boston) ran for the Senate in 1916, his campaign floundered because of a poem/song, about his sexual escapades with a woman known as Toodles. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the song went like this: "A whisky glass and Toodles' a__ made a Horse's a__ of Honey Fitz (The nickname of Mayor Fitzgerald)
2
How did we get here?
• The non-democratic Electoral Collge
• The defeat of the Fairness Doctrine
• Racism (masked as conservative Christian “values”)
• Misogyny (Maureen...?)
• A citizenry that has never understood the broad personal commitment that democracy requires
9
This columnist can fantasize all she wants about what might have been with Hart. But when we had a Hart-like president named Obama, she relentlessly attacked him as Obambi
10
The main lesson hear for Democrats and other true Patriots, is that there is no "High Road" to ever take when dealing with Donald Trump. This is a street fight and you need to fight the modern rumor mill/fast news attacks from the Republicans and the White House with fire. You cannot take a pair of "soft gloves" to a knife fight.
If not, Hart's prophecy of bad leadership will remain our national nightmare
3
Two words: Monkey Business. If you wife couldn't trust you, neither could the American people.
3
@Jeezlouise But a lot of people voted for Trump anyway
1
Just another slow news day at the Times and Ms. Dowd dusted off and updated a piece on Gary Hart. Just a waitin' on November 7.
7
Kneecapping. Like what happened to Al Franken. Honey pot is another term. Political assassins seem to be like the flies buzzing around garbage piles. Just hoping for a cheap victory. The fact of the matter is that after the paint job, we never heard much from Gary hart. Just like we do not hear anything from Franken. If trump upended the political order, he did it by not letting setbacks faze him at all. In fact he embraces controversy. I personally do not like anything about trump. However he succeeded because he was fearless and just did not give a damn what you printed or give a damn about what he did. Guess what? He was spot on. The Christian conservatives were so hungry for victory, that they were willing to get into bed with the devil. We all knew they were phoney baloneys in the first place. Those so called politicos misread the mood. The future politicians in this country will need to learn and follow. The democrats need to stand up and stop being afraid of their own semantics. Pick yourself up Al, get out there and do something.
8
I've always felt that there are brilliant, qualified people out there who could do amazing things in the presidency, but the parties control who gets the nod to run. Bernie Sanders 2016 is a classic case. The parties put puppets in who will do the bidding of the donors first and maybe listen to the people on an issue or two. They put puppets in that can be controlled. Trump is no exception. He's just a disaster of a human being so shocking that it forces us to see the truth in what our politics and the lying have become. Hart may have been an amazing president, but I do think women are now a very different force then they were in the 70's and 80's. The electorate is changing and it can't come fast enough for me. I don't think we can sink any lower than where we are now.
12
@Laura I hope you are right. This is what I thought when Ronald Reagan first became President.
8
Matt Bai thinks journalists have the responsibility to judge???
Reporters have the responsibility to report. Opinion writers can express their judgements. Don’t confuse the two.
Trump has amply and regrettably demonstrated that good moral character is a disadvantage to a political candidate. Any Trump supporter who brings up moral character to bash a candidate should be given the scarlet letter of “H” for hypocrite to wear.
18
@Rita it is the lefties that are immune to the letter H and all of Trumps alleged misdeeds took place before he became president. The same can not be said for modern Democrat presidents[excluding Carter].
1
@Rita
Reporters have a responsibility to report and that includes context and underlying facts.
2
@Rita, Ha Ha! Are you so naive to think that an accusation of hypocrisy would stumble Republicans? Apparently, you have not been paying attention to the abject hypocrisy of Republicans over the past few decades.
For Republicans, hypocrisy is a badge of honor. They promote Policy A on Monday and if that does not prove to be expedient they do a 180° and promote Policy Z on Tuesday. Yes, they switch positions that quickly and do so with no shame or embarrassment. That is why they overtly support and enable Trump today.
4
As my daughter tells me, I am so 50's, but, no matter how effective a political leader might be, there personal lives do matter to me---I feel that men who are careless with their marriages will be careless with our country or state or county. I guess what I am trying to describe is the essential ingredients of character---discipline, loyalty, integrity, honesty, fidelity--all of these traits matter--missing even one in a leader would in my mind result in a careless, maybe reckless decision making process. Not that we mortal average citizens live out all these traits, but, our leaders should.
15
Maybe we do get the government that we deserve. LoL
We've had the Walt Disney America and now the Trump America..
6
Yes, but there would have been different catastrophes. The idea of Hart being elected and not having major problems is ridiculous. The tragedies would just have been different.
17
Hart might have made a good president, and just by being elected he might have prevented a lot of the awfulness that happened after him. But this best friend of the unreconstructed Warren Beatty (back when Beatty was a famous bad boy) got caught cavorting with a beautiful young woman who was not his wife when anyone with any sense would know that wouldn't fly with the electorate. A man that clueless really had no business running for president. Is it too much for Democrats to ask that we have a candidate who doesn't have a bunch of salacious skeletons in his closet?
7
In 1948, LBJ stole the TX Senate race from Coke Stevenson by stuffing ballot boxes in South TX. This launched him on his national political career. Johnson, with all his faults, merited a 3-volume bio from Robert Caro. If you only read the first volume, Path to Power...it is time well spent. I've always voted Democrat in my 66 years and there's a lot about LBJ that is disgusting, especially his handling of Vietnam. LBJ gets a 3-volume history and Hart gets the footnote mention he deserves. That's the reality, not the "what ifs" trotted out here.
8
@Economy Biscuits
Coke Stevenson said during every election process that he ran “on his record” and didn’t have time for campaigning. Caro’s first volume deftly points out how LBJ was the first to use media efficiently. He also suffered through kidney stones but soldiered on with determination. South Texas Democrats only knew one way to vote. Their jobs and their lives depended on it No ballot stuffing was really necessary.
2
@Economy Biscuits Yes, three volumes. And we're waiting for the fourth.
1
What about 1968? Or 1972? The Democrats are the Washington Generals - they cannot close the deal. They have bad messaging and terrible leaders.
More and more I am planning to retire outside of America, it just ain't cool here.
5
@Mogwaig: Good luck finding a safe secure place to live if the US tanks. For all our mistakes we’ve been the guarantor of the world’s peace and stability, and there is no replacement in sight
2
there is no such thing as a history of "if". move on.
11
@salvatore spizzirri I agree, in a sense. Speculation is inherently personal.
Kirsten Gillibrand bullying Al Franken out of the Senate - without the hearing Franken requested and because the accusers included several women who had long associations with FOX NEWS - was indefensible.
Roger Stone - who's back in the news this week because Robert Mueller has a target on his back - "predicted" Al Franken was 'facing time in the barrel' before Franken's first accuser - a woman associated with FOX NEWS - went public. This is identical to Stone predicting 'time in the barrel' for John Podesta before WikiLeaks dumped the hacked DNC/Hillary emails. Robert Mueller has spent months investigating that one.
It's possible the accusations against Franken were a 'dirty trick' by Roger Stone to get rid of Franken. Franken had spent years irritating right wingers like Rush Limbaugh long before he was in the Senate. It's possible - even likely - Al Franken was set up by Roger Stone in the ultimate 'dirty trick.' Many people who've known Al Franken over 40 yrs went public saying they found the accusations unbelievable.
Al Franken would still be in the Senate - & still be our very best, smartest, most progressive senator - if Kirsten Gillibrand hadn't self-righteously jumped on him & organized a mob to push him out without a hearing.
Kirsten Gilibrand may be the best friend Roger Stone ever had.
And given Gilibrand's character, she'll never admit she was wrong to destroy Al Franken's career.
And she'll never admit she was Roger Stone's dupe.
63
Al Franken should run for Senate again. And Minnesota gets to decide if Franken should be their Senator.
23
@fast/furious
1,000 times, YES!! After everything I read, when I turn to the comments, I have a one word reply.....Franken. Kirsten Gillibrand shamelessly eliminated her most viable competitor. Unfortunately, very, very unfortunately, he was our best hope out of this nightmare.
11
I have read statistics showing that well over 50% of married people have had at least a brief fling sometimes down the line. It is part of human nature, it is something absolutely normal, and no amounts of fake religious indignation will change the truth. Besides, it has been shown many times that the worst offenders are actually the very "religious" people who rail about moral standards and seek to impose rigid religious rules on everyone else, while indulging in the most sordid behavior themselves.
On the other hand, what I cannot condone is the lack of decency and respect that people like Trump have consistently shown towards women. One thing is to have an affair during a bad patch of one's marriage, another thing is to hire porn stars to have sex while your wife is at home nursing a newborn baby.
The hypocrisy of Evangelicals and of all the other self described "moral majority" bigots stinks to high heaven. They have been willing to destroy people like Clinton and Hart simply because they represented liberal values, not because of any real moral indignation for their affairs. But they are more than willing to close their eyes and forgive everything, as long as it is a right-wing bigot that they are voting for.
15
Maureen hits a grand slam with a throw back look at the Gary Hart, the former "Senator Monkey Business". The philanderer blames himself for his shamelessness but points to "A list of names" who didn't get caught philandering in their time but offers up that he was separated from his wife during that timeline. How convenient to drag her into his ugly "caught moment" in a period where he was running as the golden boy candidate for the Presidency. He looks back at history and lambastes the Administrations that followed for ignoring vague warnings that terrorism would strike on US soil and that had he become President this perhaps have been avoided along with the multiple wars that followed. Without any doubt, after those pics on the boat with Donna Rice in Bimini sitting on Senator Gary Hart lap, wearing the "Monkey Business" t shirt speaks volumes as to his concerns. It's too bad the :Me Too Movement wasn't around then to support Ms. Hart his wife and Donna Rice both of whom were dragged into his taint by this unrepentant sloth.
4
We drive ourselves crazy with the what if game. If it wasn’t Hart, the neocons would have won some other way. The reality is that they want to win worse than the Dems.
4
Why can America not attract more Barak Obaman's to the Presidency?
What's wrong with finding men, or women, who are actually in love with their wives?
Those men and women exist.
Perhaps we should take a close look at Nikki Haley?
3
@Michael
By all means take a close look at Nikki Haley. You'll see an unprincipled Republican hack lying for Trump at the UN whenever she gets the chance.
1
It appears that Mr Hart ( the eternal candidate) is just a bit too charismatic and Ms. Dowd ( the fawning press) is just a bit too smitten. The whole construct is reminiscent of Camelot and does nothing more than serve to set the conversation back about 40 years. Mr. Hart is not a martyr, he was not assassinated in 1987. What has he done to make his visions relevant since then?
6
Gary Hart pitches going off the grid. Good idea in my book. Been trying to talk my son and daughter in law to bring the two kids and do just that. We even have the property way out in the middle of nowhereville. Yes, a sad tale. Sort of hard to believe that after what we have been through with Donnie Dumpster that Harts fling mean one file-o-fax. But we are a long way from 87. Heady times, so heady a tryst on a boat meant political death. And the real crime was the "vixen" in question became a bible thumper and a Don the Don supporter. Oye vey, I don't know if that is what they call irony but it should be.
3
Many what ifs in our political life spans going back to the JFK assassination.What kind of country allows the president's arch enemy (that JFK fired) to head the investigation into his death?
What kind of country leaves it to their Supreme Court to decide an election? What kind of country would allow the Secretary of State to continue to serve after they ignored the 911 warnings?
We shirked facing reality for so long it's no wonder we got DJT.
18
'Whatifism' in begotten retrospect is the balm that temporarily soothes that arthritic pain until one's next (D|R) writes another script.
2
Gary Hart is an afterthought. I worked on the Hill in the Senste in the mid 70’s. I find Gary Hart a small Senator compared to the greats that served in the 93rd and 94th Congress.
Monkey Business was Hart’s ego. He
challenged the press to go after him. They did and the rest is history. He is more Trumpian than McGovern
I didn’t buy his act then and I don’t buy this revisionist hope theory now!!
8
Leaving aside that it involved real people, I remember that photo as a turn on. Sorry it brought Hart such pain and drove Donna Rice into being a right wing evangelical.
3
But only after she cashed her last endorsement check from No Excuses jeans.
1
Apparently he couldn’t see “far enough ahead” to see reporters and have some common sense. Are we now indulging in speculative historical fiction to propound political views?
8
What exactly is the purpose of this article?
For whatever reasons Hart did not win. No one knows what might have been had he been elected president.
Same thing, for whatever reasons Hillary (another H) didn't win the election either and we cannot predict what today would be like if she had won. We can predict what it wouldn't be like, but that's about it.
4
As Whittier said “of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these ‘what might have been’”. True in 1865, 1963, 1968, 1988, 2001, 2016. And of course there are many other dates.
From what I have read, Gary Hart deserved a better fate. And certainly we deserve better than what we have today. Vote to end the garbage presidency. Let’s admit our country’s imperfections and take a small step to right one wrong.
6
Gary Hart is an historical footnote in history compared to RFK and MLK. 1968 set us on this current course of isolationism and Trump.
3
Hart is beyond pathetic. He may be no less narcissistic than Donald Trump or, for that matter, Maureen Dowd.
No one of us has the ability to rewrite history or offer a credible account of what might have been. Some of the Presidents since the end of World War II have been men of character, but no man on earth has been perfect. Gary Hart did the country a favor by withdrawing, because the office of the Presidency requires a man who will not give up just because things are not going perfectly. I voted for Hillary Clinton, and I dislike what I see of Donald Trump, but as long as we are not in WWIII and not in a depression, let's admit that Trump has revealed our country as anything but exceptional.
As Mencken wrote, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." The best, and worst, thing about our system is that no matter how rich or poor, smart or stupid, old or young anyone is, we each get exactly one vote on election day.
So, let's let the used-up hasbeens rest in peace, even though they might still be breathing. Hart, the Clintons, Jimmy...carpe diem. Morituri te salutamus.
5
@Nat Ehrlich
"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant" ("Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute you")
There, I've saved some of you from having to look this up yourself.
1
I doubt Mr. Hart could have saved America from itself. Something demented was matasticizing starting in the early 1980s. It began as Christianity but evolved into radicalized Trumpist nihilism.
5
A Dowdy article, and very parochial. Marinated in American exceptionalism, Dowd, and Hart, miss the bigger fact that what we have are human beings---and an awful lot more of them than when the USA was founded. What's wrong with America can be fixed by what's right with America, or so Clinton said. I don't think that's true anymore. A sense of gloom is widespread in the world. Crusades and Jihads and national chest-puffing cover much of the world, which edges closer to the age-old "cure" of war. God help us when Trump realizes that--or if he watches POTUS Claire Hale.
1
Well, in that case I’m glad Hart imploded, otherwise we wouldn’t have had President Trump.
MAGA!
1
Yes, actions have far-ranging consequences. My father had been a Democrat all his life when Clinton fooled around in the White House. He said that Clinton defiled both the presidency and the White House and devastated his wife. My father never voted for a Democrat after that.
1
@Terry Feder
Good for your father- without people like him maybe we would not have had the non-defiler W who brought us into the Iraq war (to avenge an apparent slight against his daddy) where thousands of American and Iraqi people died, setting off a fire in the middle-East that is still causing massive misery.
2
If Al Gore hadn’t tried to distance himself from Bill Clinton and instead involved him enthusiastically in his campaign, he would have easily won, and we never would have found ourselves counting hanging chads.
5
@Bill bartelt.
True, but not the full story. Don't forget the "conservatives" on the supreme court stopping the vote count, Ralph Nader, previously a great man, and Maureen Dowd, at her snarky best nipping at Gore's heels.
Hart should be grateful instead of bitter. After all, all he got was smeared. Look what happened to the leaders with a vision that came before him. You think 3 major assassinations in 5 years was coincidence? All being liberal guys who felt minorities deserved to be equal with whites. It took a while, but the right finally has their man who has offered to take them back to the promised land of white supremacy. They may be able to take down those at the top, but they can't take away my vote. No matter how hard they try. Vote this Tuesday.
6
As long as the American people tolerate the level of money we see today in our political system, both in the form of virtually unlimited political contributions and especially in lobbying, we are going to be drowning in corruption. And today's GOP has demonstrated beyond any doubt that it sees this as blood sport, with absolutely nothing out of bounds in order to win. I agree with Hart that calamity is coming, probably sooner than later. And I fear that Tuesday will make that a certainty.
21
I deeply appreciate Ms. Dowd's incisive thoughts and opinions. They make us think about not just missed opportunities but the consequences of our actions as members of the media as well as participants in the political process. America is being tested by some mighty forces. It helps all of us to understand the choices we made along the way and perhaps make some informed corrections.
13
Democrat, if they are to win, need to get off their 'high horse' and return to a functioning party/group which follows the US Constitution as opposed to what they have become; they have abdicated their authority and willingness to legislate by giving department heads the authority to issue rules and regulations which are never challenged and become/have the effect of law. They must remember that only Congress makes law.
3
@The SGM Although right in that "Congress makes (federal) laws," SCM's comment shows a pretty simplistic view of the long-established role of administrative agencies in implementing those laws through rules and regulations, which do have the force of law, as intended by Congress and often upheld in concept by the courts. They can be challenged on any number of substantive grounds, and they frequently are.
6
@The SGM
This level of civic ignorance is appalling. Congress has always made laws that stipulate implementation "as the Secretary shall determine" or use similar verbiage.
2
@The SGM
Republicans won’t have any trouble getting off their low horse.
3
Keep doing what you're doing, Maureen. Your columns always place a mirror to the American soul.
However, I'm not sure if one president could have made much of a difference in changing the current socio-political climate. We are in a fascinating era indeed, one that future historians may study and analyze with intrigue.
The age-old problem of hypocrisy is part and parcel of the American experience, and pervades the American psyche. Plus, the search for wisdom is not really in this country's cultural DNA. But one can only hope that that will change on day.
7
I'm not so sure. While I was kindly disposed to Hart at first due to his running of the McGovern campaign in 1972, by 1988 I found him to be pretty much an empty suit.
During the 1988 primaries and Democratic debates, all I remember him ever saying of substance was something about a "smaller, more mobile navy".
And let's not forget, he deliberately baited the press and challenged them to surveil him once rumors of infidelity surfaced.
11
I saw Hart interviewed with his wife several years ago, and I was impressed with his contrition and his ranging intellectual interests. It was a counter-point to the scandal that attached itself so indelibly to his name.
However, it is narcissistic to spend your life thinking about how that race might have changed history. Detroit to Silicon Valley? San Jose was already one of the fastest growing areas in 1980, and IBM was employing >300,000 but feeling the weight of lower-wage markets just as automakers were seeing the rise of Japan which was believed to be on the verge of buying all the real estate in New York. That turned out differently.
Saddam Hussein? He was occupying the soil of our ally and seeking wider control of world oil supply. He was also a well-known strongman, something that matters to both Democrats and Republicans in leadership, except when it doesn’t. George H. W. Bush deployed limited force and was a measured leader with foreign (and military) experience.
We want to believe that our prescience is exceptional, and Progressives (many Commenters here included) turn bitter and envious when their wisdom is rebuffed or ignored.
I will remember Hart as someone who was crushed under the sad excuse for our free press and DC politics. It is petty, and it feasts on the sensational. Right now, it hunts Trump like a juvenile paparazzi.
Hart would have been an interesting POTUS...we got Clinton.
Cyber? Ever had a credit card stolen? That is not prescience.
21
@Stuart The fact is, for good or for bad ,Hart's presidency would have changed history, but we, nor he, will never know exactly how. As for the "juvenile paparazzi hunting" our extraordinarily juvenile president, that seems appropriate as Trump rejects the bounds of good leadership and democracy every day he's in office. He also loves the attention and seeks it out. Now please, don't be bitter when your wisdom is rebuffed.
2
@Stuart
"Saddam Hussein? He was occupying the soil of our ally and seeking wider control of world oil supply. "
Yes, and GHW Bush and a coalition of allies kicked Saddam and his forces out of Kuwait. That was the mission and it was accomplished. (unlike W's adventure)
3
@Stuart
Thanks for the paean to Middle Eastern meddling. You've conveniently left Iran out of this attempted vindication of the Bushes. Be sure not to miss Dubya's medal ceremony.
2
As in John Greenleaf's "Maude Mueller"; 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, that it might have been' ".
All this is true enough, just as Al Gore might wonder about the court ruling in Florida, the hanging chads, and if Bill had resigned AFTER not being removed and getting some vindication. IF Gore were elevated to president, he might well have been elected in his own right and we might not have had the ongoing wars in the Middle East. Or have had Cheney and the lot of the faux warriors. Maybe Powell would have been listened to. Nothing is foreordained, levers of power are sometimes granted in elections, sometimes taken thanks to gerrymandering and the right court appointments.
21
We forget that Al Gore chaired the commission on airline safety while VP - one recommendation was to harden cockpit access. Had he been president, do you think he would have ignored the August 2001 warning that terrorists were planning to hijack planes to use as bombs? What might have been, indeed.
5
I worked on both campaigns for Hart, and while i don't remember much about the 88 one, except for being crestfallen when he withdrew, the 84 campaign I do have two good memories of.
The first is that Princeton NJ, has an anti-nuke rally every year to commerate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I planned to go, told the campaign, and they sent reps, which got the marchers solidly on our side. I never had that kind of power again.
The second, when Hart lost the NJ primary, there was a gathering to send everyone off. A young man walked up to me and apoligized for all the times he bullied me as a kid for my disability, and said that working with me showed him that I was a fine person now. I was shocked, I didn't remember him at all, but was very moved by it all, and told him so.
The point is, that Hart was/is a class act, and if he could inspire people to do this then he fits my definiton of presidential, and he should've stayed in and probably should've won.
I wasn't a sore loser either, registered voters for Mondale afterward, and Dukakis later in 88.
68
@Andrea W.:
So, basically, this is all about you?
2
@Andrea W.
Hart, Mondale, Dukakis. That's a bad streak. Did you work for Clinton at least?
2
@kwb Yes, not Bill so much, as I felt he was too right for me, but for Hillary, absolutely, both on 08, and 2016.
4
"The male press corps had a bro code and blind eye"? Perhaps a better explanation would be a press that respected personal privacy and avoided the creation of a national schadenfreude that rejoices in disclosures and the embarrassment of others. Sort of a national water cooler syndrome. Unless the sex is exploitative or coercive what goes on in a relationship or marriage is nobody's business. Conversely who thinks hart would have or should have won. Personally im glad bush 41 won the presidency. He displayed political courage in raising taxes after pledging not to. Hart claims that their wouldn't have been the original Iraqi excursion. Would he let Hussein invade a sovereign nation and threaten both the security and economic well being of our country.? Would a hart presidency have prevented the travesty of Bush 43 and respected the intelligence briefs warning of Saudi nationals taking flying lessons. ??Who knows. However the phenomena of a Trump presidency might have been avoided by press coverage that stuck to the news and a public that could mind it;s own business.
10
Tragedy of the American political system is the domination of invisible power of total capitalism.
People like Gary Hart or Bernie Sanders, however brilliantly endowed to steer the great country stood no chance of elected. It does not really matter that Bernie Sanders is an exceedingly brilliant man with right economic Ideas or Gary Hart with an uncanny prescience of the threats faced by the Americans due to irrational political decisions.
No matter who wins, total capitalism is America's true ruler, and it has power to destroy the country.
Bernie Sanders an exceedingly brilliant man with right economic Ideas or Gary Hart had an uncanny prescience of the threats faced by the Americans by irrational political decisions. American political system has no longer has much to do with democracy as we understand it. Democracy is about choice, but Americans don't really have much of a choice. The military, the banks, industry -- the people are helpless in the face of their power of the capitalists and its enablers as is the President.
I get a gut wrenching feeling that Hart prescient will prove correct about the next great threat. Black Swan event disruption of Cyber security putting to risk banks, transportation or communications systems.
Paradoxically if and when it happens, the only safe and secure place will of the least developed spot on earth, be among Sentinelese tribe world's last un-contacted indigenous people of Sentinel island in the Bay of Bengal!!.
18
@N.G. Krishnan
Not sure what your definition of total capitalists is. Today's corporate environment seems more like total greed. When employees and the environment take second place to stock value, profits, and competitive level playing field.
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets.
3
@USQ New Yorker: I meant Laissez-faire, policy of minimum governmental interference in the economic affairs of individuals and society. This economic philosophy invariably leads to enormous greed and crony capitalism. No wonder by 2030 the richest 1% will own two-thirds of global wealth. A perfect recipe for revolution and revolt.
8
@N.G. Krishnan---That Bernie Sanders is "an exceedingly brilliant man with the right economic ideas" is an unsubstantiated opinion shared by his many followers in the Berniac cult. What I will agree with is your statement that he had "no chance of being elected." Instead he divided the Democratic Party, gave a half-hearted endorsement of Hillary after he lost the nomination, and far too many of his supporters either stayed home in a snit on election day or voted for a third-party candidate who could not win. The problem is whether or not he will do this again in 2020. Some view him as a noble idealist committed to the American people. I view him as a superannuated narcissist who desperately needs the applause of an adoring crowd, much like the man in the White House right now, the man Bernie Sanders helped to elect.
9
The story simply reminds us that the Republicans have successfully -- from that era onwards -- enforced a moral standard that they themselves abuse with impunity.
30
It's quite questionable whether Gary Hart would have prevailed had he become the Democratic nominee in 1988 rather than HW. Reagan was still popular, and HW rightly was viewed as the thoroughly decent man who he always has been, his misguided mixings with Lee Atwater notwithstanding. Even W, for all his faults and his willingness to allow Cheney to push him into a falsely justified, disastrous war which only succeeded in getting rid of Sadaam and plunging us into a tax-starved recession. Unlike Kennedy, Hart, Clinton, and Trump, neither ever dallied on their wives.
None of their loose sexual predations were any less acceptable then than they are now. What America should mourn is not the loss of Gary Hart, but our refusal to strip the blinders of bias from our eyes and ears, and support a real leader with a strong conscience and a powerful mind.
Barack Obama was such a leader, but America insisted on faulting his ineffectiveness, which was much more the result of a race and ideology based Republican obstinance, rooted in Mitch McConnell's arrogant decision at the January 20, 2009, Caucus Steakhouse in Washington to make the GOP's sole focus over the next four years to do all possible to deny Obama a second term rather than work with Democrats to recover from the 2008 Republican-caused deep recession.
Until most Americans can get their priorities straight, support real leaders, and decide to work together, America is doomed to continue its descent into a world of mediocrity.
32
@Peter G Brabeck, yes, H.W. was so "decent" that he pardoned every single Iran-Contra criminal, so they could not finger higher-ups. How decent. He was so "decent," it has been reported he and Bill Casey probably had CIA contacts with Iran to extend the hostage crisis during the presidential election of 1980.
So decent that as leader of the CIA after Bill Colby, he helped orchestrate their sudden 180 from cooperation to total lack of cooperation with the House Select Committee on Assassinations (a parallel subcommittee to the US Senate's Church Committee, which Gary Hart was appointed). It was George H.W. Bush's CIA era that installed George Joannides as the Congressional liaison, to shield sensitive areas, while failing to disclose to Congress that Joannides had been involved in the Cuba efforts in early 1960s and 1963, including those with contacts with Oswald.
1
These immortal words spring to mind regarding Gary Hart:
"You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am." -- Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), On the Waterfront (1954)
For Donald Trump, "I came; I saw; I conquered" is fitting.
5
Really? Hollywood quotes. Ho Hum. Not very deep.
1
@Retired Educator ///:
"Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered") is a Latin phrase popularly attributed to Julius Caesar who, according to Appian, used the phrase in a letter to the Roman Senate around 47 BC after he had achieved a quick victory in his short war against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zela."
See: "Wikipedia
@Michael Dowd
No wonder...
The opprobrium is NOT partisan. Plenty of Democrats are totally disgustedly with Gillibrand’s self-serving pitchfork act around Al Franken. The reporters who said we should separate private and public were absolutely right and remain so. Only in America could adults having sex be a consistent “negative”. The Democrats have taken up the Puritan mantle - secularized, maybe, but Puritan nonetheless, and all this nonsense about power differentials and the presumption of abuse is just transparently the cost of secularization. I wouldn’t trust a politician who DIDN’T have a healthy and active libido.
14
“And that has haunted me for thirty years. I had only one talent and it wasn’t traditional politics — I could see farther ahead than anybody.’’
Really? Then how come Hart didn't see a few hours ahead and know that inviting a hot blonde out for a ride on a boat called Monkey Business and having her sit on his lap for a photo (at a minimum) was a bad idea?
I understand why an 81-year old Gary Hart would look back at this with regrets. But the notion that President Gary Hart would have made the world unrecognizable from what it is today (not to mention that this woman became a Trump-supporting evangelical) is a great premise for a movie, but that's all it is.
21
Why do we torture ourselves this way? Aren't we being tortured enough by the bizarre acting out of Trump? Why fantasize over what might have been, when it is what is that requires action of a different kind.
The scary thing is that there may be no remedy to the current state of affairs in our society. We need to face that. Voting got us in to this and voting may not get us out of it. We may have to live with it as is. Trump supporters are not going away. They have always been there. There is no discussing anything with them. They are simply not interested in adapting to a changing world, which spells doom for our country.
What we have learned is that there are a lot of ugly people in this country, who do ugly things. This is not new, but now it seems to be done unabashedly. Some where along the line, society gave this kind of behavior a green light. It may not stop until everything is either robbed, borrowed or destroyed. It's like a moral forest fire that is consuming our country, and it is led by racist, white supremacist, evangelicals and robber barons.
We should be more focused on what we to do if we should ever regain the reigns. There are more good people in this country than bad, but some of the good people don't show up, when it counts. Maybe, they have learned their lesson, but I wouldn't count on it. We will know shortly, however. What we might find is that we are unprepared for sanity, although even if the Democrats win the House, that will not be enough.
16
We advertise ourselves as a monogamous group. So why aren’t we? I believe that certain types of behavior such as infidelity to a spouse can be handled with discretion. When it is not, infidelity becomes disloyalty and a strong expression of a flawed personality and sloppy technique to boot. In my eyes a President, as in Bill Clinton, forever has my disrespect for his sloppy handling of the Lewinsky affair.
4
The entire gestalt of US politics is summed-up in the "Spy vs. Spy" comic strip published by Mad Magazine.
11
Chicken and egg. Political leaders don't change the culture, or history. Rather they are products of the culture.
Donald Trump hasn't changed in 35 years. He's been the same nativist, racist, conspiracy-mongering loudmouth since the local New York media first proposed him as a possible presidential candidate back in the 1980s. He knew his moment would come, and with the Obama administration, it finally did.
Reagan was Reagan in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Though he had won the California governor's race twice before, he was still considered too extreme, too far right to be president throughout the 70s. Even on the eve of his victorious run in 1980, the idea of Reagan being elected president was a funny punch line for Gore Vidal.
Maybe Gary Hart saw the future, but did he see how that globalized future would destroy the American middle class, and create the new age of the robber baron? Did he see, in his crystal ball, that a successful Democratic president would love Wall Street and banking deregulation as much as any Republican? Bill Clinton opened his campaign in '92 sounding like FDR, but governed like a yuppie Republican. The culture (and the money) makes the leader, and the history.
13
Two lessons here: 1) Power corrupts men's unfulfilled, even predatory sexual desires. 2) It is hypocrisy to condemn a politician for doing what is generally practiced in everyday private lives. That contradiction has produced politicians as moral and uninteresting as Jimmy Carter and as corrupt and foul-mouthed as Donald Trump. We can't compare this to how female leadership would solve the dilemma—the US is long overdue for female leadership at the highest levels.
19
Unfortunately we have not come that far and a woman president with a "healthy libido" would be slut shamed. I said unfortunately.
2
The blame for our failing democracy does not lie with Hart's extra-marital affairs. It is occurring because of rampant anti-intellectualism, and a fantasy based electorate.
Democrats, like the Clintons, became enamored with power and money the way the GOP has and sold us out to the highest bidder.
Desperate people--aka 99% of Americans--do desperate things.
This is probably are last chance at turning the tides; however, without a viable candidate for 2020, even a Blue Wave might not right our capsizing ship.
16
@james CORRECTION: This is probably our last chance to turn the tide; . . .
1
People get the government they deserve. Our culture is basically Puritan, along with its hypocrisies. We are also a capitalist nation where winning is the only thing. We also indulge in wishful thinking and want to have our cake and eat it too, to be told sweet things by our politicians that aren't possible or even smart. So we end up with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. It fits.
23
I don't care what anybody has to say about past history or anything else. America does not deserve Trump, Mc Connell, Ryan, and all the rotten cabinet officials, as well as the most recent Supreme Court appointees.
My hope is this too will pass. Soon.
18
@Mariposa841 Do you mean “history”, or “past history”? I only ask because, the last time that I checked, I found History to be the past. Please look up the definition of “tautology”.
@patrickatnyt
NOT EVERYONE MAY AGREE WITH YOU:
FROM: |||ttp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BXGEhRJeATIJ:https://www.reddit.com/r/pbsideachannel/comments/4hws4l/whats_the_difference_between_history_and_the_past/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0
HERE IS THE SOUND OF ANOTHER
HAND CLAPPING:
|||Defining history as "the study/narrative of the time past", while useful to argue that the historical science itself is a social construct, is a little bit... simplistic. French historian Marc Bloch did a ton of work on this subject, and his last book The Historian's Craft still is a fundamental pillar for the movement that we call today New History. His argument was that a better definition for history was "the study of man in time", which by itself does not particularize "the past"; one important example was the work of Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War, conflict in which he was both commentator and political agent. For Thucydides, history was about his present, and not the past. History does not work only with this amorphous, ever-growing blob that we call "the past" (or even "the human past", as 19th century positivistic historians would try to argue), but only with human societies, and time.|||
We've come so close to doing the right thing.
This? Now?
Pause for concern.
Yet, I'm still alive, I will not give up hope.
5
Amen on Hart declaring there would have been no 911 if there had been no Bush/Cheney, as we hear of Bush/Cheney smirking in the Oval Office as their CIA professionals tried to warn them that something real bad was going to happen. And then we had the Iraq War and our near fatal depression. Hart needs to get a TV spot.
11
JFK, LBJ, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump versus Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan Carter, Ford, The Bushes, Obama.
The first group saw women in a way that diminished the idea of womanhood. The second group revered their wives and had a totally different view of women.
Maybe looking at the presidency in this light begs the question. Who makes the better president - those that respect women and those that see women in a diminished light?
It is also another reason why women are deserving after all these centuries in civilization to be respected for the persons they are.
11
@Tom Osterman:
Can't speak to all of them, but HW Bush has a big reputation for being "handsy" around any pretty young women.
2
@Tom Osterman, HW Bush had a longtime extramarital affair that devastated Barbara Bush. This was recently written about in the obituaries after Ms. Bush passed this summer. George W. Bush reportedly played around during his drinking days after being married to Laura, but eventually moved past that. Eisenhower had an affair.
Women have affairs as well. It takes two to tango.
Really, so long as it is mutually consensual, who cares? I am with Hillary Clinton on this, it was the business of her and Bill and the people involved. This is why the Clinton impeachment was overreaching. Politicians are not running to be God. They are running to support certain policies. Maybe that's what they should be judged on.
1
The last thing I remember reading about Gary Hart was when he was appointed to the commission he chaired. He needed to have a top secret security clearance. The investigator for the clearance asked him detailed questions about his involvement with Donna Rice. The investigator was obliged to do this, as those who've engaged in adulterous affairs may be susceptible to blackmail, and therefore revealing secrets. Mr. Hart took it personally. He complained to his friend, former Senator William Cohen, then the Secretary of Defense. Mr. Cohen agreed the investigator had acted inappropriately and suspended him, preparatory to firing him. Ultimately, the investigator complained to the Merit Protection Board and was retained, but it was difficult for him to do his job properly again, having already been subjected to political interference. I'm glad that Mr. Hart never became president. To me, he is a narcissist, much like Bill Clinton.
40
@Guy Cabell
"I'm glad that Mr. Hart never became president. To me, he is a narcissist, much like Bill Clinton."
Surprised that Donald Trump wasn't mention in a statement about Presidents and narcissism.
3
@Guy Cabell - Because Donald Trump is what, an altruist? Gimme a break. Sanctimonious holier-than-thou selective-morality people like you have steered the country in the direction of fake-religiousness, fake-honesty, fake-populism and outright fascism. Way to go, Guy.
2
Allow a non American to make a few comments.
What if US had not finally entered the 2d World War? and Britain had been left alone ?
I was 12 when we had the Cuba Crisis and remember how pale my father was when explaining to me that perhaps war may break out.
What if there had not been an administration that behaved by thinking thoughtfully before acting?
How will Trump and his administration behave if a similar type of serious crisis occur?
What if Regan had not gone to Iceland?
What if US lived up to the words in the Declaration of Independe “All men are created equal” . However now it would today read human beings and not men. What if US with all its wealth created equal opportunities in health care and education. Is this socialism? It does not have to be like in Denmark or NW Europe where we have capitalism although sometimes the US media like Fow News says differently when for example comparing Denmark with Venezuela.
Having been many times visiting my family in Canada, I think US could just look north for a role model.
What if US was slightly more democratic and it was the popular vote that counts in presidential elections? Who would have been presidents in the past , All Gore ? and in 2016.
It is understandable that smaller states gets more representation in Congress and Senate, but in Presidential elections?
77
Both Hart’s and Clinton’s downfalls came at times when they could have contributed to pivotal times, and the conversation was lost and overtaken by indiscretions. It seems that if a person wants to really be part of something, make a difference, you have to put 100% into it. Not everyone can do that.
Now we have a President who constantly turns the conversation to him, there is no time for a national conversation on important issues and nothing moves forward. We are stuck in Trump goo. I hope that we can all give a little, go vote, read and think about an important issue and maybe that can make a dent in our lost opportunities.
44
@Barbara Snider -- Have you read James Fallows piece in The Atlantic, published in the November 20 issue, about this? You might take a look before you compare Gary Hart to Bill Clinton.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj4p-iIkbreAhXIk1kKHfbxCpkQFjAAegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fmagazine%2Farchive%2F2018%2F11%2Fwas-gary-hart-set-up%2F570802%2F&usg=AOvVaw38e-UOCbuuKFDd_-csq6Vr
3
It's hard to feel anything but disdain for Republicans. Just since 1988:
1) Purposely sabotaging Gary Hart. 2) Willie Horton. 3) Gleefully impeaching Bill Clinton although what Donald Trump does is just fine. 4) The Florida vote on the Supreme Court. 5) Swiftboating a Vietnam war volunteer as worse than his draft dodger opponent. 6) Benghazi and emails while Trump talks on an unsecured phone that is listened to by our enemies and that's just fine. 7) Embracing an antiquated electoral college system that does not support a Majority Rules convention. 8) Gerrymandering. 9) Overt voter suppression that jaw-droppingly does not even get ruled unconstitutional by the courts. 10) An incessant drive to take away our health care and Social Security while they enjoy health care and a pension run by the government and paid for by us. 11) False cries over the deficit but only when the other party is in power. 12) An enormous wealth disparity that boggles all reason. 13) Court rulings allowing unlimited monies from both domestic and international sources to influence our elections.
That's just what came to mind immediately off the top of my head. As we all know, there are many more examples.
No wonder I am hopelessly depressed about the future of our nation.
302
@Paul in NJ The column makes me miss the America that might have been. Now I also miss Sandy Hook and the Atlantic of my youth, where I spent that time. History is linked to its place, and also the history that wasn't is also linked to its places.
8
@Paul in NJ You summarize the GOP story succinctly: you are brief but speak volumes. However, item #7 above, re. electoral college , cannot be blamed on the GOP, since it is in your (U.S) laws: did the Dems make an honest attempt to change it? Also, re.#10 Health care: I live in Canada and we have nation-wide, federally-funded health care: of course, our taxes are a bit higher than yours. Just thought I'd mention it, since even Bernie Sanders (during his campaign) barely drew attention to it. Lastly, may I add an item (#14) to your list: US spends so much on national defense that it has no money left for anything else.
53
@Paul in NJ One of the opinion piece writers in recent days wrote about Trump's feral instinct to go for the jugular. I think that instinct has been more widely displayed by Republican political operatives than on the Democratic side. The hypocrisy is also much more evident on the Republican side, from the Starr report and the impeachment using sexual indiscretion as equal to high crimes and misdemeanors, to the passage of huge corporate tax cuts without paying for them and the resulting rapid growth in government deficit spending.
15
Cyber does sound prescient.
4
Wow. Gary Hart looks like Keith Richards older brother proving once and for all that aging due to stress is the great equalizer.
5
Keith is stressed?
2
My memory is that he challenged the press to follow him, and then went to meet Ms. Rice. The issue, in my mind, wasn't whether he had an affair but that he was either extremely reckless or self-destructive. Not the kind of person to which you want to give control of nuclear weapons.
30
@PaulSFO.... whoa ! And look who has control of nuclear
weapons now.... Trump the inept, Trump the military lover,
Trump the biggest loser ever.... What a comparison....
3
@PaulSFO CORRECTION: Not the kind of person to whom . . .
2
@PaulSFO- Nah- Your concern falls apart if there was no affair. Cause, if there was no affair, then there was nothing to hide; and then there is no recklessness or self-destruction, but there maybe there was a citizenship lookin' for a Peyton Place scandal where there was none. I remember this. And I remember saying, "So what!"
As far as someone with bad judgement having control of nuclear weapons, I think we got that taken care of.
2
Mildly interesting but irrelevant. Gary had his chance. Doubtful he would have defeated HW Bush.
12
@Alan
Yeah, even with no scandal I don't think the presidency would have been the forgone conclusion he seems to think it would have been. I hope that can make him feel a bit better.
3
Hart(pence, no, not him): "There was no relationship".
Does that sound like a certain individual with a middle name of Jefferson?
12
@srwdm:
I think the main point is that consensual sex between adults shouldn't matter at all.
2
I was interested by this: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/was-gary-hart-set-up/570802/
It's clear that Republicans have been involved in election chicanery right down the years (yes, sometimes Democrats, but nowhere near as much, and not the kind of cheating the steals elections.
Too bad we're all so gullible. Though how anyone could be anything but nauseated by the things Trump says and the ways he says them (he's an ugly bullying cowardly smirking prideful nincompoop) is beyond me.
42
@Susan Anderson, well, I was not around at the time and have typically voted Democrat, but well-regarded historians seem to agree that LBJ stole elections left and right during his rise in Texas; and that JFK arguably may have stolen the election in 1960 via Mayor Daley's chicanery in Chicago to put Illinois over the top.
Again, I say this as someone who typically has voted Democrat. So I am not sure, it may be a bit of stretch to say Democrats are "nowhere near as much, and not the kind of cheating the steals elections." Maybe in the modern era?
9
@GRH
"JFK arguably may have stolen the election in 1960 via Mayor Daley's chicanery in Chicago to put Illinois over the top. "
This is a myth that I am prepared to dispel. JFK won with 303 electoral votes in 1960. Let's give the 27 electoral votes of Illinois to Nixon. JFK would still have won. (276 when 269 was required to win then)
8
Had a couple of helicopters not malfunctioned and Carter's hostage rescue operation been a success, we wouldn't have had almost forty years of Reaganism. We would be twenty years ahead of where we are today with solar power and fuel efficiency. We'd still be faced with a global climate change crisis in 2018, but we might have an extra decade or two to avoid complete catastrophe. Jimmy Carter was ahead of his time 10 years before Gary Hart was. If our civilization survives long enough for a definitive history of the late 20th century to be written, then I think the Carter administration will be seen as a missed opportunity. Donald Trump is the apotheosis of Ronald Reagan.
135
@Gary F.S."Had a couple of helicopters not malfunctioned and Carter's hostage rescue operation been a success, we wouldn't have had almost forty years of Reaganism."
I just don't know where to even start with unraveling the inaccuracies in this comment.
11
@Gary F.S.: The US would even have converted to the same measurement system used by the rest of the world.
4
@Jeezlouise
Steve Bannon for one won't stop complaining about that failed rescue.
1
We over-reacted to Hart's lack of "traditional" roots in the beltway. He would have been fine. Hart, Perot, Nader, Trump. They all something to offer ( I didn't vote for Trump).
I'm more worried at this stage about seeing 2 supremes from Georgetown Prep confirmed in succession than I am about an 'outsider' winning the Presidency. Political sclerosis seems to me more threatening than reform fervor.
16
This guy thinks there should have been no gulf war? What, we should stood by and blew Saddam kisses for invading Kuwait? Wow, talk about liberal to a fault.
15
@DRS
I think that's a reference to the ineptitude of April Glaspie in the state department in inadvertently sending the message that we wouldn't intervene and that they should work out the conflict on their own. Just so long as it was done quickly.
10
@Marc April Glaspie was the messenger. The U.S. Department of State gave a green light to Saddam, paraphrasing, "The U.S. takes no position on quarrels between Arab states", this after Saddam effectively asked our permission to invade. Read Colin Powell on the subject. Bush, without asking anyone - including his national security advisor at the time - made his public "this shall not stand" commitment. Saddam previously had tried in vain to stop the Kuwaitis from stealing his oil using a slant drilling technique, dumping it on the world market, depressing the price of oil so that Saddam had to pump more to pay his war debts incurred fighting a proxy war against who? Iran. DRS, there are no liberal facts just as there are no conservative facts. Facts are facts. And, about aftermath? DRS, you should come here and check it out. One of the classic problems for students in U.S. military schools focuses on what happens when leadership fails - even leadership we may not agree with - reason enough much of the time to leave well enough alone. Before Saddam, the classic case was Tito. The Balkans were better off with him than without him. The descent from Saddam produced corruption, tribe versus tribe conflict, producing a political vacuum, and eventually, ISIS. If bad under Saddam, many Iraqis would say things are worse today including one man I recently talked to who said things were much better "under the president". I said, "Who?" He answered, "Saddam."
3
@Marc**** She didn't inadvertently send a message. She was instructed by the Bush admin. to lie. The plan was to let him invade Kuwait. Then go to the Kawaitis & The Saudis and demand to get paid ( oil ) to get Saddam out. Which they did. I don't think Saddam would have taken the chance had he not got the OK.... Wasn't he an 'ally' of the U.S. up to that point also????
3
Remember when the most controversial part of the election of Bush v. Gore was that Gore sighed too much? Or that his wardrobe was selected by a consultant? Remember the absurd "fuzzy math" of Bush and how the media never called him on such a stupid concept? I hope Trump has shown the media the price of pumping up such trivialities into scandals that obscure the big picture.
35
Seeing that careworn face and shock of white hair was a moment of truth , realization that for all of us all the time, time is passing.0ld age is 1 illness, if 1 can employ that term, for which there is no cure, and no forgiveness from those younger. See all those "info babes"on t.v.expression used by a local radio t.v. host and their male equivalents and 1 thinks that if 1 were younger, 1 might be occupying that spot and as Buck Henry wrote, "If you'e not on t.v., you don't exist!"Gary Hart always thought he was too smart by half, which was his downfall.Now his story is 1 for the archives, and who cares?Should also be noted that historians can never deal in what might have been, and neither attorney Hart nor anyone else knows what he might have done were he to have become chief of state!There were sound geo-political reasons for going into Iraq, and in my view, Bush "fils"was ensnared, just as JFK and LBJ had been entrapped by VN.Although LBJ has always been viewed as the architect of our widespread involvement in s.e. Asia, it should not be forgotten that JFK sent almost 12,000 advisers and was undecided himself about going forward although his apologists would say that he was already intending to pull out before he was fatally shot. Re Hart,he puts forth thesis of historic revisionism, convincing himself that if he had been in the WH it all would have been different, but a serious man would have been "precautionneux!"To say that others philandered is a weak excuse!
8
@Alexander Harrison Dis is 1 articul thet kneeds sum kopyedting reely badly.
1
Let's get real. Gary Hart was not going to win against G.W. Bush even if this scandal did not happen. The economy was too strong and Regan was credited with getting America to feel good again. Bush completely crushed Dukakis by 300+ electoral votes. Even if Hart doubled the electoral count of Dukakis, he still would have lost.
23
We ended up with a Democratic President who was adored by many despite his philandering and that didn't stop us from ending up where we are today. There are any number of thousands of events between Gary Hart's withdrawal from the Presidential race in 1987 that would have resulted in a different present and a different President had any of them turned out differently. It's called the butterfly effect. So positing a meaningful connection between the fall of Gary Hart and the Trump Presidency is silly.
28
As the Democratic Party becomes more diverse — in gender issues, race, immigration status, religion —requiring, by definition, more tolerance of persons different from oneself, the GOP is becoming more homogenous. Still, among the Trump voters and supporters, there are different levels: the super-rich, who don’t really care about abortion or guns or immigration issues, as long as they get their tax cuts; then the Merely rich, who really did not get a tax cut, especially after losing their mortgage interest deduction on their $2 million homes but who still like their stock market gains; then the cozy upper middle class, who think that they might get rich some day, if they could just get more tax breaks; then, the Trump Chunps, who haven’t really seen any benefit from Trump, but swallow his rhetoric about immigrants, guns, and abortion — not so much because they really feel that strongly about these issues, but they need some cover for their racism and bigotry; and finally, the ones who love Trump’s bigotry and racism unabashedly, even though Trump’s policies are never going to help them.
32
@Toms Quill, although adding diverse immigration status to the Democratic Party's big tent does not necessarily translate to electoral success because only US citizens are allowed to vote in US elections.
4
@Toms Quill
soundfs just about right
The election of 2000 was the really crucial one. What if Al Gore had become president? Osama bin Laden would have been taken more seriously, and maybe 9/11 would not have happened. Certainly the great recession would not have come because the financial industry would have been better regulated. We would have been leaders rather than naysayers regarding climate change. And I doubt that our current president would ever have joined our list of leaders.
Gary Hart is history and should probably stay there. I remember him as a lightweight.
12
@Jeff
Had Al Gore been president when the Twin Towers were attacked, there probably wuld have been 4 to 8 more successful attacks on American territory before he was replaced in 2004.
Gore spent days twice a month in California as Vice President sewing up support and, perhaps, trying to decide what he stood for.
This of course followed growing up in a D.C. hotel and a seriously buzzed news-reporting trip to South Vietnam.
The Gore that emerged in 2000 was somewhere to the Fringe Left of Pelosi and Hillary and his home state didn't even recognize him thst fall.
Someone could do a screenplay of Gore running into Barack Obama at some convention around those times. You could go with funny or just bizzare.
6
@Jeff, this voter voted for Clinton-Gore but it was Clinton-Gore Administration that signed the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, that overturned Glass-Steagall banking regulations. It was Clinton-Gore Administration members like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin that marginalized Brooksley Born and overruled her efforts to regulate derivatives.
Most Americans, including even most Democrats not named John Dingell or Byron Dorgan, did not necessarily think there was anything even all that wrong with what Clinton-Gore were doing. It was sold in many main-stream publications as necessary modernization of US banking laws (and most people did not know about Brooksley Born's efforts, except perhaps industry insiders or DC insiders).
Also, efforts to force banks to reduce mortgage lending standards so more people could buy a home (even for people who probably should not have qualified) began during Clinton-Gore (and continued under GW Bush).
So to say the great recession would have been avoided because financial industry would have been better regulated under Gore seems like quite a stretch.
17
He said he warned Rice at the White House again on Sept. 6, 2001. “Guess who didn’t listen? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Always keep one thing in mind: 9/11 could have been prevented.”
He's correct. 9/11/2001 didn't have to occur. It happened because of what the new administration did: ABC, anything but Clinton. The Trump administration and the GOP dominated Congress are doing the same thing: ABO, anything but Obama. If Obama had anything to do with it, it's no good. The ACA, which needs to be updated rather than repealed and replaced, is being wrecked by the GOP and Trump. Why? Obama, that's why. The GOP didn't have the stomach to try to fix our wealth care system. Helping the long term unemployed. No way.
Gary Hart was the most public start of vilification in politics and can be seen as an omen for what's happened since. We might have had a Bush anyway. We wouldn't have had Trump. But what Gary Hart has to remember is that even if the whole thing hadn't happened he still might not have gotten the nomination or won the election.
What if is a great game to play. But what if can paralyze you too. What this nation needs to do is move on from 2016 and look at what's happening now. We need to decide who and what we want representing us here, in DC, and to the rest of the world. Are we the ugly American or are we better than that?
26
You endorsed him. You own him.
14
Dowd can claim some deep past pleasure in exploiting the Lewinsky affair as I recall. Of course, the press is the press. But Dowd is a special ingredient op-ed nik. Not necessarily an acquired taste for some of us. Hart looks well enough for an aging pol and is a survivor.
15
lee and hillary were complicit in their husbands sordid undertakings. smart women do not make this type of arrangement; weak women do!
13
and I assume you also think Melania is complicit in her husband's dalliances. she's made the same compromises, if not more.
10
@eva staitz And who cares? And who should care?
1
You helped.
8
For a guy who claims he can see further ahead than anyone, Donna Rice was one big blindspot right in front of his eyes.
26
Gary Hart is as full of himself now as he was in 1987.
Daring the press to follow him while cheating on his wife with a woman young enough to be his daughter.
A real man of genius.
31
Not many men are still that arrogant at 81. I suspect he would have been a rather poor president; no humility.
20
Mrs. Dowd,
What do you think, would the native Americans have been better off if they had paid more attention to the border security and illegal immigration?
The question is when the melting pot works and when it ends up in the tragic situation like it happened here in America, over there in Israel or in the Balkans.
Do you know how to prevent the future tragedies?
Do you know what triggers them?
It depends whether we care more about the ancient cultures than about the people…
We can protect either the culture or the people, but not both at the same time.
Choose carefully what you really care about!
There is no racism in this world. That’s an easy explanation for the stupid masses. The difference in the skin color is the most obvious one so the people wrongly conclude that’ the cause.
Not at all!
It’s the human ego and different customs.
The different habits have even pitched the Catholics vs Protestants vs Greek Orthodox or the Sunnis vs the Shiites or the Orthodox Jews vs the liberal ones…
In all those cases there was no skin differences…
7
As I remember it, Hart denied that he ran around on his wife and, unlike the other faithless politicians, Hart dared the press to catch him. Be careful what you wish for -- you might get it.
15
@Mary
He was caught. We lost. I was an early supporter.
Schadenfreude for us.
1
So, the overall opinion seems to be: sex with someone other than your spouse does, or does not qualify you to be President of the United States. I profoundly disagree. It's a character issue. This is not Europe. It's part of most marriage vows to love, honor, and forsake all others. If you intend to have sex with whoever, whenever then don't get married. As widespread as adultery has always been it's also been a lack of commitment and self-control. What about FDR, JFK, Eisenhower, HW Bush, LBJ, Hart, Clinton, Trump...?: power, lust, and hubris.
5
If the winner of the 2000 election, Al Gore, had become president, 9/11 would not have happened, and we would be well along the road to a better environment. Instead,we have Trump, Citizens United, and our beloved America in a death spiral.
58
Calm down, America is fine. And there is no reason to believe anyone, including Gore, would have prevented 9/11.
10
911 was allowed to happen because the Bush administration would not take the intelligence, leading up to it, seriously. They would not take meetings with the terrorism czar, who made it clear the threats were of an urgent nature. 3000 people went to work that day and died because of Republican hubris. Hubris and corruption have been the defining features of the Republican Party for the last 40 years.
8
a married man, especially one who
at the time was a serious candidate
for president and would have made,
perhaps, a great one,has no business
posing with a scantily clad woman
on his knee. no one is perfect, no
not one of us,but a public figure
with great potential has to demonstrate
some measure of common sense.
he created his own personal tragedy
and must live with it like Prometheus
with the vulture of regret eating out
his guts every day of his life.
19
I think it was Harry Truman who said if you lie to your wife you'll lie to anyone. I realize in today's lack of civility world that seems so tame but it makes a relevant point. Lying and cheating are lying and cheating and it's not softened when it's to the one you gave an oath to honor and love.
Gary Hart brought it on himself. It doesn't really matter what other great qualities he had, he treated those closest to him with disdain. As far as I know his wife stayed with him but was she not hurt and embarrassed?
To those who say one's personal life doesn't matter in a leader I give you Donald Trump. Isn't it the same? And it's true, no one is perfect, but cheating on one's spouse is a choice not some accident or stupid remark, it's saying one's personal desires outweigh those of his family (substitute nation.)
Gary Hart literally dared reporters to catch him, pure arrogance. That's what brought him down, not the behavior. He's never successfully apologized and still seems to not understand. That's just not leadership. Again, Donald Trump. Cheating on wife, no accountability, lousy leader, brilliant manipulator.
Maybe if we hold our leaders to higher standards we'll get better leaders. Let's start with telling the truth, it should be easy, it's our earliest lesson in life.
19
Vanity has taken on new wrinkles with a revisionist myopic tale circulated by this omniscient primate bedecked less than sea worthy visionary of political narcissism. Not ever the center of the universe he imagines, Senator Hart sparkles less than the crown jewel he failed to grasp while now gazing endlessly into the vortex of “if only a popular grain was not present when a shutter clicked capturing a moment of candor.” Since tarnished and removed from relevance, this second coming charade with a rambling soothsayer pretense is hardly worth a two pence.
5
I don't remember all Democrats being head-over-heals in love with Gary Hart. And I seem to remember that he challenged the media to 'follow him' as he denied, denied, denied an extra-marital activity. But mostly what I remember from Hart was his hubris and the sickened look on his wife's face and she stood beside him--no doubt at his insistence.
I'm not at all sure where Ms. Dowd is going with this slightly bizarre article but if since it touches on 'owning up', she can start with herself: the spiteful vilification of Hillary, Obama and her astonishingly belated recognition that Donald Trump is unhealthy for the country and the planet.
63
@Susan Nakagawa Good comment. I recall Ms. Dowd's constant vilification of Hillary, Obama, and her gushing about Trump. And all the articles about her brother, the Trump supporter. What's really important now is dealing with the dangerous White House we have.
22
The recent news that Hart was set up and, that in fact, Ms. Rice's lap sitting was actually innocent (as Hart had said), should cause all of us to wonder what might have been.
This man, had he run in 1988, might have helped us avoid all kinds of problems.
He has shown, in the years since, that he was and is a statesman and a thinker of first class levels. Our country lost when Gary Hart was tricked out of the 1988 campaign.
4
@CastleMan
First class thinkers are never tricked. Gary was neither.
5
Maybe it would have been this and maybe it would have been that...and maybe we would have avoided the Bushes and Chaney and maybe not and maybe we would have avoided Trump and maybe not. And maybe Gary Hart would have been a good President and maybe not. All interesting to speculate about, but....
We are a nation that elected Abraham Lincoln, twice. We should be looking to replicate that. Nobody less will do.
7
In 1998 when the Clinton sex scandal broke I remember thinking 'I don't care about his sex life, I care about what kind of president he will be'.
This is a conservative country with retrograde puritanical Victorian values when it comes to sex. We missed the enlightenment on this front.
As an avid reader of history and biographies one is hard pressed to find a single universally admired character who has not led a non traditional sex life - whether man or woman. The happy monogamous 'marriage for a lifetime' is the exception, not the rule.
And I'm not talking here about rape or serious sexual exploitation. I'm talking about people being able to have a sex life that is rooted in non traditional relationships, including affairs, without that being a reason to attack their character.
Bob Hope was a notorious womanizer and had long term affairs outside his marriage. His wife of 69 years knew about his womanizing before they married and reportedly said to him " Just don't bring anything home".
Paul Newman had affairs outside his marriage - one long term, of course Joanne knew.
Margaret Bourke - White lived openly with a married man, had affairs with others, and put career above husband and children.
In America the mainstream media, not just the tabloids, feeds what titillates the publics appetite for sex scandals. When it comes to public figures we need to stop this obsession and look at what these figures are contributing to our political, cultural, and intellectual heritage.
8
A number of comments on here have mentioned Hart's infamous dare to the press to "follow me." But as the James Fallows Atlantic piece referenced in the column makes clear, "contrary to public opinion", this comment was actually made AFTER the Hart incident in an article and interview by E. J. Dionne in the NYT Magazine.
As to the substance of the column, while it is unclear whether Hart would have won the 1988 election, it is certainly clear that Atwater had a devastating effect on American politics. In addition to the infamous Willie Horton ad, the Clintons reported that he made a very threatening phone call to them when it became clear that Clinton was going to run against Bush in 1992. In the call he allegedly listed all the attacks he planned to make against Clinton and ended with a demand that he not run. What a guy!
In any event, Hart would have made an excellent president and, as he states, history certainly would have been different. The same what-if feeling applies to the lost Gore presidency, which was stolen by the Supreme Court.
9
I think we can all agree with your central postulate: If things had been different then, they wouldn't be the same now.
11
Gary Hart, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton truly personify the question of what might have been. Do they wish to occupy a larger place in history or do we and opinion columnists keep them hanging around, and for what purpose? Is it to juxtapose them against the people with their policies and actions who eventually rose to ascendancy or is there a higher purpose in mind? With so much promise and potential, it is sad and unfortunate that the above mentioned Democratic candidates did not win election and that history took its course;however, this is the gist of history and politics. We need to move on without Gary, Al and Hillary to deal with the present as it is and the future as it may or might be.
7
Kirsten Gillibrand, Queen of the Senate Minority, should have resigned after she "exposed" Franken's joke, thus denying the Democratic Party it's next Majority Leader to replace Get-Along-Go-Along Chuck Schumer. And she's as bad as Newt Gingrich for saying Clinton should have resigned. Lucky for us Kirsty is Perfect in Every Way and will stay that way - another do-nothing Democrat watching Judgeships go to finatics and Mitch McConnell continue to destroy the country so his party wins.
172
@MARCSHANK
Unfortunately for Gillibrand, she is far from perfect. If she launches a campaign, her work in the 90's defending Philip Morris Tobacco, with their lengthy history of hiding research on the toxic effects of cigarette smoking, will do her in. Although she was not without sin, she chose to cast the first stone at the highly intelligent, highly effective and decent Senator Franken. This will come back to haunt her.
15
No Gulf War? What would President Hart have done with Iraqi troops sitting in Kuwait ready to sweep down into Saudi Arabia? I think he or the author have the decades confused.
3
@Michael Blazin But for HW thoughtlessly signalling to Saddam that Kuwait was not our concern, there would have been no Gulf War I.
28
@Michael Blazin, tell us again how was that America’s business to meddle?
2
If Hart was that forward looking and thinking a visionary why didn't he see the fiasco with Donna Rice. As to Lee Atwater one can only hope that his coals are very hot for eternity. Trump was not spawned by Hart not running or being elected. He is the group love child of Atwater, Rove, Cheney. McConnell. Gingrich and DeLay.
75
Steve, please don't leave the evil Roger Stone and Paul Manafort out of the GOP Poison Pie.
15
And George HW Bush, Atwater’s client.
9
@Steve
Trump is the love child of Roger Stone.
2
If we're indulging in alternate history, the real story is that had Jimmy Carter simply left the White House and campaigned for president in 1980, we would have been saved the Reagan "revolution" and all of the crazy nonsense since, especially the legitimization of crack-pot far-right economic "theories" that have no evidentiary or factual support.
23
Jimmy Carter? You’re kidding. The nation was in deep despair at the end of his presidency. Another 4 years of a Carter presidency would have been disastrous. The election of Reagan turned this country around.
4
@Steve K: As spectator and well wisher of America I am able to see with the benefit of hind sight, Reagan and Thatcher sowed the seeds of crony capitalism and laid foundation for “Damning statistic follows damning statistic on wealth inequality. The latest, from the House of Commons, is that by 2030 the richest 1% will own two-thirds of global wealth. The distribution of wealth – or rather the lack of it – may well prove to be the defining issue of our age. Such inequality has provoked revolution and revolt in the past. It will do so again, unless we fix it” to quote The Guardian.
1
Trump is the troll under the bridge in childhood mythology. Everyone who passes must pay a price. Hart's mistake is thinking that he could control the events that has happened. He could not. Regrets on presidential ambitions have got to be painful. His inner workings need peace.
7
Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke are the prescient ones who predicted all of this the individual peccadilloes of vain foolish and arrogant men aside in the 50's and 60's.
I liked Hart and never thought he should have been hounded like he was. The real source of that hounding aside from the cowardice and hypocrisy of men like Mr Bradlee was the GOP turn to fake religion and the fake morality all of this political/economic criminality is being hidden behind.
Cyber? Well of course the scfi authors deal with that to.
8
The more relevant "what if" scenario is if Gore was declared president instead of the Bush brothers corrupt move. Jeb in Florida and all that. So many more machinations in play. If Baby Bush didn't "win" maybe is 9-11 stopped, climate change slowed, no war in Iraq, no ISIS. Gary Hart and his Monkey Business thing seems almost quaint compared to the mountains moved to get lil baby boy Bush in power.
62
senator hart would have been a good candidate and likely a good president, if elected.
but, c'mon. a lovely young woman on his knee? and someone getting a pic of it?
give me a break.
reminds me of greek tragedy.
8
@Laurence you do know that was a set up, right?
6
I think you left out the part where he dared the press to follow him and find something. It was his arrogance that brought him down. For all the soul searching it sounds like he still hasn't owned the fact that he did it to himself.
23
How about, what if Gore were anointed and not W? No 9/11, no Iraq or mid-east conflicts costing untold lives and trillions, no trickle down.
Renewable energy, healthy economics, regulated financials. Jeez.
32
Hart's case may be worth to ponder about, as we have become cynical about the importance of any given person in the outcomes of our political process, especially after "Citizens United" and corporations declared as 'persons', and flooding corruptible politicians with money, lots of it. And when Trump's mantra of making lies and insults just 'business as usual', normalizing the 'spitting' on the truth and disregarding the facts based on evidence as pesky nonsense. I don't know about you, but if this is not a form of fascism, what is? Dangerous as it is, it seems beyond comprehension of misinformed and prejudiced folks, under the spell of a professional demagogue called Donald J. Trump. One thing we ought to know however is that this is not normal. And that going to the voting booth to be able to stop an enraged and unhinged bully is still a job where every vote counts, particularly when republican efforts to suppress voting is all the rage.
19
It's the mindlessness of the voters, not their heartlessness that is the measure of politics today. I still can't figure out how the parents of children would vote for politicians who allow poisoned water that they tell they children to drink. What's going on with today's parents? Have they no heart?
12
It's wishful thinking to say he would have beat Reagan. The guy was West Coast smug and a McGovern Democrat. I understand he taunted the press to come get him. He's still surprised they did. Are upper crust Democrats still in denial about every election they lost since Eisenhower? The comparison to JFK didn't help either.
What a way to go. What if Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerrey and Clinton won? Not much. Bernie, Beto and Cortez contenders that could be somebody. Which remind's me it the time for Hollywood to get out their best by years end. Will the Hart movie be a contender?
3
@JoeG
Gore and both Clintons DID win. Remember?
2
@chichimax
Gore did NOT win the presidency; neither did Hilary Clinton. Remember?
1
@chichimax
And according to the Constitution?
1
Unless “President Hart” had an ambassador who warned Saddam Hussein in no uncertain terms not to invade Kuwait, I’m not sure why we would not have had the Gulf War. That’s the kind of country we used to have.
2
“Cyber,’’ he shot back. “Could be banks. Could be transportation systems. Could be communications systems. " on the next great threat?-not exactly prescient......
5
When Gary Hart bowed out, I was crushed.
He was intelligent, articulate, compassionate, informed in all subjects. My enthusiasm for following political campaigns diminished considerably.
Mondale? Mondale? is the best my party could do then?
I still think Gary Hart could have have been a great President, and I'm sorry he feels some guilt over his failed campaign. The guilt falls squarely in repugs hands, not Gary Hart.
10
Gary Hart would have been a brilliant President because he really was a brilliant man. I was, and am, a big supporter; I have never met him.
I believed back then that he was set up by the same machine that got t rump elected. A machine that will not allow democracy to work because democracy is not good for the oligarchs and fascists who own and operate the republican party.
Gary Hart didn't give us t rump; Ronald Reagan gave us t rump. The republican/fascist party has been grooming their very base base for someone like t rump for 50 years. That American citizens can support someone who is so anti-American in such numbers is only possible because they have been convinced that such niceties as "character" and "honor" and "duty" are traits that only that matter in Democrats. Fellow republicans can be as oily and evil and untrustworthy as possible, but Democrats need to measure up or they must be destroyed.
27
@Bob Laughlin
No, it goes back much farther than Reagan.
Nixon was the first to sign on to the plan.
And Eisenhower warned everyone of it.
Unfortunately, no one, including the Democrats, listened.
And they have been dupes to the Republican Oligarch Machine ever since.
2
You can literally pick your"what-if" moment, but it does seem that every such moment in my lifetime has tilted the future to favor the Republicans.
The two that most readily come to mind are moments of treachery.
The first was the back-door sabotage of a possible Vietnam settlement by Republican operatives who persuaded North Vietnam that it would get a better deal if Nixon was elected. President Johnson knew about it but chose not to reveal it for fear of having the news tear the country apart. There's a recording of him on the phone with Senator Dirksen, who himslef used the word treason.
The second also involved a back-door deal with a foreign nation, this time by the Reagan campaign which managed to delay the release of the Iran hostages until the last day of the Carter presidency.
And yet, the Republicans get away with wrapping htemsleves in the flag.
64
I never did really understand what he withdrew from the race for. A woman sits on your lap, beautiful or not, and you have to withdraw from the race?
I've always wondered if it was a bit of payback from the Mondale crowd that was upset over Hart's weakening of their candidate in 1984. That seems like the most likely scenario for me. Not that Dukakis stole the show as the Democratic nominee in 1988, but he was more establishment than Hart was perceived to be. Also, I don't think it can be ruled out that Democrats were notorious tankers when it came to presidential politics back then. They believed that controlling both the House and Senate were more important than the White House (with subpoena power, legislative acts, purse strings, etc.), and having a fellow Democrat in the White House (such as 1977-1981) only made it that much more difficult to maintain a congressional majority.
I'm not even sure Bill Clinton's nomination was intentional in 1992. Iraqi commander-in-chief H. W. Bush was so popular in 1991 (over 90 approval in the polls) that most Democrats thought the presidency was a lost cause. Besides, they were getting their clocks cleaned by the Bush White House on the congressional post office and banking scandals that they didn't have much time to think about winning the presidency in '92. Clinton was almost "accidental" in that regard.
If Hart had won in '88, history certainly would have been different. I still don't understand why he got out.
1
If we’re entering the realm of counter-factual, “what if” history, I submit that Ralph Nader and the Supreme Court have much more to answer for than a bunch of intrepid reporters from 1987.
109
@NA and Bernie Sanders in 2016.
4
@CLSW2000, nope you got that one wrong. Bernie actually pulled Hillary to the left more urgent concerns, thanks to him NY is actually going to see minimum wages raised to $15! Hilary surrounded herself with ultra rich celebrities who did not really speak to folks in WI, MI, PA..that is why she lost, Bernie had nothing to do with it, at the very least Bernie actually opened our eyes to the role corporate and donor money was playing in ruining our elections...
4
Excellent column. Thank you.
8
So sad. Thirty years lost. Madmen like HW, W misguided our nation. So many civilizations destroyed, million lives disrupted. If we can learn a lesson it is to keep our eyes open, our fingers ready to vote horrible people out.
34
@Petey Tonei
Yes, fewer people killed in proportion to any other period in history; trillions in wealth created; literacy at all time highs and hunger and disease at all time lows.
What a sad 30 years...
So much lost!
1
@Weiss Man
How convenient that you are overlooking the Iraq debacle that has cost the country so much. Not to mention that the trillions in wealth has primarily gone to the top 1 % while the middle class is being squeezed on all sides.
13
@Weiss Man, right! Iraqi and Afghan lives don't matter because trillions in wealth was created despite one of the worst recessions that hit during W days, when he told people, go shopping, y'all!
4
Unfortunately, the "past is not prologue." We have a serial philanderer and multiply-accused sexual predator as president. And, we are facing a truly "defining moment" in American history this Tuesday that will determine whether or not our Constitutional Republic can survive Trump's toxicity or slip into an autocracy where "Lock her up!" becomes the law of the land. After the pipe bomber, after the murder of two African-Americans while shopping, after the massacre of 11 Jews while praying, that is the ominous heart-less reality we are confronting. It's human decency v. human degradation; it's compassion v. cruelty; it's tolerance v. bigotry; it's morality v. evil; it's our Constitution v. Trumpocracy. We've moved far beyond "monkey business" and guilt to a much more darker existential moment for all Americans.
147
@Paul Wortman
The bombing at the Boston Marahon, the murder of 9 African Americans while praying, happenened under Obama. Did you blame him?
@Lksf Did they have Obama stickers on their van? Did they quote Obama tweets? Let's get serious because we face an imminent threat to our democracy.
3
Problem is that Hart did not demonize immigrants and other non-white Americans whilst he was cozying up with Donna Rice. Would white America have forgiven him if he had?
5
So women continue to be stereotyped as unable to control their emotions, yet man after man is taken down by his own ego and lack of ability to keep it in his pants. If a man can't resist the attentions of an attractive young woman, what does that say about his fitness to hold a position in which he is entrusted with the most sensitive intelligence regarding our national security? And I'm not just talking about Gary Hart. Too many men perceive women as trophies and sex as a perquisite of power. It's not about puritanism, it's about honor and commitment to the person you're married to. If you are unable to keep that commitment, get divorced - before you start messing around.
19
@CW
It seems that Donald Trump has, alas, has done all, without the honor and commitment, multiple times. No honor, no commitment, just the philandering and messing around and women as trophies and sex as power. Do you feel safer with entrusting him with national security?
4
Hindsight is always 20/20.
9
I’ve posted a comment that hasn’t been approved for appearance yet (beginning: “Journalism has suffered the economics of the entire media industry..."), but I need to add, before “Comments” closes, that my reference there to Web pages “here” was about the internet medium, not about the NYTimes. The intelligence of opinion via the NYTimes is unparalleled; and Times attention to astute reporting is obviously the gold standard of professional journalism in the U.S.
Let me add that my earlier comments may have seemed unrelated to the Hart discussion (as if that matters to anyone), but when politics becomes all surface (i.e., MAINLY impression management), then journalism is compelled to give prevailing attention to surface, and the consumer citizen is led to judge a politician by irrelevancies, because there’s a legacy now of so little depth brought to mainstream political life catering to consumers.
It’s regrettable that higher literacy isn’t especially good for political business, because the complex consumer needs more-complex, more-targeted marketing, which is far more expensive that mass marketing. Republicanism seems to depend on low literacy.
Generally, higher education isn’t good for profits. Inasmuch as I enjoy reading and writing rather than shopping, I’m not good for “the” economy. After all, the GDP is axially about degrees of consumption (“demand”) that warrant “levels” of production. What sells “news” papers is surely good for the business.
5
Trump just got shown to be irrelevant: His rant to have the invading amnesty seekers stopped by the United States Army just got refused by the United states Army. How is it possible that the Commander-In-Chief can be laughed at by those he commands? Only if he is irrelevant or there has been a military coup. So, besides this Russian agent, who has brought Putin the entire Republican Party as Trump's own agents, has no power with which to guide the Army. Soon he will have no power at all.
16
If Clinton had not messed around with Lewinski, Gore would have been elected. If we had counted the Florida votes, Gore would have been elected. If the Supreme Court had not ruled the way it did, Gore would have been elected. Sorry Senator Hart. You ruined your chance. But your failure was your own, not history‘s.
47
Taleb said in his NYT bestseller, The Black Swan, that human beings think they understand the world far better than they do. This column is Exhibit A for that proposition.
7
Journalism has suffered the economics of the entire media industry: Once upon a time, content was sponsored by the “break” for advertising. Then content became vehicle for the ads. (Just look at dramatic structure of TV entertainment: leaving the viewer hanging at the break: “Don’t go away”). Look how ABC World News has become tabloid (thanks, Disney) with hooks about upcomng video that is to be largely just replay of “bleeds-it-leads” video in the teaser at the top of the show.
And so it came to pass with political coverage.
I’m surprised that wonderful Ms. Dowd didn’t note that the tabloid trend really began with Reagan. He made the president into public relations agent—front man for the presidency engineered by others (including Nancy—but mostly G.H.W. Bush). A mascot in the Oval Office worked wonders, because it freed the administration to keep the public managed, while advisors did whatever suited their agendas.
This turned political journalism into covering the public relations for an audience shaped to be primarily a consumer. "Democracy" as public relations works for everyone: protects actual politics and keeps the population's attention where it suits backroom politics.
The news is what sells to the likely reader. Pretty simple.
They say there's a "wall" between real news and the news business. But you'll see so many animated adds on a Web page here—more likely to be magazine (opinion) than news—that one may wonder why be charged for subscription at all.
15
@gary e. davis
This is very true: "This turned political journalism into covering the public relations for an audience shaped to be primarily a consumer."
8
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton both won.
In both cases, they would have served, except for dirty Republican trickery. Storming the Miami-Dade city hall while ballots were being recounted in 2000, and getting help from the Russians in 2016.
Al Franken in 2020!
94
@Voter
A lot could happen in the next 2 years, but I’m reasonably sure THAT won’t...
5
What led us to today’s political nightmare was the anti-government conservative movement initiated by Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign tag line — “Government is not the answer to our problems. Government is the problem.”
A straight line of negativity, blame and irrationality can be drawn from the birth of that movement to the dysfunctional administration of our current unfit-for-office president.
77
@Tom W
True indeed, but remember, St Ronnie learned it from his mentor Maggie.
4
@Tom W
And that worked because the dog-whistle undercurrent for it all was, "They're (guvmint, i.e., Democrats) are going to take your tax dollars and give them to the you-know-who.
They can't win on the facts of their intents and ultimate ideology, which leaves them with lies and deceptions to dupe the gullible, which are swallowed with a nice dose of what was until recently subtle, implied racism.
I have met and known these people, and their gullibility/culpability is as real as the day is long.
12
@Tom W
And Reagan was correct.
1
Gore 2000. Democrats have lost several key chances to address climate and uplift the middle, the poor.
9
Can we make up just some very little, tiny lost ground on Tuesday?
Just a little.
Maybe start putting the world back together.
Will we all vote?
If not, too bad....
26
Why does the American press obsess about the sex lives of politicians? Even Jimmy Carter was "outed" when he confessed that thoughts of extramarital sex were buried within him. Cavorting with someone not your spouse shouldn't be politically relevant. Sure, we might want to know about it because we like gossip. But voters don't (or shouldn't) really care. Not one man or woman I've discussed Trump with says a word about his sexual history when giving an opinion about his presidential fitness. The only relevance that sex seems to have is that most straight white men are Trump supporters while most women and LGTBs are not. Which suggests that Trump needs to sign another executive order revoking women's right to vote. Watch for it.
17
@Richard
Agreed.
The tendency to over-emphasize candidates’ personalities and personal lives in the electoral process has greatly disserved the nation.
A candidate’s values, beliefs and character matter.
Their plans and policies, in the event they win, matter.
Haircuts and designer handbags, not so much.
13
Interesting interview, but it's hard to see how the analysis is more than Monday morning quarterbacking.
5
As a political technician, JFK imitator and self-proclaimed visionary, Gary Hart might have made a good president. On the other hand, if he fails to grasp the perception problem of a married senator going on an intimate private cruise and spending the night in his D.C. townhouse with an attractive blonde who's 22 years younger and only slightly older than his own daughter, he's not as smart as he thinks he is.
62
Trump is the culture war ogre at the bottom of the slope the GOP began sliding down when they began courting bigots outraged by civil rights advances in the sixties. This was greatly amplified by Reagan gutting the Fairness Doctrine, setting the stage for the right wing media propaganda machine, culminating in our now fact-free present. Can't see what Hart had to do with this.
21
So, is Mr. Hart saying he would've reversed Reagan actions including restoring the Fairness Doctrine (so the door wouldn't be open for Fox false news), disallowing monopolies, stopping the blanket protection of Big Pharma from being sued by vaccine injured? Would he have kept President Carter's solar panels on the White House and listened to scientists who predicted climate change? And would he have kept the Glass-Steagall Act in place?
Perhaps the real losses are the stolen elections of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, both elected by popular vote.
25
@lechrist
Those losses were down to the reagan republican Congress changing the rules for the Electoral College taking away the independence of the Electors thereby defeating the purpose for which is was created.
7
We're doomed, Maureen. Face it. Get used to it.
You're a year or two or three younger than I, so we, in point of fact have little to worry about. We'll be dead soon. My sons are middle-aged, so they will not have it so good. It's the grandchildren (and I have none, thank the stars) that need help and prayers (though I have zero confidence in the latter) through the coming end times.
See you on the other side, M.
17
The 2017-18 version of Gary Hart story on Al Franken.
As a comedian, before elected to the Senate he did dumb things as a comic on the road. He made dumb jokes, had a dumb picture taken with part of his entourage, horsed around with his friends. There does not seem to be any malice or eveil, even in the dumb picture. The era was different, the person was different and the USA still had a sense of humor.
Upon being elected to the Senate he became a serious patriotic American who was not afraid to ask tough questions and demand, yes demand, answers. He posed a danger to blowhard politicians and the liars that came in front of him. He served as a concerned liberal.
So, with the advent of the #MeToo movement, a movement which I agree, this early life of the comedian was weaponized to destroy his political life. His own party, his own colleagues eager to jump on the wagon of being "correct" forced him resign, [unlike their Republican colleagues] and liberals and Americans lost what was one of the last best advocates in the Senate.
While it is not possible to conclusively say the expulsion of Franken was manipulated by the Lee Atwater-type operatives, it certainly sounds like it.
Al Franken needs to be brought back to the Senate by Minnesotans, especially in this age of Trump, to call out the liars and the fakes.
490
@jkollin1
You made the rules for your team, then got burned by them. It’s hard wearing a halo.
3
@jkollin1
Or maybe Al Franken could move to New York and run for Gellibrand's seat. That would be karma.
36
@jkollin1
People need to seriously consider that the accusations against Al Franken were masterminded by famous GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone - who is a target of Robert Mueller because he bragged to people he was involved in the WikiLeaks release of the DNC/John Podesta emails. Stone may have been the member of Trump's campaign most involved in cooperating with the Russians. And we may see Roger Stone go to prison for this. It's a shame that Roger Stone was interested in smearing Franken before the woman from FOX NEWS showed up as Franken's first accuser. Seriously, what's up with Roger Stone's fore-knowledge of the accusations against Al Franken?
34
At the outset let me say that I wanted Gary Hart to beat Walter Mondale in 1984 and be the Democratic nominee for president. Hart would not have lost 49 states to Reagan like Mondale did, but he would have still lost.
Even if Gary Hart had survived the Donna Rice non-scandal and won the Democratic nomination in 1988, he would have still lost the presidency to George H.W. Bush because Reagan’s coattails were long. Hart would not have lost 40 states to G.H.W. Bush like Dukakis did, but he would have still lost.
I don’t mean to sound heartless, but “the Hart-less Presidency” has very little to do with Hart and much more to do with Barack Obama and George W. Bush. So, Hart can rest assured that he has nothing to feel guilty about, except the silly way he dealt with the press during the Donna Rice non-scandal.
7
A political leader must have a morality consistent with the evolving morality of his or her times. Saying that in the past there was media silence on presidential affairs doesn't excuse a politician from not noticing that the nature of public scrutiny and what is acceptable moral behavior has changed. Setting aside the sexual peccadillo involved with "Monkey Business," the entire trappings of Hart's behavior suggested a life lived by different rules from that of most Americans.
Hillary Clinton was not the object of sexual scandal, but her figuratively getting in bed with Goldman Sachs and the speaking fees set her off as living by a different set of rules and values from that of most Americans. These lapses in judgment take a toll.
If Hart felt his vision was so compelling--the stuff of making a difference--then he should have adjusted his behavior accordingly.
I can't wait until Bill and Hillary Clinton enjoy the same degree of obscurity as Gary Hart.
5
Where do we begin to see the path leading to this consequential but disaster of a president for the majority of our country.
While the Gary Hart episode is tempting to use as the marker as he was framed by Republican strategist Lee Atwater to turn the almost certainty of Hart’s nomination to face George HW Bush in the 1988 elections, there is more to it. Just as likely that year, the Willy Horton ads were also important.
But I think we have to go back to Nixon’s time when “dirty tricks” entered the GOP lexicon in a modern sense( mayhem in American elections is almost a given dating back to the founding)
We can move forward to Newt Gingrich in 1994 with his Contract for America”, a brass knuckles strategy to defame an administration followed by the failed but nevertheless weakening of the Clinton presidency on impeachment.
There is one constant in this progression from Nixon to the ugliness in 2018: Republican operatives trying to lie and “ make things up” to use the words of President Obama to win elections.
Fifty years later from Tricky Dick to an even trickier Donald Trump, it should be clear that republicans are responsible for the mess we are in today.
Time to vote on Tuesday to reduce the fever spread by republicans.
17
No one can know the "the road not taken". Hart is no exception, despite his prescience, nor his (forgive me) self aggrandizement. What kind of president would he have been? Fo one thing, his judgement comes into question. Aside from deciding to go on the politically fatal jaunt, how could he not have known that at the very least, the appearances of the picture taken of Rice sitting on his lap with him wearing a shirt bearing the name of the yacht "Monkey Business" were terrible at best? If not for the picture, his political fate might have been quite different, but we cannot know that. The outcry was not just about being prudishly moral, it was about decorum, something that is non-existent in the Trump White House, I might add.
Hart might be somewhat bitter, but he defeated himself, because of a lapse in judgement, and a bit of hubris.
4
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't it Gary Hart who not only denied the allegations against him but also dared the media to catch him if they could? Hindsight being 20/20, a presidential candidate 'back in the day' could likely have gotten a pass and been back on his way onward and upward had he just been more discreet, fessed up when caught, apologized and then asked forgiveness as many politicians are wont to do.
If I am mistaken, then please accept my apologies.
5
Gary Hart is / was a smart, articulate person. He would have definitely changed things for the better. In many ways the same way Bobby Kennedy would have, or a Howard Dean. He would have gave Reagan a real run for the money and probably won. But the powers that be will not allow a real candidate for the Left win or even be nominated. ( Bernie Sanders ). In stead they stuck Mondale in who was never going to win and really was Republican lite. And as far as I know Hart was separated from his wife when the famous photo was taken of Donna Rice sitting on his lap. So even if he had an affair, which I don't think he did, so what. Many of the problems with the migrants from the Central American countries can be directly attributed to our policies during the Reagan admin. That would be very different. We would have become a much smarter country. Instead under Reagan we got the real dumbing down of America.
22
America got this way because the Democratic party under Clinton decided to be Reagan/GOP lite while the GOP began a relentless campaign of misinforming voters aided by rightwing talk radio and FOX News and Democrats sold out to corporatism too and abandoned fighting for their core FDR values The GOP became masters at misinformation and the Democrats became a milquetoast party I include Obama in this who while extremely likeable and intelligent essentially governed like a liberal Republican of the past and distanced progressives resulting in the GOP gaining control of Congress in 2010
In essence the Democrats allowed the greed obsessed racist war mongering GOP push the center further to the Right until we ended up with Trump and his brand of GOP American Fascism
The Democrats lost the ideological battle with the GOP were better at telling lies than they were at telling the truth
Basically the Democrats became the party of Neville Chamberlain like appeasement strategy with the GOP since Clinton and this has worked out almost as badly as Chamberlain's did with Hitler
6
trump's is definitely the heartless Presidency. Listening and watching Barack Obama this past week reminded me (as if I needed reminding) of eloquence and intelligent, classy, and kind demeanor.
272
@Mary Ann Donahue You are being too kind in your observations about POTUS. What I would say cannot be aired and I hope that Americans will flock to the polls, delivering a message to Trump and his legions of feckless, greedy and self-serving compatriots (i.e., McConnell et al.) that they do not represent we the people; there is a new day dawning, one which will see us once again open our arms and welcome new generations of people, those hoping for a better life in the same way my grandparents did.Too bad POTUS is incapable of seeing the joy in the face of a newly minted citizen when they become part of this great land.
35
@Mary Ann Donahue
"Classy?" First, BHO says 1% growth is the "new normal" .. then takes credit for 4% growth.
More like "not classy, cheesy and common."
1
@Mary Ann Donahue
Absolutely. It’s like Spock vs. Jabba the NUT.
Seriously.
6
I met Gary Hart at an airport lounge somewhere at the time he was working his bid for the presidency. While it is true that any politician can tell lies as fact, I found Gary as an engaging, interesting guy. One of those people who says something and you think about it years later. We'll never know if he would have been presidential material, but my meeting with him says that he was a smart guy, with good ideas, and could possibly pull it off. Too bad he wasn't running today. He'd bury Trump.
27
Technology & money to manipulate politics, governance, & the news media are far outpacing our ability to govern ourselves in a more-or-less rational, democratic manner. And whether Gary Hart was an early predictor of cyber vulnerability is irrelevant -- absolutely anything you transact online is vulnerable. Wisht Congress were more responsive. Hope we can hold out until we have a president who is a bit more perceptive.
8
Gary Hart is no visionary. By the early 80s, the rise of Silicon Valley and the decline of Detroit was obvious. I'm sure science fiction was speculating about the potential of networked computers a lot earlier than that. And there is nothing original in proclaiming cyber attacks to be the next big threat. People have been speculating about those for years. (Eg The Cylon attack in the 2003 show Battlestar Galactica)
Hart seems to be the kind of fake visionary guru character that liberals are drawn to. His lack of authenticity would have doomed him as a President.
If the moral standards of 1988 had applied in 2016 then Trump would not have been nominated. I don't see how Gary Hart is to blame for our declining standards of public morality.
8
If Gary Hart's alternative history might give him some sort of a masochistic solace, by all means. But here is the thing: if he could be set up by the GOP dirty trickster so easily, imagine what kind of dossier he would have had with the Russian, the Chinese or even the British and the German had he become a worthy target!
So, rest easy, Mr Hart, I don't know Altas but I am sure you are no Altas. The world doesn't rest on your shoulder. Face it, whoever plotting for the GOP resurgence has been scheming and plotting for decades. Cheney and Rumsfeld would still be able weasel back in. Trump and Republicans would continue to ruin the world. And the Dems would remain as clueless and engage in petty power struggle while the Republicans stole from them. And America would still be struggling.
But let's put this altered reality aside for a moment. What if America didn't care about conventional morality of who is sleeping with whom so long as they are consensual and their spouses don't care and the relationships don't pose a security risk or compromise the discharge of official duties? Now, if America could do that, it would be much bigger than Silicon Valley and Detroit because she could spend their resources and geniuses on solving her, and the world's for that matter, problems
4
"“If all that stuff had not happened and if I had been elected, there would have been no gulf war. H.W. wouldn’t have been president. W. wouldn’t have been president. Everything would have changed. I don’t say that to aggrandize myself. It’s just, history changed.""
He doesn't say that to "aggrandize himself?" Sure, and Donald Trump is a model president.
Every politician must call a few or two. So what does that prove? That he would have been a fantastic president and prevented the rise of Trump?
Oh please. Revisionism, even at the ripe old age of 81 isn't pretty. (Yes, I was startled by his appearance.)
But hindsight is always 20-20, and while Hart might have been a great prognosticator of techie trends, I rather doubt he would have made a fantastic president--if he got elected.
While he may lack humility, he doesn't lack confidence. Or arrogance. And while all great leaders need a pinch or two (or more) of all three, we're unfortunately now living under one that can't even be called a leader.
Gary Hart responsible for Trump? I'd say it was more Barack Obama, who unwittingly (and certainly not purposely) unleashed the hounds of racism and bigotry that Trump decided to exploit for his own benefit.
110
@ChristineMcM Hart isn't the reason and he knows it. So does Maureen. We have let ourselves become consumed with media. He has warned us of another looming threat that is already affecting us. Are we going to ignore that, too?
3
Mr. Hart needn't feel guilty, but somebody that professes omniscience should have seen it coming during the let the good times roll eighties that the see no evil press boys club was ripe and ready to take somebody down.
Unfortunately, he foresaw silicon valley but missed the clues for private behavior in presidential politics being outed for the first time by tabloid journalism.
Ironically, he will probably be the first, last and only presidential candidate taken down by the outing of a "dalliance", as Trump's election has basically swept away once and for all the quaint and anachronistic rules of private behavior that nominees in our past were required to ostensibly observe.
But yes, he was careless and it was a foolhardy act. He had a real shot at the presidency but yet he pursued a course of action that had a catastrophic risk/reward ratio.
The promise of a presidency ought to bring out more discipline from a man than that, but I guess it doesn't.
10
“Cyber,’’ he shot back. “Could be banks. Could be transportation systems. Could be communications systems. It’s going to happen."
What is the importance of delving into the peccadillos of Mr. Hart's past? It is his prescient view of the future that should give pause to every American. As the rapt public stays glued to the next sordid episode of the Trump reality show there is a greater threat to our country than the host of the show himself. Cyber attacks as Mr. Hart rightfully points out present a clear and present existential danger to our national security.
A growing sophisticated malware can threaten media, aerospace, financial, nuclear facilities and critical infrastructure organizations, both in the U.S. and globally. A cyber attack could cripple those institutions with rippling effects of enormous consequences.
Let Mr. Hart enlighten us further on the critical issue of cyber warfare. He has been forgiven long ago for any issue involving his personal life.
29
@HMP
I could not agree more.
Conventional wars are not a present or future threat.
Despite that fact, we give the vast majority of our tax dollars to the Pentagon for traditional military expenditures.
People are out there as I type this that could take down our financial markets, our power grid our 'everything' that's stored on computers: and they could do it this evening!
We are cutting back of those defenses as our President wants to pretend that the Russians did not hack our last election.
It's analogous to W ignoring the memo in early August 2001 that terrorists would stike us soon.
We are hopelessly foolish.
11
The Democratic candidate in 1988 ended up being Michael Dukakis who would most likely have made a better president than either Poppy or Gary. There, too, the GOP did him in with the Willy Horton ads (plus an innocuous photo of the candidate wearing an army helmet). We've lost too many decent presidential candidates because of dirty tricks like these, and we, as a nation, never seem to learn.
494
@stu freeman: Yes, Dukakis got laughed off the stage with by the photo of him in the tank with the helmet. Howard Dean was a smart, good, fine candidate who got done in by a microphone 'scream'. The crowd was huge, he was excited and yelled over them, the mike picked up a funny kind of 'yahoo' yell and he was done. In an instant.
He had a 50 state strategy for the Dems! He was the last really smart Dem leader. And now he's a pundit on tv.
Ain't right.
108
@stu freeman
Yeah, yeah, "tricks" are only "dirty" if (D) are the target, right. Not.
This is very old news. Gen Z doesn't care about it, IMHO.
2
@Bang Ding Ow: Yeah, right. Integrity in politics has become ancient history in the age of Trump.
34
Being a visionary, Hart knew the obvious danger of Monkey Business, but being drunk on power got to him. Would America be better if he got elected, maybe and maybe not. Too many variables. 9/11 was not avoidable regardless of election outcome. That had to do with US foreign policy over many generations.
The regret should be that Al Gore was not given what was due to him. Again 9/11 would still happen, but there may not be the wars and the environment would have a better caretaker. Immigration issues would be handled with gentler gloves and policies revisited. That is the unfortunate fork in history.
Trump is not solely responsible for the current poisonous climate( a pun!) , he is a product of a conservative trend. The media feels regret here that America missed a visionary in Hart, so the media should do something, it should give voice to current and future American visionaries so they have a voice and an audience and help change the mood of America. Don’t focus on the sensational because it is just to sell the news like the tabloids. Another sensational tweet from Trump does not teach us anything, we know the man lies and tweets rubbish, enough already! Publish thoughts that can help Americans think and debate on. And over time, maybe America will be gentler and kinder, and show a way forward and hopefully further influence and halt the rightward trend of the rest of the world.
15
@Peggy It is not at all clear that 9/11 couldn't have been stopped. I see no reason to doubt Richard Clarke's account of trying to warn people in the Bush administration and that his warnings fell on deaf ears.
Yes, we had done much to arouse hatred against us but guess what? We hardly stopped doing so and yet there has been nothing comparable to 9/11. Seems our anti-terrorism efforts have been quite successful.
5
@Peggy, I voted for Al Gore in 2000 and consider the Bush-Cheney years as disastrous (mostly because of how they chose to handle 9/11 and Iraq and Afghanistan, and throwing in a tax cut to boot, as they were already juicing up the deficit for a war based on lies).
That said, nothing was "due" to Al Gore. He ran a poor campaign. He ran away from Bill Clinton and did not use Bill Clinton much on the campaign trail. And while I would have liked a different result, in the end, it turned out he did, in fact, lose Florida. Yes, there were many voters who were confused by the ballots. There were "undervotes" and "overvotes" that could not legally be counted because they were too confusing but more suggested the voter wanted Al Gore. They could not be counted under the standard. Everyone had to play by the same rules.
This is like saying Hillary won the popular vote. This is not the rule. GOP will run different campaign if there's no electoral college.
The bigger problem is that when we finally delivered a Democratic President and Democratic Congress from 2008-2010, they did nothing to investigate and prosecute Bush-Cheney neo-cons and the WMD lies. They did nothing to reinvestigate 9/11. It was just "look forward." And, even worse, Obama then continued Iraq and Afghanistan his entire 8 years. Doubled down on neo-con interventionism in Libya & Syria. Obama & Democrats completed the circle back to LBJ/Vietnam, proving there's no difference btwn the parties.
3
@JackToner I see what you are saying. I would say the animosity towards America was developed over a long time, resulting in 9/11, did not matter who was in charge at the time. Many in government were not thinking of terrorist acts in that scale, so less precaution, and it happened. But after 9/11 , the thinking changed and America has since been very careful. Yes, America has not abated in running very aggressive foreign policies.
November 3, 2018
Have a heart America and standby Gary Hart - America's seasoned politician continues to contribute the best of his political talents in this our time for sane and encouraging politics. We all know guilt is not productive and what is - is forgiveness and moving on with the vitality for the best of America and with Gary Hart leadership. Great article and hope is our blessing
7
When I was a White House intern in 1982-83, it was common knowledge that George Bush Sr. was living with Jennifer Fitzgerald. The difference was that he kept his dalliances private, not on a yacht or in the Oval Office.
Besides, being a Republican, he got a pass for his activities.
58
@Padonna Who gave him such a pass? We really shouldn't emulate Trump by making lazy, unsupported claims. If you got something to back that up let's see it.
3
@Padonna He didn't keep his dalliance private, the press did. And when he made it to the Oval Office, so did she, as an under-secretary of state. All of Europe was talking about this affair - only the US papers were too cowed to put 41 under the same scrutiny as they were putting the challenger. And Bush's mistress was on the payroll, as she had been for a very, long time.
22
Unless the Democratic Party starts purging , by getting rid of the old guard, they are going to lose again..
Enough with the Clintons,Pelosi, Schumer, Hart...the Republicans are good at slogans and propaganda, the democrats at whining....
10
Gary Hart is a smarter than average man who had a shot at the really big time and was thwarted. It looks like he had a pretty good life nonetheless. Good for him. It's a little rich though, for him to imagine he could have changed history if only he had become president. We all at some point in our life could have, didn't. or wouldn't take a path that would have led to greatness, or even infamy for that matter.
It was 1970. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was on a cross Canada tour and stopped in a small Alberta town to have dinner in a restaurant where I had just started my summer job as waitress. Trudeau mania was in full flight. I was, of course, crazy love with the man and I just knew I would dump soup in his lap. I decided I just couldn't get that close. I wimped out and watched from the sidelines as he flirted with others.
A year later he married Margaret, someone barely older than I was who was to my mind almost exactly like me. If I had not been such a wimp, he would have met me, fallen in love with me, married me. I would not have partied at Studio 54, would not have been divorced, and would have lived happily ever after with the man the whole world was in love with.
Who knows what might have happened after that? Probably abolished wars on earth, reaching the zenith of human enlightenment. Or sold our souls to join the race to the bottom. Either way, I would have been the cause of it all.
Ps. I don't think Gary Hart still feels guilty. He's giving himself airs.
316
@Memi von Gaza, I think you give Pierre too much and Gary too little importance. It's not personal; it means the difference between the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the country that tore up Central America, the Middle East, and the U.S.A.
21
@Memi von Gaza I love your story. I do hope you took that lesson and stepped up after that. There's always Justin...... Sure, happily married, with kids, probably much younger but as Joe E. Lewis says at the end of the movie Some Like It Hot - Well, no one's perfect.
9
@Memi von Gaza Sorry, I meant Joe E. Brown, from the movie.
5
There are 325 million Americans. Probably a million possess the character and intelligence to be a wise, competent president. During the presidential primaries the herd of competent candidates is culled, and generally the choice is between whoever is most accomplished at cheating, lying, and dirty tricks.
So, we shouldn't be surprised that a master con-artist is now president. That's our system.
24
Ah, to have been spared the Bushes, to say nothing of 9/11. Gary Hart. If only, if only...
10
"How the hell did we get here?"
Columnists and reporters broadcast Trump and Russian propaganda annihilating a decent candidate - so we ended up with the entirely indecent sexual assaulter and dictator-in-the-making in the White House.
44
Well he is 4 years younger than Ruth Bader Ginsberg and she's planning to stay on until age 90, her health be willing. So he could theoretically run at age 83 in 2 years and still has more to offer than many of the other potential candidates being talked about. Gary Hart brings to mind a very different Democratic Party, one that hardly seems to exist any more. Gary Hart was one of the Democrats who was not shy about taking on the excesses of the national security state (in contrast to Obama's capitulation to John Brennan's spying on Senate Intelligence Committee & lying about it; & Clapper's lying about NSA mass warrantless surveillance). Gary Hart was willing to ask the hard and still unanswered questions about both Kennedy assassinations. Gary Hart always had a sharp mind about defense reform.
With James Fallows and Andrew Bacevich, Hart tried again under Obama, submitting a defense reform package. Of course no one from Obama Administration even responded. After lapping up the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama continued Iraq & Afghanistan his entire 8 years & expanded the neo-con adventurism via gun-running to CIA rebels in Syria & destruction in Libya.
Gary Hart harkens back to a time when Frank Church Democrats were still welcome in the Democratic Party. Before identity politics were used as a fig leaf to distract from today's Democrats total fusion with the military-industrial complex. Not sure the Democrats have room for anyone like Gary Hart anymore.
137
@GRH
Thank you for a super informed, broad and deep comment. Some readers will not even understand your reference to “new-con adventurism” but take heart (ugh—unintended pun) that some of us do. I worked on the hill at a time when—believe it or not—I was a foreign policy consultant to both dems and repubs. That was a long, long time ago.
34
"The standards remain subjective, inconsistently applied and partisan." This has to be the most insightful sentence ever written in the NYT. It's the reason why liberals who never saw a circular firing squad they wouldn't join will never gain traction in this country. Franken's resignation still makes me furious and we should be embarrassed that we forced a good man from public life without a fair hearing. I will believe in true justice when Sen. Gillibrand loses in an epic landslide. We have to stop equating sexual assault with men being sexual offensive. They are not the same thing. One is a crime the other is obnoxious behavior. We should hold those accountable who have committed crimes. But we go off the rails when we treat people who are guilty of no crime the same way. This is overreach. There will be a fierce and ugly backlash, when we decide we can’t let Progressive fanatics destroy people’s lives by retroactively imposing today’s sexual standards on past actions. Lets don't kid ourselves what "Jacobin feminists" want. All sexual misconduct is the same. There're no innocent. All men are guilty. All men must be punished. In 1789 the French Jacobins established a revolutionary dictatorship. The Jacobins were known for their Reign of Terror that led to many be-headings. Until the masses revolted & placed them on the guillotine. But not until they destroyed countless lives. Someone needs to ask what's the end game for these political purists while there's still time.
65
Yes, Senate Democrats pushing out Al Franken was a huge mistake; one we will all be paying for in the years to come.
Sen. Gillibrand, who devoted her career as a lawyer to defending cigarette companies from civil suits and criminal investigations, saw her opportunity get rid of the competition for the minor infractions committed by Sen. Franken—and she didn’t hesitate for a moment to think only if herself.
Fortunately, Gillibrand is dead to Democratic donors. She was nothing more than a legend in her own mind anyway. My wife, a lawyer, who makes the bluest Democrats look pale yellow by comparison, condemned Gillibrand in the harshest terms for her mercenary and purely selfish part in summarily executing Sen. Franken.
Whereas, we are hoping Sen. Franken will come back in the second act. We don’t deserve to have him back working for us, but maybe he will re-consider for the good of the country. We need more like him.
852
@Duane Coyle
Amen, Duane. SHE is dead to me also. Talk about an opportunist. She is a Republican at heart, but geographically a Dem.
No thanks.
54
@Bill Brown
" We have to stop equating sexual assault [by men] with men being sexual[ly] offensive. They are not the same thing. One is a crime the other is obnoxious behavior. "
couldn't agree more!
from a complete feminist, left-leaning woman.
51
A serious question, Ms. Dowd: When will YOU be writing a similar column about Hillary Clinton, and especially your participation in Her undeserved vilification ??? We very loyal readers and subscribers deserve, at the very least, an explanation. Just saying.
1003
@Phyliss Dalmatian Hilary R Clinton would have won the election in 2016 by flying colors in any of all the Nordic Countries Finland Denmark Iceland Sweden and Norway, because she is very competent, smart, well educated and most of all very experienced in international and domestic politics. However, the ignorami = poorly educated passportless Americans and selfish nontaxpaying 1 % rich people, elected the most incompetent president in USA history, got his corrupt family and cronies to run the USA into oblivion/dark middle ages!!! There is a saying in Finland "Siberia teaches" think about that...
620
@Phyliss Dalmatian ~
As much as I would appreciate Ms. Dowd revealing the reasons for her chronic villification of Hillary Clinton, I doubt it will happen. Self reflection is not part of Maureen's writing here.
409
@Phyliss Dalmatian
Ms Dowd wrote that Secretary Clinton was not a perfect candidate, but she was far better than Trump. The replies, then and now, were that Secretary Clinton was, by far, the best candidate for president the US has ever had, and, by saying she was less than perfect, Ms Dowd was strongly recommending Trump. I fail to follow the logic of the Times commentators.
51
If only, if only. If only a bunch of white people from England hadn't come here and slaughtered all the people who were already living here because they didn't like the way those people lived. If only Bobby Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, there would have been no Nixon and no Watergate. We can't change the past, only the future.
113
in law and life timing is everything. The press including
Dowd rolled over and played dead ignoring Trump's raciscm
misogyny and constant lying
No one worked hard to put Orange Caesar into the
White House.
Come Partiro Ms. Dowd
Retire and answer your true calling-souring milk
43
A lovely tale of a great man in a counterfactual universe. There is no way to know that Hart would have won if not for the monkey business scandal (at the time it looked bad in a “grab ‘em by the...” way).
My doubts about his ability to win are based on his subsequent awful political judgment when he dropped out and then clumsily tried to get back in. Moreover, the Bush family and operatives were both vicious and effective, and finally America loved old Ronnie.
The 80’s were a time when the conservative crazy train was pulling out of the station on its hellbent mission to finally destroy America’s pathetic social welfare benefits. To say that one man holding a lantern on that train’s tracks could have changed its trajectory is absurd.
39
Why not also discuss that Bill Clinton and Hillary would have been out of business if Gary Hart had won. America has become more aligned to Republican story line: messing around during Presidency or run up to Presidency is wrong; past is ok. It is not important that the guy is smart, it is more important that he follow the Rep Code and dog whistles. This is the poison that has legitimized Trump, and dumped the Clintons.
6
Hmmm. Politicians who can see into the future past the election cycle. What a concept!
9
Gary Hart didn't fail because he was caught in a sleazy situation. He failed because of his colossal ego - shown here in his own quotes, attributing the fate of the nation to his own actions - in which he dared the press to catch him. So they did.
Hart was a non-player, because he has the ego to taunt the press, to stand on his high horse, but he lacked the chutzpah that Trump has to grandly lie about it, even as pictures and stories are published. He retired in a huff instead - how could we not all see his extreme excellence?
We abandoned Hart, not because he had an affair, or was a philanderer, but because he so much lacked good judgement or perspective that he couldn't see that taunting the media to start a media frenzy was a bad idea. In his own mind he was our salvation; in reality he was another overblown ego reaching for the ultimate power trip.
Back then, we were smart enough not to trust the "I alone can save you" type of politician.
161
@Cathyl
Well said.
5
Oh spare me. Hart had 0.0% chance of being president. Even without the “Monkey Business” episode, Dukakis would’ve beaten him in the primary and Bush in the general.
6
Is this a movie review or a political column? Not one of Maureen’s better efforts. Pretty fluffy stuff on the eve of the mid-terms.
8
Gary Hart was and is a narcissist on the scale of Trump.
Do you remember how he dressed and mimicked JFK? It was pathetic.
If he had been president, just a different set of calamities would have befell us, just not the ones that happened.
14
>
Just another guy/victim/roadkill to fall to the "Will" and its Drum Major Eros.
The Greeks fully covered this years ago. It's just a cliché now.
Even the mightiest of the Greek Gods knew it was best to walk on the other side of the street when they saw the boy-god Eros with his gold & lead arrows coming.
“Sexual intercourse has never done a man good and he is lucky if it has not harmed him”
Epicurus, 300 B.C.
But thanks for playing.
10
It's so interesting that the Evangelicals tolerate adultery within the GOP -- even at its very highest level -- but become shocked-shocked-shocked(!) when committed by Dems. Just sayin' ...
618
@Expat Bob the media seems to be most interested in adulterous scandals. They are the ones who focus on sensational news.
9
@Expat Bob
I'm always amazed that anyone would think Evangelicals would find Trump's behavior toward women objectionable. Of course evangelicals tolerate adultery. It serves men, and evangelicals are the staunchest proponents of white male patriarchy. To their minds women should still be barefoot and pregnant, and adultery, porn, sexual harassment and the like are just parts of their god-given birth right as men.
27
A good column by Maureen Dowd. Matt Bai's book is an excellent take on Hart the politician and man as well as the role of the press then and now. Side bar; the photo of Mr Hart looks like he was separated at birth from Keith Richards.
1
Those questions about an alternative history -- Dick Cheney, two wars, Sept. 11, ISIS, the climate catastrophe -- have a simpler answer than Mr. Hart's philandering. Remember Florida in 2000? Remember Katherine Harris? Justice Kennedy? These, and those working with them, are the people who bear at least some responsibility for the horrors of the last eighteen years -- and those yet to come.
924
@Ellen Valle, none of those truths you wrote invalidates Hart's truth.
9
@Ellen Valle
Do you remember if Mr. Obama as the president prosecuted a single elected official for pushing us into two wrongful wars?
At least a single one for the sake of more than 10,000 killed US troops, many hundreds thousand wounded and with the PTSD symptoms, and several trillion dollars of the taxpayers money wasted on the futile efforts.
Why did Mr. Obama believe that the culprits were above the law and that should be protected from the consequences of their wrongful actions?
What about some really selfish reason - protecting his own butt from the same kind of executive responsibility?
10
@Kenan Porobic
Really? do you honestly think this country was in a place to proceed with a prosecution of folks who lied us into a war that benefited every single one of them? While I understand how you feel, I also believe the country didn't need anymore division than we already had, especially what the President was going to be made "a one term President." The republicans protect their own....period. end of report.
61
I suffered when Hart lost and when Jerry Brown pulled out and (I go back pretty far) when McGovern went under. I felt good about Jimmy Carter, still do. And hopeful when Clinton won (he threw it all away when he deregulated the banks.) I liked the doves in Obama's cabinet, but not the hawks left over from our disastrous wars.
My sentiments are:
anti-war (we're strong--we don't need to throw our weight around)
anti-monopolies who buy their way into OUR government
more and more lately, populist-fueled faschism (has the world learned nothing?)
I was with Bernie in the last election until he was whipped by the powers that be. I'll determinedly vote democrat in the midterms in hope that his views are rising and will come to fruition in our next generation.
45
In addition to the greatest blunder in 50 years, Clintons deregulation of the Banks, He is responsible for Arkansas based Walmart going all in on Chinese suppliers. Walmart should have been slapped with massive import tariffs and busted up by our now toothless Antitrust Laws.
We needed a Teddy Roosevelt.
27
@betty durso, it's not entirely fair to blame Clinton for Republican policies that were fated for a veto override if he had vetoed them. Note the "not entirely".
11
Hart gives himself too much credit (or blame) for Trump and the dismal state of the country.
For a guy so good at predicting the future, it's a shame he didn't know that a photograph of a model on his lap would derail his political career and alter the course if the universe.
We will never know how events would have played out if he had become president. However the world doesn't follow the script in your head. There are too many unpredictable people and variables. Speculation might be a fun pastime, but it's pointless.
Hart may be a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions, or just another fork in the road not taken. We'll never know.
21
I remember Gary Hart well. In fact, I was enthused about his candidacy. And personally, I like him still. Although it is to be respected that he has “guilt,” especially in view of the Shameless and Shameful Fool in this White House of today, Hart remains clinging to many a politician’s self-misconception, that being that the world revolves around him. It doesn’t. The reality is the world moves on and does not have the time or desire to fixate on any of us as much as we like to think it.
But more to the point is that our nation has gone through a metamorphosis and not for the better. Without the flaws of a Clinton or Hart, we have managed on our own to replace some sort of decency and restraint and, yes, morality with nothing less than hate and hubris run amok. The questions are why and when and how has this nation succeeded so infamously in degrading itself through its citizens to the point we are at now. Mr. Trump is not only in himself a disgrace but he also reflects humanity’s darkest sides. No, Mr. Hart, it is not about you. It is about us.
27
I shudder when self-appointed guardians of public morals like Ben Bradlee and Kirsten Gillibrand run off people like Hart and Franken. Trials by public opinion suffer from prescriptive standards that are unclear, evidence that is incomplete and not analyzed closely, and punishments that are bear little, if any, relation to the standards that have been proved to have violated.
27
I think that ALL of our political leaders need to maintain a certain standard that is free of ''indiscretions''. ( President Obama and his family being the gold standard)
Having said that, what has propelled this administration to power has been greed and selfishness. Greed for money and selfishness to keep mine and keep all ''others'' out.
That is not the American way, nor even the human one.
30
I think that ALL of our political leaders need to maintain a certain standard that is free of ''indiscretions''. ( President Obama and his family being the gold standard)
Having said that, what has propelled this administration to power has been greed and selfishness. Greed for money and selfishness to keep mine and keep all ''others'' out)
That is not the American way, nor even the human one.
5
Hart's contemplative instincts posit that his political demise unleashed what has come to be known as a butterfly effect. We will never know if he is right, but it takes more than a little bit of ego to magnify one's impact to such global and sustained proportions. Alas, for Hart, what could have been. Blame the butterfly.
Would the world have been a different place had he been elected president? Certainly, as it would have been were George Wallace elected. But his claim of guilt over what were perceived to be his long-ago moral failings seems designed to salve his ego and rewrite history in the context of more recent events.
Moral failings are a gift that keep on giving to one's opponents, and which keep on taking from one's own reputation. Hart can attempt to redefine himself until the day he dies, but for those who actually remember him, it is his infamous life-is-a-series-of-snapshots image on the "Monkey Business" that remains planted firmly in their memories.
Hart can continue to hope for a repaired reputation and even relevance in today's political discourse, but sadly, for him, that ship has long-ago sailed, and still, to this day, it's not a good look.
5
"He oversaw a bipartisan panel on threats facing the nation that delivered its final report on Jan. 31, 2001. “The first finding was America will be attacked by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and Americans will die on American soil, possibly in large numbers"
Actually, an attack using a "weapon of mass destruction" had already occured eight years earlier in 1993 on the WTC.
That attack involved parking a truck filled with a 1400 lb. urea-nitrate hydrogen gas enhanced bomb in the underground garage, next to a foundation structure, of the North Tower of the WTC with the expectation that the explosion would have had sufficient force to cripple that part of the foundation of the North Tower send it toppling into the South Tower and bringing both towers down along with massive damage to surrounding buildings.
The "weapon of mass destruction" here would have been the North Tower itself. That is a degree of ingenuity a magnitude higher than sending planes into the towers which, as bin Laden said, were only intended to create fires, not topple the towers.
As it was, the bomb was not powerful enough but it did kill six and injured over a thousand.
I guess our once and future philosopher-king missed that example of a "weapon of mass destruction". But then that is one of the pleasures of selective hindsight.
12
@GerardM
Well, it shows the value of engineering knowledge. The towers were built to withstand the truck bomb attack.
No engineer ever conceived of massive volumes of burning kerosene being introduced into the buildings, the heat weakening the structural steel, causing the weight above to pancake the towers.
Ingenuity? No. That was wishful thinking in the first bombing. Dumb luck on the second.
But Colleen Rowley, an FBI agent reported to her superiors about flight school attendees suspiciously uninterested in the key processes of take off and landing. That she was marginalized shows that the clues that could have prevented 9/11 were both at the highest level of government and also far below that, both of which failed us.
2
"Always keep one thing in mind: 9/11 could have been prevented."
But when the Democrats in Congress had the chance to do a full investigation, they did not. They let Rice, Cheney, and Bush, Jr off the hook. Why? There is an answer, I am not sure what it is, but it is not pretty.
And Nancy Pelosi "took impeachment off the table" for the lies Bush and his administration told to help ease the way to Iraq. I know the answer to this one: Too many Democrats were complicit in the run-up to Iraq. Their careers were more important than the state of the Union.
79
I was struck by the preening egotism of Mr. Hart's words quoted in this article: "“I bear a very heavy burden of responsibility,”...“If all that stuff [his fling with Donna Rice] had not happened and if I had been elected, there would have been no gulf war. H.W. wouldn’t have been president. W. wouldn’t have been president. Everything would have changed. I don’t say that to aggrandize myself. It’s just, history changed."
“And that has haunted me for thirty years. I had only one talent and it wasn’t traditional politics — I could see farther ahead than anybody.’’
Gary Hart was profoundly arrogant, flaunting his "relationship" with Donna Rice and even inviting the press to follow him around (I guess that makes him a bit stupid, too).
Was Hart so vain that he thought members of the press would cover up his extramarital hanky-panky as they had for John F Kennedy and other politicians, and assumed he could do likewise? Whatever the source of his smugness, he clearly brought his downfall upon himself.
My only question is why anyone thought his tawdry story was worth making into a movie.
12
@Ro Ma
I think the movie was made to make us think of what might have been. We need rethink
5
Please - just stop. The country got a carbon copy of Hart when it elected the Clintons. The man should have some contrition for the mess he made and just move on.
10
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, it might have been.”
47
"Lee Atwater, the Republican dirty trickster and Poppy Bush party chief, confessed before his death that he had set up Hart for his weekend of doom on “Monkey Business.”"
That Rice had been pimped by Machiavellian conservative operatives to seduce Hart seemed an obvious and strong possibility at the time. I'm sure my deduction was shared by many, but mainstream journalists never pursued that angle. Another example of the left often being the most rational of political viewpoints.
However, the fact that he was so easily set up and seduced doesn't say a lot about his character, however advanced his political strategic thinking. All he had to do was refrain from compulsive and destructive behavior for the duration of the campaign, and he would have become president.
Hart is one of the people responsible for the people getting the government they deserve.
16
Could Hart really have turned the tide of history? Or been whipped by the tail of it?
Is Mo merely entertaining our delusions that one man can really shape the future of the world?
Could Hart have reversed Reagan's reigniting the imperative for growth -- morning in America -- and reinforcing American's power position that we would not negotiate our way of living big on a small planet?
Would we now not also be seeking to escape our reckoning with living big by finding faux security off the grid?
Any leader taking charge with any vision for living small would have been whipped unmercifully by the tail of history. President moonbeam would have been overwhelmed by the fierce sun of manifest destiny and similarly tied to its iron, unbending track. Permutations of detail aside, there are no other parallels. We are screwed on the track of our history of big.
I am haunted by another one who didn't become president: Jerry Brown. Maybe if we'd had him in the White House for 8 years, our bridges wouldn't be falling down, our electrical grid wouldn't be on the brink of failure, and America would be doing its duty to the environment.
656
California has the highest poverty rate of any state, and quite a bit of inequality. Its agriculture is dependent upon underpaying an army of “guest workers.” Its housing costs are beyond the reach of all but a few. And it is dependent on an unsustainable water supply.
12
@Bob White - And 18 of the 19 poorest states are run by entirely GOP'er legislatures, while all 5 of wealthiest states are run by entirely Dem legislatures:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2018/10/21/midterms-poorest-states-have-republican-legislatures/1694273002/
It's virtually impossible for such a statistic to occur due to sheer happenstance - 95% of the 38% of states who are poorest are run entirely by GOP'er legislatures ?
C'mon.
Then there's the massively failed GOP'er 'economic experiment' in Kansas by Brownback:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/us/politics/kansas-tried-a-tax-plan-similar-to-trumps-it-failed.html
as well as the chaos visited on Louisiana by Jindal:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/04/the-debilitating-economic-disaster-louisianas-governor-left-behind/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.079911b6be35
Plus there's the actual lived reality of the 2008 collapse under auspices of GOP'ers.
Jerry Brown would be a good beginning to rejecting Failed GOP'er economic templates, and installing Dem policies that are proven to be superior - proven in the states, the laboratories of democracy.
236
I wasn’t claiming GOP states are the better model. I only addressed California and Brown as not being an example for the rest of the states, based on current status.
3
What was also lost was an emphasis on ideas and thought as at least up there with physical attractiveness as qualities by which to compete for office. It wasn't just Hart's fault. Competing Dem's came up with the catchy line: "Where's the Beef," and that became the story, instead of looking at his books. The press further contributed to the frenzy by focusing on some stupid stuff, like his shortening his name. Why was that even important? Who cares about alleged aloofness?
So we lost someone serious who wrote about issues and thought about the future. And, while cautious about making a linear connection, now we have 2 AM tweets letting us know whose turn it is to be demeaned.
Now, there's not even an obvious place to send ideas that might help break our political and policy stalemates. No one even asks for them. Documents don't get read or covered, and the dominant mindset is that "there's nothing new under the sun." Instead we're doomed to play out, for the most part, the same old political cycles, the same old approaches to issues.
Back to fault, it's impossible to know the counter-factual; what would have happened if such an event played out differently. Way too many unknowns. Any certainty is only in our heads.
Gary Hart: be gentler toward yourself. It looks like you're not done making contributions.
11
@Matt Polsky you may be thinking of the 1984 election when Walter Mondale used the "Where's the beef?" from a Wendy's ad against Gary Hart. Hart claimed to be the idea man so Mondale used the phrase to downplay Hart's claim.
2
An enlightening piece. It’s ironic but today I think most people would make little of what appears now to have been a staged attempt to bring Hart down with “monkey business.”
I wish he had nor beat himself up about it, though. He is NOT responsible for the mess we are in now with a President like Trump. Since 1987 so many twists, turns, and accidents have changed history. For me, the most important was “hanging chads” in the 2000 election in which collusion by the Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court and its switch voter Sandra Day O’Connor delivered the Presidency to George Bush rather than recount the votes (which many think would have confirmed that Al Gore carried Florida). (Justice O’Connor later publicly regretted her vote.) That brought us Cheney, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Give yourself a break, Gary Hart.
347
@Barbara. "2000 election in which"
Al Gore lost his home state. Al Gore lost Ralph Nader, who took 5% of Florida. Al Gore lost Bill Clinton. Al Gore lost, all by himself.
2
@Barbara Mr. Hart's dalliance with Donna Rice was apparently not the only one; it has been reported that reporters had other examples ready to publish if the Rice affair had not surfaced so spectacularly. (Monkey business indeed!)
Also, given that according to himself Mr. Hart was and remains so omniscient and brilliant, how did he allow himself to get "set up" with a cutie pie he spent so much extracurricular (and extraterritorial) time with? Just as with Bill Clinton, I am sure he never inhaled.
1
@Barbara Thanks for a great comment about the consequences and direction our culture and values are going. My fear is the steep decline our present White House & congress are heading toward and what affect it will have on its future movement. Today's problems may be miniscule in comparison. What will our grandchildren have to contend with?
1
Like Oedipus, a tragic figure writ large on the political and ethical landscape that unfolded for you and your county, you still lack the ability to truly see yourself. "Ya gotta have Hart..." and we almost did. You were so eloquent, so attuned to the international zeitgeist, so presidential, and then, as the inevitability of your election seemed so real, your fatal flaw, the hubris of a man on a dizzying trip to popularity and power is revealed -- outrageously, you invite the press to stalk your every private move... Alas, Mr. Hart, ultimately, you were your own undoing, and as is the case with millions of others, we entirely agree with you that you bear responsibility for the horrible turn of events-- the destiny that is our sad political march ending with Trump.
7
@James Landi I agree. One thing that was left out of Ms. Dowd's column was that while there were rumors of Gary Hart having an affair, Hart invited the press to follow him to show evidence that he was having an affair. Hence we got Monkey Business.
8
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas.
15
To say what would have happened over 30 years is indeed grandiose - especially if the 'would have' eliminates much that has been negative. Hart's statements are not unlike those of JFK idolizers who claim that if he had not been assassinated we 'wouldn't have had Vietnam.' It is pure fantasy based upon assumption of JFK or Hart acting as some ideal leader and avoiding all the mistakes of those who had to lead in real and complex world affairs.
Sadly, Hart is right that we have deteriorated considerably in terms of what behaviors we find acceptable in those who not only are called to lead but also are by default role models for future generations.
21
I wish you were right about the deterioration. Meanwhile, I couldn't help wondering if the focus on politicians' sexual conduct, without making any necessary distinctions between the wide range of behaviors, has fed into an avoidance of scrutinizing politicians' failures in leadership. They can lie. They can do drugs. They can say contemptuous things of the unwashed. They are saints as long as they don't have anything sexual that is newsworthy. Quite a destructive way to see political history.
1
Classic Mo: " If reporters had not hidden in the bushes, would there have been any Bushes? "
Gary Hart - now there's a name we don't often hear anymore; too bad he hasn't been doing some TeeVee punditry during the rise of Faux Noise Machina.
Hart is the poster child victim of not just Atwater, but the faux-preacher industrial complex - and their double standard for Dems/GOP'ers, best illustrated by the hypocritical pearl clutching over Hart, Clinton, and Edwards, totally forgotten in their headlong race to get Pres. Un-indicted Co-conspirator and: judges.
Any old movement conservative Federalist Society apparatchik will do for a lifetime appointment, in the rush of bro-code geezer Senators to beat their Code Blues.
The Hart dirty tricks example definitely changed history, leading to the 1 time in the 3 generations since WWII when the same political party kept the White House for 3 consecutive terms - and critically placed a 'buffer administration' between St. Ronnie and Iran-Contra.
Hart is right to know there would not have been a Bush 41 administration without Atwater's tricks - though there may have also been an a-la-Clinton impeachment case a decade earlier than occurred.
As to Cyber, we agree, but would bet what will occur will be epically grand scale theft:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-muth/an-economist-asks-who-mad_b_971113.html
and economic disruption.
40
@R. Law, and, of course, George H.W. Bush provided full pardon for all Iran-Contra criminals, including Oliver North and Elliot Abrams. Latter of whom who said he would vote for Hillary (and she of course did not disavow his support, just as she happily accepted the endorsement of neo-con, intervention-first regime changer Max Boot).
4
Forgive me if I DO kinda-sorta think there’s an element of self-aggrandizement here on former Sen. Hart’s part.
I mean, who but a 17-year-old fudges his age by a year?
That written, Gary Hart has a formidable mind, perhaps the single most important element in his FAILING to be elected president, images of Bimini and a lap-seated hottie notwithstanding. But the imponderables associated with a Hart win in 1988 are SO incalculable that to claim a guilt for events that actually occurred with a reality that began with HW sitting in the Oval Office instead of he are just … laughable. MASSIVELY laughable.
From HW’s reaction to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and panicked pressure by regional allies to do something material about it, and all events that proceeded from those decisions, cannot be stated with anything like confidence would have been materially different with a President Hart, except in convenient hindsight. We were evolving as a nation and a people along an arc that encompassed and surpassed any one man’s gauatemaliness. Maybe a successful Hart first term could have forestalled a Bill Clinton in 1992 – a Clinton who was hardly compelling at the outset of his run for the presidency that year when, if Hart had been president, there probably wouldn’t even have BEEN Democratic primaries. But that assumes a successful Hart first term. On and on. It’s just completely unpredictable, and most of it assumes that Hart would have been a success at more than getting elected. …
11
… And no president could have made such an unalloyed claim since Ike – and he had heart attacks to overcome.
An almost-82-year-old man, still proud but getting along, seeks to make more of his life’s singular failure as he sets about arranging affairs than history likely would accord it.
Hope he enjoyed the elk, buffalo, and … quail.
5
Who was chasing who, it seems as if Hart's affairs were pretty consensual, if anybody did the groping, it was the women. I know it is hard for some of you to believe women can be just as aggressive as men, it is too bad our society is so hung up on who has sex with whom. It is a holdover from the old hellfire days of the Puritans, we still have not got over them.
If he was in France he would have been a national hero, he would have had to be protected from amorous women. So we lost a visionary due to a Victorian mentality.
even better he did not have to be a paper billionaire to be attractive to them, oh how many of us wish we had that same attraction.
Yes he most likely would have made a very good president, he could imagine the future and was correct about it. He did not even try to invent some imagined tale about it, well Puritanism ruled, and now we have a different kind of Puritan, a pure liar and swindler, what more could we ask for?
231
@David Underwood
You make an unseemly caricature of "Puritans". I dare you to do some research ... but you have to start at about 1570's on upwards. You are engaging in anti-intellectualism. Of course, they were devout Christians, that's for sure, and they also espoused literacy for all so each and every person could read and interpret liturgy without the filter of Authority. But it all comes down to sex? silly.
5
@Here we go
Read "Hellfire Nation"
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105179/hellfire-nation
This insightful new conceptualization of American political history demonstrates that—despite the clear separation of church and state—religion lies at the heart of American politics. From the Puritan founding to the present day, the American story is a moral epic, James Morone says, and while moral fervor has inspired the dream of social justice it has also ignited our fiercest social conflicts.
From the colonial era to the present day, Americans embraced a Providential mission, tangled with devils, and aspired to save the world. Moral fervor ignited our fiercest social conflicts—but it also moved dreamers to remake the nation in the name of social justice. Moral crusades inspired abolition, woman suffrage, and civil rights, even as they led Americans to hang witches, enslave Africans, and ban liquor. Today these moral arguments continue, influencing the debate over everything from abortion to foreign policy.
Written with passion and deep insight, Hellfire Nation tells the story of a brawling, raucous, religious people. Morone shows how fears of sin and dreams of virtue defined the shape of the nation.
James A. Morone, professor of political science at Brown University, is also the author of The Democratic Wish: Popular Participation and the Limits of American Government.
I have a friend who's family came here in 1629 and were Puritans,
27
Heads Republicans win; tails Democrats lose.
What a twisted Lucy and Charlie Brown political hellhole of a country the USA is.
Tuesday, November 6
D to go forward; R for reverse.
660
@Socrates
D for impeachment, resist, Big spending, Pelosi, and Hillary.
R for tweets, jobs, taxcuts, Big spending, Mitch, and Pence.
1
@Socrates
I live in Massachusetts, and I will definitely NOT be voting for Senator Warren, a woman who manipulated the goals of Affirmative Action to her own career ends.
I trust that every other voter will look to their representatives and make the same decisions. And then we can check back in on the results on Wednesday.
However it turns out, I will respect those voters. That is what we do in this country, irrespective of their race, gender, faith or intelligence. It’s a bother to Progressives, but it is the way we do it here.
2
@Stuart Except none of this is true.
40
Terrific recap. Chilling cyber prediction especially when the US struggles during a hurricane or flood. Part two interview - does Mr. Hart see a decent path forward? Are there young leaders that impress him? Either party.
76
@kat perkins All of his cyber worries are important, but I think the biggest disruption would be if the power grid were attacked.
Everything he mentioned would come to a standstill.
6
@kat perkins It is past time for both parties to try to find new, younger leaders.
The R's are almost a lost cause, but the D's should be looking very hard at the younger crop they have this year.
The old guard is too old. I realise that is ageist, and I am an old person myself. But surely there is someone from say 38 to 58 who would make a good candidate?
9