All the presidents' women: a not-so-secret sexual history
With Valentine's Day here, spring is not far behind, and for married male politicians that means sex scandals. British politicians have long been portrayed as being pre-eminent in sordid, career-ending affairs, while their US counterparts are painted as keener to acquire wealth than adoring or acrobatic mistresses.
Yet the litany of licentiousness of Washington's politicians can easily hold its own against any record Westminster can provide.
Bill Clinton, of course, has been enshrined forever on the Mount Rushmore of raunchiness, due to his scandalous affair with the thong-snapping intern Monica Lewinski. But such tawdry tales did not begin with Mr Clinton. In fact, almost since the birth of the US, American politicians have stood groin deep in sexual scandals.
Thanks to a loving wife - and perchance those wood and whalebone teeth - the country's first president, George Washington, was forever faithful to Martha.
But Thomas Jefferson, the young nation's third president, had a passionate affair with a beautiful woman named Sally Hemmings for 18 years. Jefferson was a widower at the time, so this wouldn't have been considered a scandal by today's standards. But this was 1802, and the southern-born president was sleeping with one of his own slaves. For nearly 200 years, historians dismissed the rumours as scurrilous gossip spread by Jefferson's enemies. But in 1998, DNA testing confirmed Jefferson was the father of at least one of Hemmings' sons.
Fast forward eight decades to 1884 and the presidency of Democrat Grover Cleveland. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was a 47-year-old bachelor when he made his run for the White House. His opponents hoped to close down his campaign by accusing him of fathering an illegitimate son a decade previously, the result of a secret affair with a sales clerk.
But Cleveland quickly admitted the tale was true and further revealed that he was supporting both child and mother financially. Cleveland won the election, but by a margin of just 62,000 votes. Then when Cleveland ran for a second term, opposition newspapers printed the rhyme: 'Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Going to the White House! Ha Ha Ha!' - only to have him win by a larger margin.
Forty years later, handsome Republican Warren Harding became president in 1920. Routinely rated as one of the country's shoddier presidents, having endured three major scandals during his single term, the married politician had numerous affairs. During the campaign, one mistress, Carrie Phillips, received US$20,000 in hush money and an all expenses vacation, courtesy of the Republican Party.
Having quieted her, Harding won the White House, but then continued to 'entertain' a past flame, Nan Britton, sometimes with the help of the Secret Service in an anteroom just off the Oval Office. Harding died while in the White House, and soon after Britton penned a tell-all best-seller, publicly outlining the president's positions, so to speak.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the longest-serving president in US history, having won four terms in office. Despite being wheelchair-bound due to polio, he also holds the record for maintaining the longest running extra-marital affair. F.D.R's mistress, Lucy Mercer, first met Roosevelt in 1918 and she was with him on the day he died of a stroke in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945.
While based in London as a general during the second world war, Dwight D. Eisenhower (president 1953-1961) was alleged to have begun an affair with his attractive British driver, Kay Summersby. The rumour goes that after the war, 'Ike' planned to divorce his wife and marry Summersby, but his Pentagon bosses threatened to bust him out of the army. Years later, President Truman confirmed this story and revealed that he personally had the files destroyed.
The US media left the account alone until 1975, when Summersby was dying. To raise needed money for her final days, Summersby wrote a contentious book titled Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower. By the time the book was published, Summersby had passed away and the president and his wife were dead.
From the 1960s to 90s, Washington's political wolves continued to roam. President John Kennedy came to be known as 'Jack the Zipper' by his Secret Service detail.
His mistresses ranged from actresses Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield to Judith Campbell, mistress to mafia mobster Sam Giancana. Others on the lust list included White House intern Mimi Fahnestock (now a 62-year-old grandmother) and several secretaries.
Apart from the White House itself, Washington's favourite 'love nest' for such politically perilous liaisons would be the Mayflower Hotel, an ornate 70-year-old, Peninsula-style pile that for decades has been a place for politicians to safely stockpile their mistresses.
In the 30s, general Douglas MacArthur kept his Filipina mistress in the hotel. Though a 50-year-old bachelor at the time, McArthur was afraid that his 80-year-old mother might find out about the beautiful mixed-race actress who was 25 years his junior, and be violently upset if she knew.
Through the 50s and early 60s, Jack Kennedy maintained a suite in the Mayflower for the same purpose - even though FBI boss J. Edger Hoover breakfasted in the hotel every day for 20 years. (This is how Hoover probably found out about Kennedy's love life, information he would later use against the president when Kennedy wanted Hoover to retire).
An oblivious Jackie Kennedy chose the same hotel as the venue for Kennedy's 1961 Inaugural Ball. Though the dashing young president had been a habitual 'overnight' guest of the hotel for years, the Mayflower's adept staff acted as though they were meeting Kennedy for the first time.
Nearly 40 years later, the Mayflower still plays a backdrop to Washington's sex scandals. In 1999, when the Monica Lewinski scandal broke over the Clinton Administration, her lawyers wanted to stash the way-too-talkative intern somewhere away from the press. So they booked her into a fashionable Washington hotel. The Mayflower.
