Gary Hart was the frontrunner candidate from the Democratic camp in 1987 for the 1988 US presidential race. But his extramarital affairs with model Donna Rice put an abrupt end to his presidential campaign. Based on an anonymous tip, the Miami Herald reported that Hart had spent a weekend with a woman, not his wife, in his Washington, D.C., townhouse in May 1987. The publication of a photograph of Rice sitting on his lap on a yacht named the "Monkey Business" published on the cover of the National Enquirer struck the last nail in the coffin of his campaign trail.
Twenty-eight years later, Donald Trump made it to the Oval office with sex scandals far worse than Gary Hart's vitiating his private life. If the first term of his presidency did not quite expose Trump's flippancy, the exposure of felony proved in the court did not stand in the way of his getting elected as the 47th president in the 2024 presidential election.
Have the American people become more tolerant to such sex escapades after more than 30 years? This is what a few media in the US has termed celebrity circus. When politicians are treated as celebrities, their private life may no longer be judged by a moral yardstick. In fact, in case of Trump and Clinton, the American public now held a liberal view. Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky prompted the US House of Representatives to impeach the president but he still survived. Scandals such as this involving many other high-profile presidents could have made rounds if the US media of those times did not turn a blind eye to the private lives of politicians and presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eisenhower, John F Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson all had their mistresses but none were taken to account for their digression by the male-dominated Press.
Gary Hart can certainly feel that the Press's obsession with scandal and the treatment of politicians as celebrities is what unmade his political fortunes. He could be a successful president but his celebrity status undermined by exposure of the scandal brought to a premature end to his political career. What media could do 30 years ago is perhaps no longer possible now because of the social sites. Well, if there are scandalmongers, there are also their opponents who can defend the victims.
What is noticeable, though, is that the US public or voters have not changed their view much on this subject. Generally they thought that what politicians and presidents did behind the closed doors were their own business. It should not destroy the promising political careers. In the case of Trump, an entertainer of the highest order like Charlie Chaplin who incidentally played the role of a tramp, the frivolity and eccentricity or capriciousness provide for high entertainment. If there is method in his madness, few Americans would be convinced of this virtue. Deployment of US army in states through executive orders in total disregard for state administrations' jurisdiction or opinions suddenly unfolds an ominous spectre for the country boasting democracy and civilian rights.
In The Tramp, the protagonist comes to the rescue of a farmer's daughter from a couple of hobos. As a reward for his good work, he was employed as a farmhand at the farmer's crop field. He even foiled a planned robbery attempt. But when he comes to know that the farmer's daughter is already in a relationship, he quits and take to the road from where he came.
This Trump is, however, a different material who pretends to be a peace broker but virtually doing nothing to stop the attacks on the Palestinians and Ukrainians. He behaves like an emperor. Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva did not mince words when he said, referring to Trump, that this world does not need a king. The era of king and emperor has indeed demised.
Presidents of America with extramarital affairs behind them were otherwise serious politicians. But here is a former TV host who is a comedian with streaks of a tramp who behaves in way that gives a false impression of him. Politically he is neither mature nor astute as demonstrated by his political hard line taking a stumble in the face of the opponents' principled stand. A Trump thus melts into a tramp. Trump is not alone, there more like him.
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