Nigel Cawthorne - Sex Lives Of The Presidents: From Washington To Clinton

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Contents

Who did THOMAS JEFFERSON call his black Venus?

Was ANDREW JOHNSON a flasher?

Was GROVER CLEVELAND into bestiality?

Did FRANKLIN ROOSEVELTs notorious womanizing send Eleanor into a lesbian relationship?

Did JIMMY CARTER only lust in his heart?

What did Hillary CLINTON tell BILL she needed more than twice a year?

FIND OUT THE STARTLING ANSWERS IN SEX LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS!

FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

President Clinton is mired in accusations about his sex life. But whats the big deal? It has been ever thus. Bill Clinton is simply following in a long line of Presidential promiscuity.

It was begun by the first President, George Washington. His first lover was an Indian squaw. He had a long-term affair with the wife of his best friend. During the Revolution, he had a congressman procuring for him so that he could enjoy the solace of love when he returned from the front. And he died from a chill he caught after a night of passion in the unheated slave huts with an African beauty.

It would be wrong to think that, back then, the peccadilloes of those in power were hushed up. Washingtons involvement in the Washerwoman Kate scandal was made into a Broadway play.

Thomas Jeffersons seduction of a married woman and his second family with the slave girl Sally Hemingswho was also, incidentally, his sister-in-lawalso made the press. The attacks were merciless. The racist press at the turn of the nineteenth century accused him of keeping a Congo harem in the White House. By comparison, Bill Clinton is getting an easy ride.

The hounding of Andrew Jackson over his bigamous marriage was so vicious that his wife Rachel died of shame before he entered the White House.

When the freshly widowered 54-year-old John Tyler married a 24-year-old model, the press urged that his arduous duties in the bedroom should excuse him from office. The couple had seven children.

President James Buchanans homosexual affair with William Rufus De Vane King, Vice-President under Franklin Pierce, was widely mocked. James Garfield also seems to have had a youthful gay fling, before joining one of the many nineteenth-century sects that encouraged free love. His political career survived an affair with an 18-year-old journalist on the New York Times and, during the 1880 election, the allegation that he slept with a prostitute in New Orleans.

During the 1884 election, Grover Cleveland was forced to admit that he had fathered an illegitimate child. He was also a draft dodger, having paid a young Polish immigrant $150 to fight in the Civil War in his stead. Cleveland won the election because his Republican opponent James G. Blaine was even more corrupt. Then the 49-year-old Cleveland went and spoiled it all by marrying his 21-year-old ward. The press pack pursued them on their honeymoon. In scenes reminiscent of the paparazzi pursuing Princess Di, the couple were spied on through telescopes, while editorials speculated what a man of Clevelands age and girth could be doing with a pretty young woman. Scurrilous pamphlets alleging bestial practises lost Cleveland the 1888 election. But he returned to the White House, with his popular young wife, in 1893. They had five children.

The lugubrious Woodrow Wilson was a serial adulterer. While in office, his first wife died and Wilson began pursuing a wealthy widow, Mrs Galt. When he asked for her hand in marriage, Washington gossips quipped that she was so shocked she fell out of bed. The affair hit the rocks when one of Wilsons former amoretti published his love letters. Wilson tried to limit the damage with a sickeningly schmaltzy press release.

More trouble ensued when The Washington Post made one of the greatest typos in history. When President Wilson presented his fiance at their first formal engagement, the Post reported: The President spent much of the evening entering Mrs Galt. It meant to say entertaining Mrs Galt. I think.

Warren Harding could just about qualify as Americas firstand onlyblack president. He had a Jamaican grandfather. His racial origins, which he never denied, were a major issue in the 1920 election. This helped distract attention from his compulsive womanising. His wife caught him inflagrante delicto with a young woman in the coat closet in the Oval Office. He would almost certainly have been brought down by the drunken orgies he attended with chorus girls in a house on H street, if he had not died in office. His wife tried to salvage his reputation by burning his papers. But his lover Nan Britton, mother of his illegitimate child, wrote a book called The Presidents Daughter. The Society for the Suppression of Vice tried to stop its publication, until campaigning journalist H.L. Mencken of The Baltimore Sun rode to the rescue.

Franklin Roosevelt sailed closer to the wind than any president in history. Always a ladies man, he seduced his wifes social secretary. When Eleanor found out, she said she would stick by him, provided he gave his mistress up. He said he would. He lied, and continued seeing the mistress for the rest of his life.

He took his accommodation with his wife as carte blanche to take other lovers. But when Eleanor took a lover, threatening his chances in the 1932 election, he got his own mistress to seduce his wifes lover to prevent a politically devastating divorce. By the time Roosevelt entered the White House, Eleanor had come out as a lesbian. The press made veiled references to Eleanors strange companion, the cigar-smoking, bourbon-swilling AP reporter Lorena Hickok, whose sexual proclivities were no secret at all. But during the Depression and then the war, Roosevelt was Americas saviour and the press saw no alternative but to sit on the story.

FDR hated his wifes sapphic liaison but had to put up with it. During the crucial days of World War II, Roosevelt and his mistress lived uneasily in one wing of the White House, while Eleanor and her lesbian lover occupied the other.

Dwight D. Eisenhowers affair with his army driver Kay Summersby was well known by the press. They were often photographed together in wartime Britain and on trips to North Africa. But when he returned to the US to pursue a political career, he abandoned her.

In her autobiography, Summersby spilled the beans. She said that, with her at least, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the European Theater was impotent. This may not be a problem to President Clinton, but it demonstrates the need for discretion. If Hitler had got wind of the fact that the leader of the great seaborne invasion couldnt get it up, imagine what use he could have made of it as a propaganda weapon. The D-Day landings could have been a flop.

John F. Kennedys shortcomings are well known. They are all here. And Kennedys successor, Lyndon Johnson, boasted memorably: I had more women by accident, than women had on purpose. Judge for yourself.

Even President Nixon had a dangerous fling with a suspected Communist agent.

Jimmy Carter may only have committed adultery in his mind. Does that count? Im sure Bill Clinton would not think so. But Ronald Reagan led a Hollywood lifestyle, which included the accusation of date rape weeks before his marriage to a pregnant Nancy.