Opposition parties (with the aid of the press), have long debated whether candidates were “fit” to be presidents.
The candidates honesty, adherence to societal norms, stability, levels of “masculinity” (whatever that means), and religious devotion, have all been measured and debated.
It was once thought that a divorced person couldn’t be elected president, or an atheist, or someone who shirked their military duty.
However, most of those “taboos” are now in the dust bin.
Integrity and character were once considered factors as to who should be elected president.
In 1952—when Candidate Richard Nixon was accused of illegally receiving $18,000 from backers—he denied using the money for his own support and played the “family” card, disingenuously saying that he’d never return the family cocker spaniel, “Checkers.”
(The speech worked, and Eisenhower kept Nixon as his running mate!)
There were many stains on Warren J. Harding’s legacy but the chief one was the “Teapot Dome Scandal”—a saga of drilling oil on federal land, bribes and interest-free loans, blackmail, gambling with the White House china, a murder-suicide, and rumored poisoning of a President by his wife.
Most of the “dirt” on Harding, came out after Harding died.
(”Teapot Dome” refers to the dome shape of one of the Wyoming oil fields where Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall, illegally allowed private interests to drill for oil.
The corrupt former Cabinet official was eventually sentenced to a year in jail, fined $100,000, and lost his law license, but Fall was the only person who endured any consequences.)
Divorce was once thought to be an important issue that could break a potential candidacy.
Andrew Jackson’s marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards occurred before her divorce from Lewis Robards, making her an inadvertent bigamist.
(This scandal followed the Jacksons through their 34-year marriage, and his political career. Rachel died soon after Jackson was elected, and she was never First Lady.)
Candidate Gary Hart and his wife Oletha never divorced, but his being a front-runner (for the 1988 nomination) ended after photos of Hart surfaced on the “Monkey Business” yacht.
Andrew Jackson married a divorced woman, but the first president to be a divorced man was Ronald Reagan.
The next divorced president was Donald Trump—a twice-divorced, notorious womanizer since the mid-1970’s—who bantered about his infidelities (and personal sex life) with radio host Howard Stern during the 1990's and early 2000's.
The fact that Bill Clinton received educational draft deferments, and didn’t volunteer to serve in Vietnam, made him a “shirker,” according to a few WWII veterans.
Some life-long Democrats (like my father) chose to vote for Independent Ross Perot in 1992, rather than vote for him; however, Clinton still won two terms.
Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, were young men of the same era, and received educational and medical deferments during the Vietnam War. However, Biden expanded health care and benefits for veterans, and frequently mentions deceased veteran son, Major Beau Biden, in his speeches.
Publicity about sexual indiscretions have affected political futures since the nation’s earliest days but the stories weren’t a problem, as long as they were just rumors.
Federalist Alexander Hamilton might have become one of our first presidents, had he not confessed to a year-long affair with a married woman, and making blackmail payments to her husband.
Grover Cleveland and Warren G. Harding were both accused of siring children out of wedlock.
Al Gore fell victim to the indiscretions of the president he served.
Would Gore have won the Electoral College (after winning the popular vote, in 2000), if not for the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal?
In total, four U.S. presidents have been accused of siring children with women they owned as slaves (among them, the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming story), and at least seventeen have been accused of engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage.
15th President James Buchanan was the only unmarried president—leading some to question his sexual orientation.
However, if Buchanan was gay, the word didn’t get out.
His image (in the mid 1800’s at least) was “manly” enough for him to be nicknamed “Old Buck.”
Sources like Collier’s Encyclopedia make a big point of his “near-engagement” to Anne Coleman in 1819, as if to prove his “sexual normality,” but “less conservative” sources speculate about Buchanan’s “special friendship” with William Rufus King.
Pundits have had some odd ideas about masculinity.
Why else would a Newsweek cover story (1987) describe Republican candidate George H.W. Bush”—a WWII pilot, who flew fifty-eight missions and won the Distinguished Flying Cross—as a “wimp?”
A year later, Democratic candidate, George Dukakis, was criticized for not looking sufficiently “macho” while riding in a tank.
“Mental health standards” have also been high—for presidential candidates, at least.
In 1972, Democratic candidate George McGovern was set to run with Tom Eagleton.
After it came out that Eagleton had received psychiatric help for nervous exhaustion, however, McGovern felt forced to find a new vice-presidential running mate.
(The revised ticket lost to Republicans Nixon and Agnew.)
There was also a big to-do as to whether Ed Muskie (the early Democratic front-runner in 1972), had “cried” when responding to reporter questions about his wife.
Newspapers discussed whether the liquid on Muskie’s cheeks was tears, or melting snow, and he was proclaimed “unstable.”
(Soon, Muskie’s presidential campaign was dead.)
As to religion, no U.S. president has ever declared himself to be an atheist.
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were both “called” atheists because their religious views were atypical, and neither believed in organized religion.
Ulysses S. Grant was one president who refused to specify his Protestant religious denomination, but he never said he was without a belief in God.
It's interesting that the press, and other societal critics, assumed for generations that the American public wanted a “paragon” as their president, but perhaps that was never true.
President Harry Truman never earned a college degree, and didn’t do well as a haberdasher.
Yet, many consider him a good to great president.
The fact that President John F. Kennedy conducted sexual affairs while he was in the White House was covered up at the time, but now that everyone knows, it’s done little to hurt his presidential legacy.
It appears that our “concern with fitness” is based on which political party we’re aligned with—and not by what attributes a great president should have.
*The title of this article is based on the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which is about sex, lies about sex, and recording stories about sex lives on videotape. Videotape is a tech dinosaur. The 1989 film starred James Spader and Andie MacDowell.
