The 1980s sex scandal that explains TMZ’s move to DC

The newest journalists running around Capitol Hill are none other than reporters from TMZ. The celebrity gossip site, famous for its aggressive and sometimes unsavory — but often effective — newsgathering tactics, opened up a Washington, DC, bureau just last week.

TMZ’s expansion into congressional news promises even more celebrity-style coverage of politicians. (For example, TMZ founder Harvey Levin recently asked the public to send pictures of lawmakers doing anything but their jobs during Congress’s spring recess.) But this brave new media landscape and its consequences date back further, to the 1980s. The clearest example is that of Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, an oft-forgotten politician once considered a frontrunner for the 1988 Democratic nomination for president, who was forced out of the race by allegations of an affair. 

Rolling Stone columnist Matt Bai, who wrote a book on the Hart scandal titled All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, tells Today, Explained co-host Noel King that Hart was right about a lot of things to come in politics, including getting the leaders we “deserve.”

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Who is Gary Hart?

Gary Hart in 1987 was the far and away leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination [in 1988]. It all went away in one week in what was the first modern broadcast-era sex scandal in politics. 

He was said to be having an affair with a woman who was not his wife, and that he spent a night with her on a boat and then had her in his townhouse. He was followed by reporters from the Miami Herald who hid in the bushes on his street and followed him. It all made for great drama and his political ambitions in that moment imploded and his political career never recovered.

What was new here was that, rather than having it be discovered either in the commission of a crime or by some kind of disclosure, reporters went out and searched for evidence of extramarital affairs on Gary Hart’s part. And the press really decided in that moment that it was both relevant and essential to know whether he had been faithful to his wife or not. 

“There was a lot happening in that moment. You were right at the birth of satellite technology and what would become the 24-hour news cycle.” 

Hart, who grew up in an era of very different rules, basically said that this is none of your business. And that was not considered a suitable answer then or now. He never elaborated, including to me, and I wrote an entire book about it.

The rules didn’t change because Hart was a different kind of politician or because he changed the rules. The rules changed because they were changing and Gary Hart just kind of walked into it. There was a lot happening in that moment. You were right at the birth of satellite technology and what would become the 24-hour news cycle. 

Suddenly it was possible to go live from anywhere, which had a real impact on what was considered news and what wasn’t. You also had this new generation of journalists who had been inspired into the business by the example of Woodward and Bernstein 10 to 15 years earlier. That meant not just taking people down in a shallow way, not just looking for scandal, but really protecting the American voter from failures and lapses in character, which was something they thought the American media of the previous generation had failed to do.

How did [Hart] react once he was caught?

Defiantly. He felt it was no one’s business. He refused to answer questions about it. He tried to move on. Hart would tell you that he got out of the race not because he was no longer a tenable candidate, but because it was impossible to speak to voters. Suddenly it wasn’t just the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the Washington Post on the campaign trail. It was People Magazine and it was the brand-new A Current Affair and all these kinds of things. 

He withdraws from the race after a week, and he gives a speech that I think, particularly given the moment we’re at now, is the most important forgotten speech in American political history: 

We’re all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say, “I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve.” Some things may be interesting but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re important.

And I’ve come back very often in my writing over the years to this phrase. Because I do think in a sense, as a country, that’s what’s happened. We have created a political process that rewards shamelessness and dishonesty and exhibitionism and entertainment. And lo and behold, we have gotten a president now, twice, who is shameless and exhibitionist and attention-seeking and an entertainer at heart. And those two things are not coincidental.

Some of the scandals that have been uncovered, they’re not just cheating scandals. Some of them are serious crimes, sex crimes. Is the tabloid-ification of political journalism also a good thing?

Yes. Not all scandal coverage, not all tabloid coverage, is worthless. It’s not like we just don’t care about anything you do in private. But I do not agree with those who would say, Well, if a president’s going to have an affair, we should know about it. You have to be accountable for that, right? 

There are a lot of journalists who covered Gary Hart. If they’re still around today, they will tell you he got what he deserved. My answer to that has always been, well, I guess we’re going to have to go back in history. Let’s build a time machine. We’re going to have to get rid of FDR and we’re going to have to get rid of Lyndon Johnson and we’re going to have to get rid of John Kennedy. And I guess we can just figure out another way through the Great Depression and the Second World War and the Cold War because none of these guys deserve to be president. 

We are not morality police. My sympathy with Gary Hart is he was pleading in that moment not for complete innocence, not that he shouldn’t have to be accountable. He was essentially saying some things are relevant and some things are not. And no one has ever made a case with any persuasiveness whatsoever that anything Gary Hart did in that moment was relevant to the governance of the United States.

Congress takes a recess and TMZ is chasing [Sen.] Lindsey Graham around Disney World. There was this satisfied reaction: Maybe we should be paying attention to what Congress is up to. Maybe we should be a little bit more mad at them. Do you put any stock in that?

I saw a grown man having a lot of fun at Disney. And look, I think the undercurrent of the allegations of those photos was different. It was not just about a senator having fun while the Capitol was dysfunctional. It was about rumors about Senator Graham that a bubble wand seemed to reinforce in people’s minds.

Rumors about his sexuality.

“If you’re chasing a politician around Disney World…I don’t know how constructive that is.”

Of all the things I really don’t like about Donald Trump, I will give him credit for talking all the time to the media. He wants to be seen, needs to be heard. I have lived through an era where I went from riding around in cars and buses and getting to know candidates who wanted to govern the country, and having lunch with them and socializing to an extent that I understood who they were, to an era when it would be almost impossible to have that kind of proximity to leading politicians of the day. And we created that climate. 

If you’re chasing a politician around Disney World because he seems to be having too good a time when the government’s not perfect, I don’t know how constructive that is.