Ambition gone with the tabloids

William Jefferson Blythe Clinton is, of course, the most famous living person almost impeached over an ill-judged sexual relationship with a woman (not his wife, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton). Clinton’s legacy is truly almost great – he turned a monetary deficit into a trillion dollar surplus that George Bush blew like an irresponsible heir, leaving Barack Obama holding the economic ruin.

Bill Clinton was the first ‘black’ president, before Barack. He failed the Rwandese, but atoned by forcing peace in both Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Before Bush, junior, he was Africa’s first anti-Aids champion. Yet for all his accomplishments, Monica Lewinsky – and that little black dress – will always be a dark stain, pardon the pun, in his history’s footnotes.

The curious case of John Edwards is less known.

This handsome Senator–lawyer from South Carolina was ear-marked to be Obama’s running mate in the first half of 2008, a poverty-to-wealth story who had brought Big Tobacco to its knees in massive legal suits that saw communities in the US win billions.

But by July, Edwards had to say ‘bye bye’ to potential VP-ship, and possible presidential, ambition. National Enquirer, an American rag, revealed that while the Senator’s saintly wife Elizabeth lay dying of cancer, Edwards was having an affair, and eventually a baby, with a film-maker called Rislle Hunter whom he paid $114 000 (about Sh10 million) in hush-baby money.

When, after a ‘homeless’ convention, the Senator was caught with his clandestine missus outside the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel, all he could say was: "I adon’t talk to these tabloids. They are trash. Full of lies." But it was the truth, and Senator Edwards’ dreams were well cooked ... and thrown out of a hotel window.

Felled on a yatch

Twenty one years earlier, as the programme ‘Hart to Hart’ captured American viewers’ hearts, the National Enquirer had laid low another untouchable political ego. Gary Hart, a Democratic presidential hopeful in 1987, had been asked by the Miami Herald newspaper about a young woman seen vanishing from his residence. "Is it an affair?" Cockily, Hart dared the media: "Go on. Follow me around. Put a tail on me. I don’t care. Your people (following me) will be very bored."

The National Enquirer did, and far from a boring trip, the picture their paparazzi got of the Senator Hart canoodling with Donna Rice, a nice looking model (not his wife) captivated America for months. They were caught on his luxury yacht, bizarrely named "Monkey Business" making out! From being a front runner in 1987, by the New Hampshire primaries of 1988, Gary Hart got only 4,888 of the 122,020 votes available, and soon after dropped out.

The eventual Democratic nominee was a Greek-born midget called Michael Dukakis whom the ruthless Republican Party machine cruelly harped on with slogans like "Don’t Do ka-ka on the U-S-A," "Beware of Greeks wearing lifts," and "The Only Platform is Down in his shoes."

Had the American sweetheart, Gary Hart, won the Democratic nomination, it is possible George Bush Senior would never have been president, Gulf War 1 never happened, Al Gore been US president, run for another term, so no Barrack Obama – so, after all, everything happens for a reason.

Even a tabloid picture that stops a presidential race dead cold!

There’s a curious footnote to Senator Hart’s heart-breaking story of whore and deceit. He was briefly appointed to head a national terrorism commission in 1998, by President Bill Clinton ... then in the red-hot heat of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Jewish ‘presidential material’ New York Governor Eliot Spitz resigned last year. His fame built on bringing down Wall Street crooks and looking like the first ‘Jewish Obama’ came tumbling after he was busted for using taxpayer money to entertain ‘high class’ (euphemism for insanely expensive) NYC prostitutes.