An affair, a lie, and a Conservative government came tumbling down

Christine Keeler, the woman at the heart of a 1963 scandal that helped oust the dominant Conservative Party, died on Dec. 4 at age 75.

She was just 19 when, working as a model and night club dancer, she took lovers from opposite sides of the Cold War: British War Minister John Profumo and Soviet Embassy attaché Yevgeny Ivanov.

Questioned about the affair by a Parliamentary foe who suspected there were Russian spies around every corner, Profumo lied and said nothing inappropriate had taken place between them. Later in life, he claimed he lied to protect his wife, stage and screen actress Valerie Hobson.

But that didn't buy him a pass. He was forced to resign, and his mentor Prime Minister Harold Macmillan barely survived a vote of no confidence. He announced his resignation months later, and the following election ended a 13-year run for Britain's Conservatives.

The Hobson-Profumo marriage is one of the nine I wrote about in Why They Stay. Here's an excerpt from my book, along with my wish that Ms. Keeler will rest in peace.

First, though, a word of explanation about the first line, which references the White Queen. In Why They Stay, I proposed that today's political marriages are not so different from centuries-old sovereign unions, such as that of medieval queen Elizabeth Woodville, grandmother to King Henry VIII. She's known today as the White Queen, and her loyalty to the Tudor dynasty surmounted her desire for a faithful marriage. In Why They Stay, I argued that contemporary political couples make the same sorts of compromises because of the unique set of standards and pressures they face.

Valerie and Jack are the first of our modern White Queen couples to face live press scrutiny. Unlike the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, whose infidelities were revealed many years after their time in office, the Profumos suffered their downfall and humiliation in real time. They struggled with the glare of publicity on political couples. First, Valerie and Jack retreated into the bunker of the private space they had constructed together. The day after Jack’s resignation, hundreds of reporters around the world were looking for him. In an attempt to stay ahead of and away from the press, he moved around the English countryside to the homes of various relatives and friends, with Valerie and their sons David, 7, and Mark, 12. They stayed at the Suffolk home of Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, who referred to the Profumos’ visit as “operation sanctuary.” Back in London, Jack’s secretary Pam Plumb fended off the media. Journalists posed as private detectives hired by the Profumos to get her to reveal their whereabouts. The editor of the Daily Telegraph invited Plumb to lunch.

During this time, one imagines that Valerie and Jack were in urgent discussion about how to choose their moment and method for a public resurfacing. Future couples would call press conferences to declare their positions, but the Profumos didn’t have role models to steer by. Instead, true to Valerie’s training on stage, they planned an elaborate pantomime of marital support. Nearly two weeks after Jack’s resignation, the couple returned home to their high-ceilinged town house in the tony neighborhood of Chester Terrace, overlooking the tranquil grandeur of London’s Regent’s Park. A police escort led Valerie and Jack through the cluster of news reporters. Looking composed, Valerie wore a headscarf and white gloves. They made their way through the silent crowd. Soon the mob jostled and called out. Valerie turned, looked at her husband, and clasped his hand in hers as they made their way to their front door. It was an image of solidarity inspiring both sympathy and admiration.

Looking back from our era of regular public revelations of adultery by political leaders, it’s hard to understand how incendiary the Profumo scandal was to the western world. Just a month earlier, in May 1963, sexy starlet Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” at Madison Square Garden to President John Kennedy, marking what we now know was a yearslong series of liaisons between the two—but that relationship was relegated to whispers among press reporters, not scolding editorials published in the country’s leading newspapers.

The Profumo Affair profoundly altered British society, emboldening the press and rocking people’s faith in their leaders. It gave lie to the belief that those born into the ruling class were inherently superior and destined to lead, making room for lower-born folks to rise through the political ranks on merit. Sixteen years later, a grocer’s daughter, Margaret Thatcher, became Prime Minister. David Profumo, the only biological son of John and Valerie, wrote that it has become an article of faith that “my father’s behaviour was instrumental in changing the heartbeat of our society.”

Opinion: Alabama Senate candidacy may redefine decency

Nov. 16, 2017

Pity the politician, enmeshed in a sex scandal, who can't decide, should I stay, or should I go?

For the moment, GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama is defiantly holding on. Even as party leaders abandon him after accusations that he molested a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old girl when he was a single man in his 30s, Moore apparently hopes voters will feel otherwise come the Dec. 12 special election.

And why should he not? Voters send confusing signals about how much character matters in a politician. History tells us that men can get away with many forms of sexual transgression and still get elected. Moore may be gambling that he'll ride out the initial scandal storm and be one of the fortunate ones.

Of course, not all political sex scandals are made equal. The accusations about Moore are repulsive: hanging around the Gadsden Mall in Alabama or a local restaurant, meeting teenage girls, and admittedly dating women so young he had to ask their moms' permission. If he stays in the race and is elected, his candidacy would significantly redraw the line of what's acceptable behavior for public figures.

Also, and this is important, Moore has denied abusing the women. In the absence of a criminal or Senate ethics committee investigation, all we have to go on are the women's words against his.

One politician who remained electable, to the surprise of many, was Rep. Mark Sanford, South Carolina's 1st District representative in the U.S. House. Sanford is the former governor of that state who disappeared for a week in 2009, out of contact with his family or security detail, saying he had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. In fact, he had been visiting his Argentine lover. He called her his "soul mate" in the immediate aftermath, divorced his wife of 20 years, was elected to serve in Washington in 2013 and ran unopposed in 2014.

Also there's David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who spoke to teenagers about abstinence before marriage, until it was disclosed that he had been a client of "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Like Vitter, Moore burnishes "conservative Christian" credentials. Vitter was re-elected, post-scandal, to the U.S. Senate.

Disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner had a brief shot at a second political life when he ran for New York City mayor in 2013, until a new accuser began speaking about his sexting to the media. Voters elected Bill Clinton president in 1992, after Gennifer Flowers claimed they had had a long-time affair; Clinton denied it. And, of course, voters awarded the highest prize in politics last year to Donald Trump, an admitted playboy, adulterer and accused assaulter.

Following his video about grabbing women's genitals and allegations of sexual harassment, which Trump denies, many in the GOP distanced themselves from him, thinking his chances of winning were hopeless.

Now, many senior Republicans say Moore should drop out of his Senate race. If he stays in, his fate will lie not with them but with Alabama voters. Will they stretch their character requirements to embrace an alleged predator?

Not that long ago, American politicians didn't have a prayer if they were even divorced. In 1980, Ted Kennedy dragged his wife Joan on the presidential campaign trail, even though it meant she would have to respond to embarrassing questions about her battles with alcoholism. Her presence helped tamp down criticism partly stemming from the Chappaquiddick controversy.

Given time, divorce, adultery, hypocrisy and even suspected assault are flaws voters have overlooked. It will be a sad day when and if we enlarge that circle to include molesting adolescents.

Excerpt: Eleanor stayed married for the kids but later regretted her choice

Excerpted from Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives (Ogunquit Press, March 2017).

The marriage between Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt has served as a template for political couples who search for a way stay together through the husband’s serial infidelity. As the story has come down to us, the Roosevelts suffered a rift over his affair and then went on to live separate, successful and very public lives under the same roof. But a closer look shows that their reality was very painful, messy and human.

By staying in the marriage, Eleanor believed she was doing right for their five children and for her husband. Just as she was experiencing her own deep sense of betrayal, she was called on to rally behind Franklin as he stepped onto the national stage as the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in 1920. She traveled on his whistle-stop tour, monitored his press coverage and gave him advice on his speeches. Her patriotic devotion to the public ideals the couple stood for revealed itself in her own design for a fulfilling life outside of her empty marriage. Using her position first as the wife of New York’s governor and then as first lady, she advocated for safe housing, laws against child labor, wider voter registration, birth control and civil rights. Her determination to rise above personal pain gave the world one of its great leaders.

“Never for a minute would I advocate that people who no longer love each other should live together because it does not bring the right atmosphere into a home,” she wrote.

Yet the manner in which Franklin dealt with his marriage and his own needs for intimacy reverberates throughout the lives of his children. They chose spouses with the right pedigree. Infidelities abounded. A partner who didn’t fulfill one’s needs was shortly substituted for another. And worldly success often took precedence over happiness at home. It’s almost as if the children of Eleanor and Franklin were trying to work out in their own lives the issues that their parents left unresolved in their marriage.

“At first, each of us married into moneyed families. Not because we needed money, but because we were exposed to moneyed people,” James wrote. “Eventually, we made other marriages. Some of us married outside the social register…. Hopeless romantics, we Roosevelt children married again and again.”

The eldest, Anna, briefly attended college at Cornell University but quit to marry Curtis Dall, a successful stockbroker, in 1926. She said that she married to “get out of the life I was leading,” a reference to the Roosevelt’s difficult family situation in the aftermath of Franklin’s affair with Lucy Mercer.

Anna and Curtis separated as Franklin was entering the White House in 1932, and Anna moved there with her two children. She met and married a reporter, John Boettiger; it was a second marriage for both. Eleanor felt Anna and John entered this marriage having learned from their sufferings and mistakes, and she commented to a friend in a letter that marriages shouldn’t be preserved for the sake of the children. “Never for a minute would I advocate that people who no longer love each other should live together because it does not bring the right atmosphere into a home,” she wrote, adding that it was very sad when a couple was unable to make a success of marriage, “but I feel it is equally unwise for people to bring up children in homes where love no longer exists.”

Excerpted from Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives (Ogunquit Press, March 2017). To read more about the book, and for links to purchase, click here.

Essay: Sadness at Anthony Weiner's demise

Although former Congressman Anthony Weiner mostly bedeviled me when I covered politics in New York City, I only feel sadness today at his political and personal demise. Any schadenfreude I felt after his first Twitter stumble in 2011, which led him to resign from Congress, has dissipated.

Partly that's a result of his repeated humiliation over time. No one deserves that -- even if he did set himself up by seeking such a high profile and insulting staff and reporters like me. The man's got an addiction, which I define as a willful self-destruction even as there are parts of one's life that are so worth showing up for. Like his vision for the middle class that he hoped to carry out as NYC mayor. Like his beautiful and extraordinary wife Huma Abedin, who filed for divorce on Friday even as Weiner was pleading guilty in the federal courthouse in Manhattan to sexting with an underage girl. Like the couple's son.

If kids don't give you a reason to be a better person, I don't know what does.

Weiner, however, even involved 4-year-old Jordan in his sext-capades. He took a suggestive image of himself for his 15-year-old sext partner as Jordan lay next to him in bed. I can only shake my head at how sad this is, how much this man in that moment was obliterating everything. Especially, but not exclusively, any image he could hold in his mind of himself as a good person.

To me, this is the nature and the bottom of addiction. Hatred of oneself creates a downward spiral, finally extinguishing decency and integrity.

In the opening lines of the documentary Weiner, for which filmmakers followed Anthony on the campaign trail for mayor in 2013, he admits to having done bad things but adds, "I've done good things, too."

I wonder where we will find the next generation of political leaders if we have to screen for such a panoply of character flaws. Narcissism, self-destructiveness, crossing the line into involving minors in one's obsession and damaging the public regard for a woman, Huma, who's a political force in her own right.

Are we, the public, supposed to overlook these flaws, as Weiner suggests, and concern ourselves with the good he might do in office? (I'm hard-pressed to find many accomplishments while he was in Washington.)

Who runs for political office in America today, at least on the highest levels, but for narcissists? Is there another motivation for public service, or are some politicians just better at hiding their self-regard? Perhaps self-regard doesn't have to be as toxic as Weiner's?

I'm sure I'm being too bleak about our political class. Weiner's felony guilty plea is depressing. He's smart, rose from humble beginnings, and can talk circles around his opposition. All, so it seems now, gone to waste.

If you liked this post, please subscribe to future updates by scrolling down on the home page. Also, please check out my book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives, published in March 2017.

Loyalty to a cheating spouse helps tank Hillary's candidacy

Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton's closest aide, and since graduating from college has held no job that wasn’t connected to this rising American political star. At Huma’s wedding in July 2010, Clinton called her a “second daughter.” That’s how close they are.

Ten months after her marriage to Anthony Weiner, on May 27, 2011, Huma’s husband was caught very publicly cheating on her via sext message. Anthony sent photo of himself, erect in gray undershorts, to a 21-year-old sext partner. By mistake, he bypassed the direct message function on Twitter and sent the pic to all 45,000 of his followers. A conservative blogger and Anthony detractor, Andrew Breitbart, got hold of the errant tweet and publicized it further to the world.

And what did Huma do? At first, she believed Anthony’s story that his Twitter account had been hacked. Within a couple of weeks, though, he told the truth. She considered their unborn child she was carrying, and she stayed with Anthony. She tried to resurrect his political career in 2013, as he ran for New York City mayor. Huma used her connection with Bill and Hillary Clinton to raise money and support for Anthony's mayoral campaign.

Such marital stoicism, in the words of journalist Jennifer Senior. And to whom did Huma look for this example? Her mentor Hillary Clinton. “At the end of the day,” Huma has said of the senior woman’s advice, “every woman should have the ability and the confidence and the choice to make whatever decisions she wants to make that are right for her and not be judged by it.”

To whom did Huma look for this example? Her mentor Hillary Clinton.

Huma stayed with Anthony until August 2016, when a fresh leak of sexts showed that he had not only continued virtual flirtations with female partners but was now referring to the couple’s toddler son, Jordan, as a “chick magnet.” At this point, Huma announced that she was separating from Anthony. But was this decision to break with a cheating man already too late?

The following month, in September 2016, the FBI learned that Anthony had been sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Given the girl's age, this was now a potential crime, and the FBI opened an investigation into Anthony's activity.

Then, with less than two weeks to go before Election Day in on Nov. 8, 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that this investigation had revealed a new cache of emails, forwarded by Huma on Anthony’s laptop during Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the state department. Comey’s revelation reinforced public concern that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was careless. Then, just two days before the election, Comey told Congress that the new emails contained nothing of interest in regard to Clinton—but if he intended to clear the air, Comey’s announcement had the opposite effect. It energized Donald Trump supporters to show up at the polls and vote.

We all know now how that turned out.