It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Achilles’ heel is located nowhere near a person’s foot but rather higher up. It has always been this way with humankind. In the beginning, Eve gave Adam an apple and, let’s face it, he probably gave her a banana in return. They suddenly realized what those strange body parts were for and as a result got kicked out of Paradise. Fast-forward to the 1490s, when a new plague swept Europe, rotting private parts, bones, and noses with excruciating pain, followed by madness and death. Spread by sexual contact, syphilis, as one sixteenth-century apothecary put it, “Comes from choosing beds unknown and plugging holes best left alone.” Few, alas, could bring themselves to stop plugging those unknown holes.
Who among us hasn’t had at least one sexual encounter that was unwise, unsafe, or unethical? We risk losing marriages, friends, and even our lives for a sweet coupling that lasts minutes and the soaring exultation of an orgasm measured in seconds. The sex drive mocks logic and is resistant to common sense. This primeval instinct overpowers us, causing us to lose all self-control. Such loss of control never has more explosive consequences than when played out in the bedrooms of world leaders. Those dalliances affect not just an individual, a marriage, or a family. They affect entire nations.
Of course, some political leaders lose their self-control more often than others. “You know, I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day,” President John F. Kennedy told British prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1962. Kennedy used sex with strangers not just as aspirin, but also to project a presidential image. On September 26, 1960, an hour and a half before the first-ever televised live presidential debate, Democratic nominee Kennedy cavorted with a prostitute in his Chicago hotel room for fifteen minutes. During the debate, he appeared relaxed, radiant, and confident. The Republican nominee, Richard M. Nixon—tense, sweating, and gray-skinned—looked as if he hadn’t been laid in years. Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley said, “My God, they’ve embalmed him before he even died.” Kennedy won the debate by a large margin among the seventy million television viewers. He was so pleased with his performance that he arranged to bed prostitutes right before every debate after that.
Donald Trump follows in a historic tradition of scandalous presidential sex. Weeks before the 2016 presidential election, his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about a one-night stand she had allegedly had with Trump ten years earlier. The resulting lies, cover-ups, shifting narratives, denials, and eventual admissions have resulted in Cohen sitting in the slammer for three years for campaign finance violations and the possibility that the president himself might be indicted after leaving office. And all because of—according to Stormy Daniels—two minutes of really bad sex.
Despite the American reputation for prudery, many of our leaders have had a colorful sexual past. One beloved president suffered a fatal stroke in his mistress’s presence. Another was gay. At least two first ladies were so fed up with their husband’s philandering that they almost certainly had affairs of their own, one with a woman. Three presidents have been accused of rape. Another had a thirty-year affair and seven children with his enslaved woman, and a leading presidential hopeful had a love child with his mistress while his wife was dying.
Why have so many national leaders been adulterers? Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state and national security advisor under presidents Nixon and Ford, had an explanation: “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” And he should know. With his Coke-bottle glasses, unprepossessing features, and a German accent thick as blutwurst, Kissinger was known as “Dr. Strangelove” in Washington circles. Still, as one of the nation’s most influential men, Kissinger bedded Hollywood’s sexiest sirens.
Edgar Faure, prime minister of France twice in the 1950s, said, “When I was minister, some women resisted me.” This is not surprising, as he was balding and bespectacled with thick lips and ears like Dumbo. “Once I became prime minister,” he added, “not even one.”
In the course of exploring the sex scandals of U.S. presidents and European leaders, we will discover the answers to several burning questions. For instance, what is sex like with the president of a nation? Does the man’s charisma, his passion and zest for power make it better than with an average Joe—Donald Trump aside? Fortunately, letters and biographies illuminate both the delights and disappointments of presidential passion. More importantly, we will explore the issue of whether a strong sex drive has any relevance to political success or failure. Does rampant adultery show a lack of character, the stamina needed to run the country, or a bit of both?
And why have first ladies stayed married to such disgraceful philanderers—with the exception of one Italian who notified her husband of her intention to divorce by publishing her grievances in a major daily newspaper? Do these women make a Faustian bargain? They accept a life of luxury and fame as the price for humiliation and betrayal that everyone in the world knows about? Why did Hillary stick to Bill like glue—rambling on about a vast right-wing conspiracy—instead of throwing his gasoline-soaked clothes out the White House bedroom window, running downstairs, and setting them on fire? Why does Melania stay with Donald, giving vent to her fury in passive-aggressive fits of wearing inappropriate jackets and slapping his hand away on the red carpet? What kind of woman would make such a deal? Is any amount of money worth it?
What about presidential girlfriends? What’s in it for them? Centuries ago, royal mistresses bedding smelly old kings received premium pay packages: titles, lands, castles, and jewels. But presidential mistresses would be more likely to receive rewards along the lines of an official White House paperweight. Is it the excitement that attracts these women? Being, for a few minutes, at the epicenter of the universe? Do some of them set out to bag a powerful man, like JFK’s countless girlfriends who gleefully disported themselves on the first lady’s sheets? Is getting the president in bed a kind of trophy?
We will examine the differences between the American reaction to such love affairs and people of other nations. When Americans have caught their leaders with their pants down around their ankles, they have often reacted with shock and outrage. Astonishingly, the founding strain of puritanism brought to Plymouth, Massachusetts, by a few dozen bleak souls in 1620 existed until quite recently in the American character—even four centuries and 330 million citizens of all nationalities later, a kind of virus from hell, resistant to time, genetic dilution, and common sense.
Lyndon Johnson once raged to his mistress, “If a man can’t do a little of what he’s not supposed to, he ain’t much of a man. Hell, our country is so outdated. Why can’t we do like the Chinese and fuck all the women we want and populate the world like the good Lord wanted us to? What is so goddamned wrong with that? In this fucking Victorian society, we’ve become stalemated by fucking only one woman.”
Many Europeans would agree. From time immemorial, their reaction to such behavior has been a slow smile followed by a wink. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that France has the unique distinction of being the only nation where a president is known to have died while receiving oral sex from a mistress in the presidential palace, a fact that swells some Gallic breasts with pride.
We will also investigate the changing role of the press in such scandals. Since the 1790s, the American press has, at times, formed a barricade of complicit silence, maintaining the fiction of presidential dignity in the face of adultery, orgies, abortions, and sweaty grappling in White House closets. At other times, reporters scenting a sex story have resembled sharks in a feeding frenzy.
Lastly, we will examine the recent death of American puritanism. Because the truth is no one even pretends to care about political sex scandals anymore, not even evangelical Christians, who hold their nose when they vote for Donald Trump.