I try not to be enticed by scandal. There are usually more interesting non-scandalous things happening than whatever the scandal of the day entails. And this is doubly true when in comes to presidential scandals.However, with the passage of time, some scandals become more interesting. It’s easy to forget that even though we always think the past was more innocent, human hypocrisy knows no bounds. So it’s surprising when we hear that people who lived two hundred years ago were just as flawed and sinful as we are today, despite claims of purity, modesty and humility.And perhaps discussing the flaws of these leaders will make us more interested in them, and push us to learn more them and the times in which they live.But, let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good sex scandal?So, in (dis)honor of Presidents’ Day, here are some presidential sex scandals you might not know about.Warren Harding. It’s hard to imagine anyone going gaga over Warren Harding, but he appears to have been quite the ladies man. He married a dowdy, masculine woman whom he never really loved. However, he kept up a fifteen-year affair with Carrie Phillips, the wife of his longtime friend.
Harding, Carrie, and their spouses frequently hung out and traveled together. All was swell until Carrie wanted Warren to leave his wife. “No go,” Warren said. Carrie left her husband anyway, and moved to Germany. Then the First World War began and Carrie—who’d become a German sympathizer—tried to force Warren—who was a U.S. Senator—to vote against U.S. involvement against Germany or else she’d go public about their affair.Harding stuck to his guns though, and voted for the war. Carrie did nothing. However, a couple of years later Harding won the Republican presidential nomination. Carrie threatened to derail the whole thing so the Republican National Committee sent Carrie and her husband on a long, slow trip to Japan, gave them $20,000, and paid them a monthly sum until Harding’s death.Presidential mistress hush money. Scandalous!However, that’s not even the most scandalous situation Harding found himself involved in.In 1910, Nan Britton was a freshman in high school. She was so enamored with the forty-five-year-old Harding that she had his Ohio governor campaign poster hanging in her room. Fast forward seven years. She’s in New York at secretarial school. He’s a U.S. Senator. She writes to him asking his help in finding a job. He obliges and secures a job for her as a stenographer.On July 30, 1917 she "thanks" him in a hotel room overlooking Broadway. Minutes later, the NYC vice squad breaks down the door, but he provides some hush money to the police and all is well.Then in early 1919, on a couch in his Senate office, Warren and Nan conceive a child. Warren’s an upstanding gentleman, of course, so he provides healthy support payments to Nan until his death. And their affair continues while Warren’s president, sometimes in a small closet just off the Oval Office.(Just remember that little tidbit the next time you hear someone mentioned how Bill Clinton “disgraced the presidency!”)All this action eventually took its toll on Harding. He died in office in 1923, when he was 58 years old. Surprisingly, syphilis was not the cause of death.Grover Cleveland. While many presidents have had meaty affairs while married, Grover Cleveland had perhaps the best premarital scandal. And actually, if it’s premarital, is it really a scandal? Who makes the rules for scandals anyway?In September 1874, a woman named Maria Halpin gave birth to a son. Although she was quite popular (if you know what I mean) among businessmen in Buffalo, she named Cleveland as the baby’s father. Since her other men were all married, and he was not, Cleveland accepted the responsibility. Sounds upstanding, right?Well…maybe not.Despite providing child support, Cleveland also arranged for Maria to be admitted to an asylum, and the child was adopted to an unrelated couple. When the asylum discovered Maria had no reason to be there, they let her go. Cleveland gave her a sum of money, and told her to leave town, which she did.This all came out as Cleveland ran for President in 1884. It wasn’t enough to keep him from office though, and at forty-nine years old, Cleveland finally married Frances Folsom, who was just twenty-one.And just to add a little bit more flavor to the scandal, Maria had named her child Oscar Folsom Cleveland, after Oscar Folsom, who was Cleveland’s best friend, and one of the men in Buffalo with whom she had relations. Frances Folsom, Cleveland’s new bride, was Oscar Folsom’s daughter.Franklin Roosevelt. The Roosevelts were rich. Not just a little bit rich. Super duper rich. So rich that part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal staff was a social secretary. I have no idea what a social secretary does, but I do know that Eleanor’s social secretary was named Lucy Mercer.She was twenty-two in 1913 when she went to work for Eleanor. Franklin really liked Lucy, and she liked him in return. In 1918, Eleanor found out about their affair, and threatened to divorce him if he didn’t stop seeing her. FDR said he’d stop seeing her.However, the affair resumed years later. When FDR became president, Lucy kept him company at the White House while Eleanor was out of town. Eventually, FDR enlisted the help of his daughter, Anna, in arranging Lucy’s meetings.FDR was at his vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia when he died in 1945. Lucy was with him. Upon her arrival from Washington, DC, Eleanor learned that FDR’s affair with Lucy had continued for many years, that Lucy was with him when he died, and that Anna had not only known about the affair, but had helped arranged it.I hate to end on a downer, so let’s take a look at John Tyler. There’s no information about him having marital affairs, but that’s probably just because he didn’t have time!And he was also happy, apparently. A love letter written to his wife just before they married contained this awesome line, “Whether I float or sink in the stream of fortune, you may be assured of this, that I shall never cease to love you.”He married for the first time when he was twenty-three years old. His wife was twenty-two. They had seven children live to maturity. She suffered a stroke though, and died when she was fifty-one.Two years later, when Tyler was fifty-four, he married for a second time. His bride was twenty-four. They had seven more children, the last of whom was born when Tyler was seventy!One of Tyler’s children, Lyon Tyler, who was born when John Tyler was sixty-three, had children late in life as well. Lyon’s last son was born when Lyon was seventy-five years old. (These Tylers are a virile bunch!) And that son—John Tyler’s grandson, the same John Tyler who was born in 1790 while George Washington was president—is still alive today!PREVIOUS POST: An SNL Sketch: Cooking with Paula and MarthaIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Interesting Elections from American History+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, did you like reading this? If so, you should Share it on Facebook so you can bring joy to others. You can also find tons of other posts by me here. And you can like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes. Please.
Want an e-mail every time I write something new? Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. I'm not going to send you a bunch of junk, and you can ditch me any time you want.