But in 1987, when rumors of his infidelities surfaced, Gary Hart dared reporters to "put a tail on him", and that they did. They followed Hart to the "Monkey Business" yacht and his rendezvous with Donna Rice. The rest is history. Hart dropped out of the race, not realizing that four years later, Bill Clinton would win the presidency with much more baggage.
Personal footnote: During the height of the controversy, I was on my honeymoon and Gary Hart gave a press conference literally 20 floors under my feet at the midtown Sheraton in NYC as my new wife and I looked out the windows at all the news trucks. When we were on our cruise to Bermuda a couple days later, we learned he had dropped out of the race.
Also, during the 1984 campaign, the term "yuppie" was coined and at first, it was not a derogatory term but a term for a young urban professional - the type that would ultimately propel Gary Hart to the presidency. It was lost on many of them that it was the policies of President Reagan that was most responsible for the go-go business climate that propelled yuppies to incredible levels of affluence during the decade of the 1980s. Speaking for myself, my annual salary increased more then tenfold from 1985 to 1995. That was simply an incredible decade and I was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of it.
Anyway, I might just do that thread because Gary Hart brings back good memories for me in that it reminds me of the best decade of my life so far (The Trump decade is just getting started!)
But getting back to the topic at hand. Power is an incredible aphrodisiac for women. Having the good looks of a JFK, Gary Hart (or Trump) in combination with wealth and power, cause women to literally throw themselves at their feet. It is hard for most men to resist. The rock band The Beatles is a good example of this. Women were reduced to tears in their presence and literally worshipped them. This video still frightens the hell out of me. If not for the police, that rock band would have been torn to pieces.
In the mid-60's I was working for a small recording studio in mid-Manhattan run by the Tonight Show musicians. That studio was an 'establishment' enterprise, of course; but there was another studio down in The Village that was more cutting edge. The owner asked me one day to take a pile of tapes downtown to the other studio; when I offered to take a cab he insisted that I let his chauffeur drive me downtown in his Rolls-Royce limo. Driving down New York City's Fifth Avenue, me sitting in the back seat, I literally saw well-dressed women smiling and waving, even ready to get in the car.
Being a country good-ol-boy guy, I was shocked... and obviously never forgot the experience.
A New York Tel guy once told me that there was a ritzy hi-rise on the upper east side with one phone pair in the basement terminal sealed with a tag to not tamper on orders of the President of the United States. He said a squeeze lived there of the Sec State, Henry Kissinger. Kissinger was no spring chicken even then.
Re: the Beatles.
A lot of women/girls were hired to scream and carry on. Once you get mob behavior started, others (who aren’t paid) will join in. Kind of the 60’s version of the astroturf protests that the democrats like to buy.