All the President's Women

Presidential Philandering is as old and respectable a tradition as the Presidency itself. George Washington introduced it when he took the job in 1789 and it's been going on in random but healthy spurts ever since. Of course, not all of our Chief Executives played around, but a lot of them did and the ones who didn't got accused of it anyway by the scandalmongers and the mudslingers. A hundred years ago, a sexual slur or a ribald verse could cost a man the election; nowadays, it's practically a sign of character. Take Nixon, for example: If he'd spent more time violating die opposite sex and less time violating the Constitution, who knows where he'd be today? It's interesting to note in passing that, by and large, our most beloved heads of state have also been our most frequently loved heads of statemen like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy got more action than men like Van Buren, Fillmore, Coolidge and Hoover; and J.F.K. probably got more than all the others combined.

Unfortunately, most responsible texts on the American Presidency deal exclusively with the affairs of state, discreetly ignoring the affairs of statesmen, an unpardonable oversight, in our opinion. So, in the interests of history, but largely for our own amusement, we present the following documented account of the making of the Presidents--1789-1976.

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"First in war, first in peace, first in the pants of his countrywomen" might have been a more accurate appraisal. As Woodrow Wilson once wrote of George Washington's early years: "No young Virginian could live 26 years amidst fair women in that hale and sociable colony without being touched again and again by the quick passion; and this man had the blood of a lover beyond his fellows." In other words, Washington was horny a lot. During the Revolution, several newspapers claimed he kept a Tory mistress who filched secret documents from his bedchamber. While he was President, rumors circulated widely that he was two-timing Martha with an Irishwoman he kept in New York. And one newspaper went so far as to suggest that he had someone seduce his female slaves to prepare them for his "use" once he returned home to Mount Vernon, which probably explains why he missed the place so damn much. Washington never made any public denial of these claims, even though they discredited him for years widi New England Puritans. But the one true love of his life was Sally Fairfax, wife of his close friend George William Fairfax. Apparently, Washington and Sally carried on before and during Washington's marriage and their relationship, judging from his letters to her, was intimate--as intimate as it can be when the guy has wooden teeth, at any rate. Although Washington never fathered any children with Martha, his illegitimate progeny were numerous (some even claim they include Alexander Hamilton), which prompted one notable scholar to call him "the father of our country in more ways than one."

Washington was a hard act to follow. Although John Adams occasionally bemoaned the fact that he couldn't keep his mind off women, he never fooled around. Once he met Abigail, that was it.

Thomas Jefferson, however, knew what he was doing when he wrote those immortal words about die right to pursue happiness--he'd been pursuing happiness in the form of the fair sex all his life. In 1768, still a bachelor, he had a steamy affair with Betsey Walker, the wife of his best friend and neighbor. In Paris, in 1786, four years after his wife died, Jefferson fell in love with Maria Cosway, the wife of a bisexual painter who specialized in pornographic miniatures. The following year, one of his slaves, 14-year-old Sally Hemings, accompanied his daughter Polly to France as "companion." It soon became evident whose companion she really was--by the fall of 1789, she was pregnant. At the beginning of Jefferson's first term, while Dolley and James Madison were living in the White House, rumor had it that the reason Dolley obtained the position of White House hostess was that she and Jefferson were carrying on right under her husband's nose. A little later, the story of "Black Sally" leaked to the press and she became the subject of frequent ribald slurs. Jefferson didn't seem to care--he fathered six more children with Sally and continued the relationship until his death. After being thwarted by his first love, a 15-year-old named Kitty Floyd, who ultimately dumped him for a harpsichord-playing medical student, James Madison, hardly a ladies' man, waited 11 years before making his next foray into the battle of the sexes. He never cheated on Dolley. James Monroe had two relationships before marrying but probably didn't get to first base with either of them.John Adams' son John Quincy Adams was something of a womanizer. During the campaign of 1828, the Jacksonians accused him of acting as pimp for Czar Alexander I of Russia, a charge that earned him the title Pimp of the Coalition; many observers chose thus to explain his enormous success as a diplomat. As President, Adams was known as an inveterate skinny-dipper who daily bathed au naturel in the Potomac.

While the Jacksonians were busy calling Adams a pimp, the Adams forces weren't exactly sitting around, twiddling their thumbs.Andrew Jackson was accused of both adultery and bigamy, the notion being that he had slept with and married Rachel before she was divorced from her first husband. The controversy died down when Rachel passed away shortly before Old Hickory's election. During his Administration, Jackson was accused of being overly attentive to the whims of Margaret Timberlake, wife of the Secretary of War, John Eaton. It was said that careers in Washington were either made or broken because of her influence over Jackson.

Things calmed down considerably after Jackson left town. The next eight occupants of the White House represent the sexual Middle Ages of the American Presidency. Scandals were nearly as rare as statesmen, Martin Van Buren was so effeminate--he wore corsets, dressed like a fag and used women's perfume--that Davy Crockett once claimed that it was practically impossible to tell whether he was a man or a woman, William Henry Harrison lasted only a few months as President, so he barely had enough time to test the bedsprings. The only lively one in the bunch was--of all people--John Tyler, who, some weeks after his wife died, commenced to pursue a lovely young Washington belle named Julia Gardiner, who was less than half his age. Apparently, hi? pursuit was a literal one--one report has him chasing her down the White House stairs and around tables and chairs for a kiss. That's probably all lie got, until he married her a year later. The next President did a good bit of running himself--James K. Polk was allegedly plagued by diarrhea during his entire Administration, so it's safe to say he spent more time in the White House outhouse than in the White House bedchamber. Next in line was Zachary Taylor, "Old Rough and Ready." A more appropriate title would have been Old Soft and Boring. Taylor was so heavy and his legs were so short that, as a soldier, he had to be boosted onto his horse. He habitually wore baggy pants and loose-fitting suits and cut a spectacularly undashing figure, Millard Fillmore, the President Everybody Forgets, had an eminently forgettable love life. After his first wife died, he married a rich widow who, according to reports, looked like "the Mona Lisa grown old." Fill-more vacated the premises to Franklin Pierce, whose most intense physical affair was with the pommel of a saddle that apparently struck him in the groin during combat in the Mexican War, causing him to fall off his horse and pass out. Equally bland was James Buchanan, who is best remembered as the man who came before Honest Abe.

There were strong rumors that Abraham Lincoln fooled around with a woman named Mary Owens and fathered an illegitimate daughter, although there's some doubt as to whom he fathered her with. His wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was ungovernably jealous and frequently complained of headaches, which was as good an excuse in those days as it is now. Their marriage was rocky--Lincoln even threatened to have her committed-- and what with the Civil War going badly for much of his Administration, it's probably safe to assume that Lincoln sought solace in various boudoirs.

So did his successor. Andrew Johnson's wife was an invalid throughout his term in office and spent her White House years secreted in an upstairs bedroom visited by family intimates only. So the President was forced to find female companionship elsewhere. Some historians blame Johnson's continuously appeasing attitude toward the postwar South on his succumbing to the attentions of various Southern ladies seeking pardons for their husbands. Rumor had it that the White House under Johnson had the ambience of a bordello.

For an old soldier, Ulysses S. Grant was surprisingly straight. Perhaps the queerest thing he ever did was play the role of Desdemona in a performance of Othello by a theatrical company of bored troops during the Mexican War. He was dedicated to his wife, who was cross-eyed. So dedicated, in fact, that, when she wanted to have an operation to straighten her eyes, Grant forbade it, saying, "I like her that way." Equally weird was Rutherford B. Hayes, whose only true love was his sister, Fanny.

James Garfield's morals were probably intact, even though his wife, Lucretia, suspected him of liaisons with several lifelong ladyfriends, including Rebecca Selleck, whom Garfield visited repeatedly whenever he was in New York. Chester Alan Arthur, a strikingly good-looking man, seemed to prefer the company of men; in college, he developed a close relationship with his roommate, Campbell Allen--so close that he once wrote a letter to Allen describing how they had once fallen asleep in each other's arms. Along those lines, Arthur refused to move into the White House until it was redecorated by Louis Tiffany, Grover Cleveland probably fadiered at least one illicit child. As sheriff of Erie County, New York, he belonged to a group of bachelors called The Jolly Reefers, who regularly entertained prostitutes. One of these women was Maria Halpin, who claimed that Cleveland was the father of her child. He paid her off with $500 and saw to it that the child was adopted. During his first term as President, Cleveland married Frances Folsom (who was?27 years his junior) and allowed the press to follow him on his honeymoon. Rumor had it that he abused his wife, causing their children to be deaf and dumb.

Benjamin Harrison, whose one term occurred between Cleveland's two, put the scandalmongers to sleep for four years. Cleveland woke them up, then William McKinley put them right back to sleep again. McKinley was devoted to his wife, who was an epileptic. Occasionally, during White House dinners, when Mrs. McKinley made her characteristic hissing sound signaling the onset of a fit, the President would throw a handkerchief over her face, then continue his conversation as if nothing had happened. Equally devoted to wife and family was Teddy Roosevelt, whose proverbial Big Stick didn't see much action outside his marriage bed. Mr. Macho was so clean he sued a newspaper that had called him a drunkard and won the case.

Next on the roster, weighing in at 325 pounds, is William Howard Taft, whom one biographer optimistically called a ladies' man, although, at that weight, he couldn't have been a terribly desirable lover. According to a psychological study by Sigmund Freud, Woodrow Wilson "almost certainly remained a virgin until he married his first wife at the age of 28" and "his sexual life was confined to his first wife and his second." Rumor had it, however, thathe was putting it to his second wife before his first one died. A current joke went, "What did Mrs. Galt do when the President proposed to her? She fell out of bed." Wilson's frequent illnesses and the secrecy surrounding his stroke in 1919 gave rise to the suggestion that he was suffering the terminal effects of the venereal disease that he had contracted during his Princeton days. Wilson died in 1924, but that doesn't seem to have slowed down his wife, to judge by author Pietro di Donato's account of his short affair with her as published recently in Oui magazine. She was 67 years old at the time, but Di Donato attests mightily to her sexual prowess, saying, "Successive rings of muscle clamped my lesser head and she took three comes before uncunting."

Wilson's successor, the handsome and incompetent Warren G. Harding, got the scandal presses rolling so fast he could barely keep up with them. Described by associates as "a sporting ladies' man," with a distinct "weakness for women," Harding naïvely hoped his marital infidelities would remain secret. They didn't. He was never deeply in love with his wife, Flossie, a divorcee five years his senior, and she, apparently, wasn't all that fond of him, either, since several biographers claim she poisoned him. Harding s mistress, Nan Britton, spilled the beans on her lover shortly after he died by discreetly writing a book called The President's Daughter, a detailed account of their affair, including some torrid passages about their frequent rendezvous in various White House coat closets. The book also goes on, at some length, about Harding's illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Ann. Britton's disclosures, along with the Teapot Dome mess, prepared the public to believe practically every rumor about Harding, who had died in office, no doubt from the strain of it all.

Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge inherited a bordello and overnight turned it into a morgue. Apparently, he "treated his wife more coldly than any President's wife was treated, before or since," according to one biographer. In fact, he shortened their two-week honeymoon to one week and thereafter slept with his pet dog, Rob Roy. He was said to have preferred die company of men and once closed a letter to a Northampton cobbler with the words "I love you." Draw your own conclusions.

About Herbert Hoover nothing can be said except that his wife was the only woman in his life. Ever.

Not so for Franklin D.Roosevelt. For a guy confined to a wheelchair, F.D.R. really got around. His most famous affair was with Lucy Mercer. When Eleanor ran across their love letters, she offered to let Franklin out of the marriage, but F.D.R.'s mother intervened and convinced Eleanor to agree to a marriage in name only from then on, as long as the President stopped seeing Lucy. This later became known as the New Deal. Roosevelt also carried on with Missy LeHand, his longtime secretary--she often acted as White House hostess in Eleanor's absence. Since Eleanor's absences were long and frequent, there's a good chance Missy acted in a number of other capacities as well. F.D.R. was also romantically linked to Crown Princess Martha of Norway, who spent most of the war years in Washington. Martha and her children often lived for as long as a week at a time in the White House and she spent a good deal of that time with F.D.R., alone. Chances are foreign policy was not the number-one topic of conversation. Roosevelt was also very close to New York Post publisher Dorothy Schiff, although the degree of intimacy of dieir relationship is unknown. As for F.D.R.'s deal widi Eleanor--by 1945, the year of his death, he was back with Lucy Mercer. Not only was he a two-timer--;he was a double-dealer as well.

Up until 1960, the Cold War produced its share of cold fish. A lot of people were just wild about Harry Truman, but the only woman who seemed to be demonstrably wild about him was his wife, Bess. And vice versa, Dwight D. Eisenhower had a rather well-publicized affair during the war with Kay Summersby, a young British WAC who chauffeured the general around Europe. At one point, Ike asked to be relieved of command so he could return home to divorce Mamie and marry Kay. During his 1952 Presidential (concluded on page 281)Presidents' Women(continued from page 158) campaign, there were fleeting rumors that some of Eisenhower's friends, most notably Joseph P. Kennedy, had bought Kay off and sent her back to England until after the election. In any case, Ike recovered, took up golf and began to sink his putts elsewhere.

"This Administration is going to do for sex what the last one did for golf." predicted Theodore Sorensen after the 1960 election. He wasn't just whistling Dixie, either--J.F.K.'s score was way over par. Of all our Presidents, there's little doubt that John F. Kennedy was by far the horniest. According to author Richard Condon, who has spent the past 15 years researching the late President's sex life, J.F.K. had scored with 470 girls by the time he was elected to Congress, 903 when he entered the Senate and nearly 1600 by 1961. Make that 1603--he made it with three women on the morning of his inauguration. The gossip mills are still churning out the stories of J.F.K.'s affairs. Famous names include Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, with some talk of liaisons with Angie Dickinson, Kim Novak, Janet Leigh and Rhonda Fleming. The latest to reveal an intimate relationship with him is stripper Tempest Storm. Rumor has it that Jackie was so revolted by her husband's behavior that she intended to divorce him, until Joseph Kennedy (again) bought her off with a quick $1,000,000. Now we know what he did for a living.

There's plenty of hard evidence that Lyndon Johnson fooled around, though the details have been pretty well concealed. Nevertheless, he was, indeed, a ladies' man. On cruises aboard the Presidential yacht, Sequoia, he would watch television with a pretty girl sitting on either side of him. One journalist refers to "a rather dull but persistent intraoflice affair that began early in Johnson's life in the Senate and ended when he was Vice-President." He reportedly once unzipped the back of a Congressman's wife's dress at a party and had a proclivity for kissing all women at social functions. Admitting to having a "weakness for beautiful women," L.B.J. once refused to hire an able woman on the grounds that she had "everything but good looks." He once said to the late Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn: "[Lady] Bird knows everything about me, and all my ladyfriends are hers, too. So I'll be damned i? I try to shut up babbling mouths."

Concealing information about lady-friends was never a big problem for Richard Nixon. In fact, there's some evidence that he hasn't even slept with Pat since the early Sixties. Since then, at least one possible affair has come to light: Literary agent Scott Meredith claimed to be in possession of 22 love letters, purportedly written by Nixon to the wife of a European diplomat. The letters refer to a meeting in Paris at Georges Pompidou's funeral and a later meeting in California, and one complains bitterly that all of Nixon's friends are deserting him because of Watergate, the mysterious lady being pointedly included in their number.

When Nixon appointed Gerald Ford Vice-President, Ford's friend and fraternity brother Jack Stiles said Jerry was one of the few guys who could stand up under close FBI scrutiny of his personal life. Ford didn't do much dating in high school or college. Stiles can remember only one incident in which Ford, while in college, brought a girl to Ann Arbor and registered her in a hotel as "Mrs. Anderson." Unlike Nixon, Ford does get it on with his wife. When asked how often she sleeps with her husband, Betty Ford answered, "as often as possible."

As we go to press, we don't know if Jimmy Carter will be President, but we think the subject of his lust is one we'll stay away from for a while.