No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
While running for President about a century ago, Grover Cleveland bumped into what might have been a fatal problem -- the public charge that he had fathered an illegitimate son by a tall, pretty widow, Maria Halpin, manager of the cloak department in a Buffalo store. To modern Americans accustomed to politics...