Essay: PUBLIC FIGURES AND THEIR PRIVATE LIVES

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How much a scandal hurts often depends on how skillfully it is exploited by political enemies. When he accepted a token gift for putting in a good word for his friend Bernard Goldfine with the Federal Trade Commission, Sherman Adams, Eisenhower's Presidential Assistant, did not do anything much out of the ordinary in Washington. But congressional Democrats, who were smarting from charges of corruption during the Truman Administration, seized their opportunity and drove Adams from public life. Former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas exercised bad judgment when he accepted a retainer from the foundation of Financier Louis Charles Wolfson, whose case was due for review by the court. Yet Fortas might have been able to keep his seat on the bench if he had not been associated with the wheeler-dealer politicking of Lyndon Johnson, or so closely identified with the liberal, activist opinions of the Warren court.

Nuances of Behavior

Even if they are surrounded by enemies ready to pounce at their first lapse, public figures can get away with a lot if their misdeeds are only a matter of gossip. The U.S. President, in particular, is well insulated against excessively prying eyes. Warren Harding employed the Secret Service to keep watch over his liaisons in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt's affair with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer, was successfully kept out of print even though it almost broke up his marriage. Washington gossips amused themselves with stories about John Kennedy's attentiveness to pretty girls; yet no hint of scandal emerged to damage his career.

There is a kind of safety in the undocumented rumor. On the other hand, even relatively innocuous events can become damaging once they are matters of public record. Justice Hugo Black's brief, youthful membership in the Ku Klux Klan did nothing to shape his judicial philosophy; yet when Black's Klan affiliation was revealed shortly after his appointment to the Supreme Court, he was almost forced to resign. Nelson Rockefeller had a possible shot at the Republican presidential nomination in 1964. But he was removed from contention when he divorced his wife of 18 years to marry a mother of four, who lost custody of her children by choosing to marry Rocky.

The kind of private behavior that is tolerated in public figures varies considerably from nation to nation. Each country has its own unwritten code of seemly behavior. It would have been acceptable for the Prince of Wales to carry on a discreet affair with Mrs. Wallis Simpson, if he had wanted to; but for him as King Edward VIII to marry a divorced American woman was unthinkable. Class resentment and sexual envy were aroused in the British public by the disclosure that the Tory Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, had fraternized with Christine Keeler and assorted other shady characters. But when Profumo lied about the matter to the House of Commons, he destroyed his standing with the Establishment as well. Such flouting of tradition brought about his own resignation and contributed to a Labor victory the following year.

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