Perhaps I was having an out of body experience. Or maybe my allergies had clogged my brain that day. Whatever the reason, I had a decision to make—and fast. Would I have the nerve to ask a politician what the fuck he was thinking when he cheated on his wife back in 1988?
As a gossip columnist and features editor for a tabloid-style paper in Washington called The Hill, asking politicians about their personal lives is my daily routine. On this day, for this story, I was posing a question I knew would make politicians squirm: why does Washington produce so many sex scandals that are so weird?
My heart was beating fast as I raced across the tiled floor outside the Senate Chamber to catch two-time presidential hopeful Gary Hart as he walked toward a flight of creamy marble steps.
This conjured up a similar feeling to months earlier when—for a different assignment— I approached Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and asked him to name the most romantic thing he’d ever done for a significant other. (No matter for the past year that he has been embroiled in the aftermath of his criminal admission to soliciting sex in a Minnesota airport men’s room, which, I presumed, would not be his answer). His answer: a candlelight dinner for his wife, the previous weekend.
“Excuse me, senator,” I began. No response. “Excuse me senator,” I began again a little louder. By my third “Excuse me” and a brief touch to his solider, the decision had been made. I was going to ask my question, well aware that I might soon be told to go to hell.
My question would be polite but blunt. Certainly I wouldn’t ask why he was bedding a woman other than his wife during a presidential bid.
But I would ask him: Why are scandals that come out of Washington so weird? A fitting question, I thought, considering he showed his face on the very week the town was ablaze with then-New York Govenor Elliot Spitzer paying for a prostitute just before Valentine’s Day. They had holed up inside Washington’s famous Mayflower Hotel for an hour.
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