Book uses politicians’ private lives as framework for American history

Don’t laugh – One Nation Under Sex is a serious, well-researched, informative look at American history as reflected by the sexual lives of many of its leaders and how they affected public life. Just remember how different the public perceptions were of John F. Kennedy’s goings-on (if he goes too long without a new woman, he gets migraines, he told British Prime Minister Harold McMillan), which were not publicized, and Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings for a single indiscretion, which was highly publicized.

The first ambassador to France was newspaperman Benjamin Franklin, the inventor and gossip columnist, whose job it was to persuade the French to send troops to support the revolutionary cause in America.

The ladies fell at his feet (including a relative of Marie Antoinette’s), and he became the most popular man in Paris. When President John Adams came to Paris, he couldn’t hide his contempt for the masses of French nobles and told Franklin he was wasting his time. He was wrong.

Franklin’s dalliance with the ladies made him so popular and he was such a good salesman that Louis XVI sent both the army and the navy to help Washington – thus bankrupting his own kingdom.

Not only did he supply Washington with troops, but Franklin decided Washington needed an experienced man to train them too. He found him in his favorite bathhouse, the city’s previously gay pickup joint.

Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s plan for America – a powerful federal government, a national banking system and getting a start on the industrial revolution – was up against Jefferson’s, who wanted America to remain a pastoral country of independent farmers as it then was. Hamilton’s ambitions were of the very highest.

At 35 he was hailed as an economic genius and visionary statesman and became vice president. Jefferson, however decided that Hamilton was too ambitious and revealed his vice-president’s past dalliance.

To save his career, his vision of America’s future and his own hope of the presidency, Hamilton wrote a 95-page booklet in his own defense. It was so detailed, it had to be true and thus Hamilton’s plan to industrialize America was saved.

Jefferson then had his own scandal or two. The same alcoholic columnist discovered Jefferson’s affair and then his six children with his slave, Sally Hemings. Somehow the columnist ended up in the James River.

Then came Dolly Madison, who had relations with three presidents, it was said.

But I can’t go on, there are so many interesting stories. Though the authors do compact them and keep to their theme of relating these tales of presidential affairs in the context of their times to show the effect on government as well as the times. Did we know, for example, that Lincoln was bisexual – which was not so scandalous at the time?

The one that made the most impression on me was the section on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor, told by her mother “you have no looks, so see that you have manners,” grew into a shy, awkward and insecure young woman, not at all sure of being able to hold onto her handsome, socially adept husband.

“Sex is something you must learn to endure,” she told her daughter – one of six children.

She hired Lucy Mercer, “the lovely Lucy,” as Franklin called her every day when she arrived, to be her secretary. Their later affair was common knowledge and when Eleanor discovered it, she told him she would remain his wife on two conditions: never to share his bed again nor could he ever see Lucy again. Their own relationship subsequently turned into a close working partnership.

He contracted polio (for which, of course there was no cure at he time) after visiting a Boy Scout camp and was never again to have the use of his legs. He hired “Missy” LeHand as his secretary, and it was she who looked after him day and night and – most importantly – gave him back the morale he so desparately needed to continue as president, to continue his storytelling and his daily cocktail parties, which Eleanor hated so.

Washington knew about the affair which it became, the authors assume, though they don’t have authentification for it. In those days the press kept quiet.

Meanwhile Eleanor began keeping company with two very talented lesbians who took on the task of bringing her out of her shell. They took her hiking and swimming and horseback riding – even taught her to drive.

She grew confident and outgoing, began to address audiences on the need for political reform, founded a newspaper, overcame her prejudices (against Jews, against female voting) and became the “great civil rights advocate she was known as to this day.”

Then she fell in love with a reporter, Lorena Hickok, the first woman to have her byline on the front page of The New York Times. They kept elaborately secret the fact she lived at the White House and they planned to live together when they left it. But meanwhile Eleanor became a confident public figure.

Through their separate loves, Eleanor and Franklin were completely changed people, which allowed them to be confident and able through the war years. When Franklin died, many Americans were shocked to know that he had been paralyzed from the waist down for all those years.

There’s a section about Hoover’s effect on politics for so many years. The authors report people gossiped about his being homosexual and dressing in women’s clothing, but they are careful to call it gossip, as they do in other places where facts can’t be authenticated.

The book covers Hoover’s influence, Eisenhower’s affair, the rise of conflict over gays, McCarthyism, even the affair Nixon was rumored to have had, of course, the Kennedys (Jackie’s affairs were a shock to me) and finally, the Clintons.

The stories are told unsensationally but with a firm sense of narrative (substantiated by 19 pages of references), a few of which he debunks. (Did Dolly Madison really sleep with three presidents?)

They sum up frequently and for present times, point out the number of women now in Congress has affected it, in that fight though they might as congressmen, the men would go out for drinks and an evening’s frolic as comrades – and now that doesn’t happen as often.

The authors prove through their research and writing that the affairs they tell of really did have an effect on American history, surely a concept most of us hadn’t thought of as an aspect of American life. Besides, it’s a good read.

Book info:

One Nation Under Sex

By Larry Flint and David Eisenbach, Ph.D.

Palgrave Macmillan, $25

Posted by Rae Eastman on October 18, 2012. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry