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He was a young, smart member of Congress who had relatively little national name recognition when he launched the campaign that would change his life. The more he campaigned, the larger the crowds grew, the more media attention he received.
He refused to take money from political action committees and talked about the environment. To many, he felt like the future of his party. Not part of the existing establishment. Little by little, he pulled closer to the to the man he was chasing until at one point it seemed he might actually win.
Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign surprised a nation. Most of all, it surprised -- and put a scare into -- his fellow U.S. Senator, Walter Mondale, who didn't officially get the Democratic nomination until the convention:
Admitting that "Ronald Reagan beat the pants off us" in 1980, Mondale told voters in his nationally televised speech: "I heard you. And our party heard you."
Apparently not. In November, Mondale would go on to win his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. That's it.
Hart served the remainder of his second Senate term representing Colorado before deciding to bypass a run for reelection so he could prepare a presidential bid again in two years. Rumors of his "womanizing" had popped up in 1984 and he ended his campaign in debt after self-financing much of it, but he was considered one of the front runners.
As 1988 approached, Republican Vice President George H.W. Bush was presumed to be his party's nominee for president. On the Democratic side, all signs pointed to Hart having only one real barrier to the nomination: New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Once Cuomo announced he would not enter the race, Hart was off and running.
Until he wasn't.
The "womanizer" label continued to hound Hart in the spring of 1987. Lois Romano of The Washington Post asked him about the rumors being spread by other campaigns and Hart insisted that "you don't get to the top by tearing someone else down."
At the end of April, Miami Herald reporters, based on an anonymous tip, followed the relatively unknown Donna Rice to Washington, D.C., where she spent a few days with Hart. The reporters staked out the Senator's home for nearly two days before confronting him in an alley. Hart -- and later Rice -- denied the relationship, but the national media smelled blood.
The alleged affair became all that reporters wanted to cover. Hart, who was always loathe to talk about his personal life, insisted that it was none of anyone's business. His campaign repeatedly insisted that the public didn't care. Public polls backed them up:
64% of respondents felt media treatment of Hart was "unfair"
53% felt that marital infidelity had little to do with a president's ability to govern
67% disapproved of the media writing about a candidate's sex life
60% stated that Hart's relationship with Rice was irrelevant to the presidency
One week after the Herald story and just three weeks after announcing his candidacy, Hart suspended his campaign. He returned in December and after a brief bump to the top of the polls, dropped out for good after single-digit Super Tuesday results.
And coverage of political candidates was forever changed.
Hart's story is the subject of a new film, "The Front Runner," starring Hugh Jackman.
The film made me think about where the line is or should be for politicians. How much of someone's marital issues should be public fodder? Why did Hart's campaign collapse when just four years later a known philanderer from Hope, Arkansas, survived multiple scandals to win the Presidency. Twice.
Why did Mark Sanford survive and eventually thrive where Eliot Spitzer didn't? And we all know about our current President.
But where is the line. Is there even a line anymore? Not just when it comes to sex scandals, but in general. Is a candidate's depression a disqualifying issue? Nearly 16 million American's suffer from depression, after all. What about a woman who has had an abortion? It's a legal medical procedure and nearly one in four women in the U.S. will have one by age 45.
How much of any person's life are we entitled to know? Who should we hold to higher standards than we hold ourselves? Or our friends?
What do you think? How much is fair game?
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