Tabloid exploits don't stop today's politicians
Star Tribune, February 9, 2000
By Katherine Kersten

Remember Gary Hart? In April 1987, Hart was a front- runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Polls showed him well ahead of rivals Jesse Jackson, Richard Gephardt and Michael Dukakis. Then someone snapped a photo of Hart on a trip of the good ship "Monkey Business" with buxom Donna Rice perched on his lap. In short order, his political career was swamped. Hart's indiscretion, lamented an aide, had amounted to political suicide.

Things sure have changed. A few months ago, another presidential candidate, Donald Trump, gave what the New York Post described as a "sex-drenched" interview to radio shock jock Howard Stern. Trump spoke from his penthouse with his current girlfriend, supermodel Melania Knauss, nestled by his side. Knauss proudly informed the radio audience that she was nude. Trump and Knauss eagerly provided intimate details of their sex life.

Did Trump pay a political price for his "tell-all" radio ramblings? Far from it. Shortly after hobnobbing with Stern, Trump flew to Minnesota to push his bid for the Reform Party's presidential nomination. Gov. Jesse Ventura welcomed him with open arms. The two spent the day making joint appearances and held a press conference. Trump spoke at a gathering sponsored by the Metro North Chamber of Commerce the ultimate mainstream organization and was also keynote speaker at a fund-raiser for Ventura's campaign committee. The notion that Trump "can't win, declared Ventura, "is something we've really got to work to overcome."

Donald Trump is not allied with a major political party. Nevertheless, his campaign for president is of more than negligible interest. Trump has a good chance of winning the Reform Party nomination, which carries with it $12.6 million in federal campaign funding. His advisers' plan a presidential campaign modeled, in part, on Ventura's successful gubernatorial bid. Trump's staff includes serious political operatives, among them the head of "E-team Trump," Phil Madsen, the creative force behind Ventura's highly successful campaign Web site.

It's worth asking why Trump's interview with Howard Stern hardly raised an eyebrow in the press or public during the candidate's Minnesota visit. Clearly, something's changed since Gary Hart's demise.

The fact is, Donald Trump is running for president in a post-Clinton electoral environment. Bill Clinton established that a contemporary president can frolic in the Oval Office with an intern half his age and yet maintain sky-high approval ratings. Clinton apparently conducted public business by phone while receiving oral sex; he was accused of groping female acquaintances and other predatory sexual acts. Yet today, his popularity tops Ronald Reagan's in the Gipper's seventh year in office. Thanks to Clinton, the standard of sexual conduct for future presidential candidates has fallen to truly subterranean levels.

Here in Minnesota, we've done our part to ratchet standards down by electing Ventura. Clinton, at least, viewed his sexual escapades as bad for public relations; he denied them until the notorious blue dress appeared. Ventura, by contrast, has boasted of the sexual high jinks in his past. In "I Ain't Got Time to Bleed," his best-selling autobiography, Ventura bragged about bedding a girl as an adolescent and proudly recounted his shrewd dealings with a prostitute at a Nevada brothel.

Unlike Clinton, Ventura has not sought to veil his objectification of women under a feminist political agenda. In an interview with Playboy magazine, our governor volunteered that he wants to be reincarnated as a size 38DD bra. Last summer, he served as ringmaster of the erotically charged SummerSlam pro wrestling extravaganza. As Ventura waited backstage, two scantily clad women grappled together; the winner managed triumphantly to unfasten the loser's brassiere. Right before the governor strode into the lights, a male wrestler unveiled a stout, shrouded woman and announced that the loser of his match would have to kiss her behind. In the audience, a woman exposed her breasts, to the lavish praise of the announcers.

Ventura's apparent desire to see Donald Trump in the White House should not surprise us. A Trump presidency would be the logical next step in the downward spiral that we, as voters, have done so much to encourage. Trump is well qualified to carry on Clinton's legacy of sexual hanky panky. In fact, Trump has declared that if Clinton had been caught with a slinky model instead of Monica Lewinsky, "he'd have been a hero."

In America, politics has long represented what is noblest in human beings -- our capacity for self-government, the touchstone of which is self-control. Our politicians haven't always lived blameless lives; where power is at issue, human failings will often be in evidence. But when figures like Ventura and Trump enter the political arena, our common life becomes increasingly difficult to portray as a noble enterprise.

The advent of candidates like Ventura and Trump suggests that, for many of us, politics is rapidly becoming just another form of entertainment. As citizens, we're getting lazier and lazier. Fewer of us vote; even fewer follow issues carefully. We'd rather hear Jay Leno joke about the presidential debates than watch them ourselves. Little wonder, then, that we're beginning to pay a price.