The newest journalists running around Capitol Hill are none other than reporters from TMZ. The celebrity gossip site, famous for its aggressive and sometimes unsavory \u2014 but often effective \u2014 newsgathering tactics, opened up a Washington, DC, bureau just last week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
TMZ\u2019s expansion into congressional news promises even more celebrity-style coverage of politicians. (For example, TMZ founder Harvey Levin recently asked the public to send pictures of lawmakers doing anything but their jobs during Congress\u2019s spring recess.) But this brave new media landscape and its consequences date back further, to the 1980s. The clearest example is that of Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, an oft-forgotten politician once considered a frontrunner for the 1988 Democratic nomination for president, who was forced out of the race by allegations of an affair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Rolling Stone columnist Matt Bai, who wrote a book on the Hart scandal titled All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid<\/a><\/em>, tells Today, Explained<\/em> co-host Noel King that Hart was right about a lot of things to come in politics, including getting the leaders we \u201cdeserve.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There\u2019s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained<\/em><\/a> wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Pandora<\/a>, and Spotify<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gary Hart in 1987 was the far and away leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination [in 1988]. It all went away in one week in what was the first modern broadcast-era sex scandal in politics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He was said to be having an affair with a woman who was not his wife, and that he spent a night with her on a boat and then had her in his townhouse. He was followed by reporters from the Miami Herald who hid in the bushes on his street and followed him. It all made for great drama and his political ambitions in that moment imploded and his political career never recovered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What was new here was that, rather than having it be discovered either in the commission of a crime or by some kind of disclosure, reporters went out and searched for evidence of extramarital affairs on Gary Hart\u2019s part. And the press really decided in that moment that it was both relevant and essential to know whether he had been faithful to his wife or not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere was a lot happening in that moment. You were right at the birth of satellite technology and what would become the 24-hour news cycle.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Hart, who grew up in an era of very different rules, basically said that this is none of your business. And that was not considered a suitable answer then or now. He never elaborated, including to me, and I wrote an entire book about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The rules didn\u2019t change because Hart was a different kind of politician or because he changed the rules. The rules changed because they were changing and Gary Hart just kind of walked into it. There was a lot happening in that moment. You were right at the birth of satellite technology and what would become the 24-hour news cycle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Suddenly it was possible to go live from anywhere, which had a real impact on what was considered news and what wasn\u2019t. You also had this new generation of journalists who had been inspired into the business by the example of Woodward and Bernstein 10 to 15 years earlier. That meant not just taking people down in a shallow way, not just looking for scandal, but really protecting the American voter from failures and lapses in character, which was something they thought the American media of the previous generation had failed to do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n How did [Hart] react once he was caught?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Defiantly. He felt it was no one\u2019s business. He refused to answer questions about it. He tried to move on. Hart would tell you that he got out of the race not because he was no longer a tenable candidate, but because it was impossible to speak to voters. Suddenly it wasn\u2019t just the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the Washington Post on the campaign trail. It was People Magazine and it was the brand-new A Current Affair<\/em> and all these kinds of things.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He withdraws from the race after a week, and he gives a speech that I think, particularly given the moment we\u2019re at now, is the most important forgotten speech in American political history:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019re all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say, \u201cI tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve.\u201d Some things may be interesting but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean they\u2019re important.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n And I\u2019ve come back very often in my writing over the years to this phrase. Because I do think in a sense, as a country, that\u2019s what\u2019s happened. We have created a political process that rewards shamelessness and dishonesty and exhibitionism and entertainment. And lo and behold, we have gotten a president now, twice, who is shameless and exhibitionist and attention-seeking and an entertainer at heart. And those two things are not coincidental.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some of the scandals that have been uncovered, they\u2019re not just cheating scandals. Some of them are serious crimes, sex crimes. Is the tabloid-ification of political journalism also a good thing?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes. Not all scandal coverage, not all tabloid coverage, is worthless. It\u2019s not like we just don\u2019t care about anything you do in private. But I do not agree with those who would say, Well, if a president\u2019s going to have an affair, we should know about it<\/em>. You have to be accountable for that, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are a lot of journalists who covered Gary Hart. If they\u2019re still around today, they will tell you he got what he deserved. My answer to that has always been, well, I guess we\u2019re going to have to go back in history. Let\u2019s build a time machine. We\u2019re going to have to get rid of FDR and we\u2019re going to have to get rid of Lyndon Johnson and we\u2019re going to have to get rid of John Kennedy. And I guess we can just figure out another way through the Great Depression and the Second World War and the Cold War because none of these guys deserve to be president.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We are not morality police. My sympathy with Gary Hart is he was pleading in that moment not for complete innocence, not that he shouldn\u2019t have to be accountable. He was essentially saying some things are relevant and some things are not. And no one has ever made a case with any persuasiveness whatsoever that anything Gary Hart did in that moment was relevant to the governance of the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n