Matt Bai

I mean, where do I start?

It's like I walk into a cafeteria and... Shut the fuck up.

Why don't you start there?

Gary Hart, in 1987, was the far and away leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination.

Gary Hart did it again today.

And it all went away in one week in what was the first sort of modern broadcast era sex scandal in politics.

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 to sort of hid in the bushes in his street, in his house.

We were just going to watch the townhouse until I would actually have the chance to see Senator Hart and at that point talk with him.

And followed him, accosted him in an alley.

It all made for great drama.

And his political ambitions in that moment imploded and his political career never really remotely recovered.

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's 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.

And Hart, who grew up in an era of very different rules and who knew most of these reporters quite well, well enough to have dinner or drinks with them, and who was and is a very private Western kind of personality and sort of, in that sense, maybe the Dick Cheney mold, basically said, this is none of your business.

And that was not considered a suitable answer then or now.

He never elaborated, including to me.

I wrote an entire book about it.

And I think, you know, the thing that resonates about Hart and the reason I revisited it and the reason I think it still holds some fascination among people who lived through that moment in 1987 is that he was not an ordinary senator or presidential candidate.