The Front Runner

by Matt Bai

Now a major motion picture starring Hugh Jackman. When politics went tabloid… In May 1987, Colorado Senator Gary Hart seemed like a no-brainer for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. He was articulate, dashing, refreshingly progressive and led George H. W. Bush by double digits in the polls. However, he was also a deeply private man, uneasy when attention moved away from his political views to his personal life. Then, in one tumultuous week, it all came crashing down. Rumours of marital infidelity, a photo of Hart and a model snapped near a fatefully-named yacht, and a newspaper’s stakeout of Hart’s home resulted in a media frenzy the likes of which had never been seen before. Through the spellbindingly reported story of the Senator’s fall from grace, Matt Bai, Yahoo News columnist and former chief political correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, revisits the Gary Hart affair and unpicks how one man’s tragedy forever changed the nature of political media and, by extension, politics itself. This was the moment when the paradigm shifted – private lives became public; news became entertainment; and politics became tabloid.

Paperback

Published January 10, 2019

About the author

This is the place on the site where I answer those often asked questions: "Who do you think you are?" or "Just where do you get off…?"

You can get the official version of my bio here.

For more than seven years, I've written on national politics for the New York Times Magazine. You can access most of my work on the 2004 and 2008 campaigns and other topics here. My work for the magazine was featured in both the 2005 and 2006 editions of "The Best American Political Writing."

I’m also the author of "The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics," published by the Penguin Press, which is now in paperback. The book, which took me several years to report and write, is an inside account of the new progressive movement in America and an analysis of the state of Democratic politics in the years before Barack Obama. The New York Times named it one of the best books of 2007.

In 2006, I contributed a personal essay to an anthology called "I Married my Mother-in-Law and Other Tales of In-Laws We Can't Live With—and Can't Live Without." I recommend the anthology, and not just because I'm in it.

I grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, a nice little town just outside of Bridgeport, the city where both of my parents were born. Those who have ever driven through Bridgeport will understand how I came to care about politics and industrial decay. In fact, I've never lived more than a few miles from a housing project, which probably explains my skepticism toward both Darwinian social policy and the notion that expansive government can fix everything. I went to Tufts and Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, where the faculty generously awarded me the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship.

Early in my career, just out of college, I was a speechwriter for what is now the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, where I wrote for the great Audrey Hepburn during her last years. (I’ve still never seen one of her movies, but she was a lovely person.) I started my journalism career at the Boston Globe, where I covered crime and breaking news, and then spent five years traveling the country as a national correspondent for Newsweek, which was a terrific opportunity. (I also did a disastrous little stint at Rolling Stone, which included no articles and a lot of weirdness, but I'm contractually prohibited from talking about that.) There are probably several states in the country from which I still haven’t reported, but I can't easily think of them.

When I’m not traveling, I live a life of domestic tranquility in Washington with my wife, Ellen, and our two small children, Ichiro and Allegra. For hobbies, I enjoy woodworking and mountain climbing. Actually, that's not true at all; I couldn't build a birdhouse, and, after a brutal game of touch football and a whole mess of knee surgery, I can barely climb a Jungle Gym. My main hobby, outside of reading history and fiction, is watching the Yankees. In this arena, at least, I am entirely partisan.

Reviews

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Front Runner by Matt Bai is not one of the best motion pictures you could see, it is not one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, nevertheless, the story is relevant and this cinephile has enjoyed it – for notes on films from The NYT 1,000 and other sites you could check my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...


8 out of 10

I have written a review on The Front Runner https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... but it was on some channel recently, and although it is not spectacular, it is still worth watching, especially given the contrast between what happened in 1988 and then in 2016 and then in

- 2024

The American electorate brought on top of the world an Orange Joker – he is still there as we speak – recently, even after he showed between 2016 and 2020 what he can do, what with the mob occupying The Capitol, keeping state secrets in the bathroom, trying to steal the elections and more – and then we have Senator Hart
Gary Hart should have read The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... a psychology classic by John Gottman, in case he made some mistakes, however, standards have changed in the meantime

Senator Gary Hart was a remarkable man – indeed, he might be alive today – smart, articulate, charming, original, he had qualities missing in many (most) leaders, especially if we look at the administration that looks like a line up of clowns and weirdos, one has been changed for another yesterday
Noem, the Homeland Secretary has been fired and replaced by another incredible moron, she had been so disgusting – she wrote an autobiography, or at least she read the audiobook version, and she boasted about shooting dead her puppy and goat, and then lied about meeting Kim of North Korea – a parade of fools

In 1988, Gary Hart is favorite to win the presidential elections, he has the abilities, the popularity, except he makes a mistake – maybe a few – he tells a reporter to follow him, and an outfit from Florida does just that, only to discover that a good-looking woman enters the flat where the politician is staying and does not leave at night
Or so it seemed

The apartment has another exit, ergo, she could have used that…this is Much Ado About Nothing https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... if we compare with what happens at the top now, it looks as innocent games, it is awful to see that a monster is elected and he has so much power

[A D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable tale of the downfall of Presidential candidate Senator Gary Hart. He went from being the front runner for the Democratic nomination for the 1988 election to a disgraced tabloid laughingstock inside of a week. In this book he comes across as a man who could have been a good president and taken his country on a different path from the one it did take. However, his probable affair with a model torpedoed his candidacy and led to him being splashed across every newspaper in the world. You can’t help but feel sorry for his poor wife, subjected to a scrutiny she didn’t deserve all because of her husband’s inability to be, at the very least, discreet, and at worst faithful. As for Hart himself, well it’s fair to say he created the rod that was used on his own back. Some people might ask, what does it matter? His personal life is just that and it wouldn’t have made him a bad president. My own opinion is that if someone can’t be faithful and truthful to the person they married, then why the hell should I believe anything they tell me.