Gary Hart

This article is about the US politician; on the British politician of a similar name, see Garry Hart, Baron Hart of Chilton .

Gary Hart

Gary Hart (originally Gary Warren Hartpence ; born November 28, 1936 in Ottawa , Franklin County , Kansas ) is an American politician and author . The Democrat was a member of the United States Senate for Colorado from 1975 to 1987 and ran for the Democratic presidential election in 1984 and 1988. After that, Hart worked as an academic, journalist and foreign and security policy advisor.

Family, education and work

Gary Hart was the son of Nina Pritchard Hartpence and Carl Riley, who was a moderately successful farm machinery salesman. Both parents were strictly religious and belonged to the Church of the Nazarene , which forbade dancing, cinema and alcohol. His grandfather was a Marshal of the Frontier in Missouri his mother were railroad workers, the Father. He attended public schools and was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and was involved in various groups. He studied on a scholarship at Bethany Nazarene College near Oklahoma City , where strict rules prevailed and Hart was recognized for his achievements. In 1961 he graduated from Yale Divinity School - with the career goal of teaching - and in 1964 he studied law at Yale Law School . Before he started studying law, he and his father had shortened the surname from Hartpence to Hart .

In 1958 he married his fellow student Oletha M. "Lee" Ludwig in Kansas City ; both went to Yale together, where his wife taught English. They have a son and a daughter. In 1979 the couple separated; Hart moved in briefly with Bob Woodward . Reconciled, the next breakup lasted over a year in 1980. Even after her husband's alleged affair became known in 1987, she publicly adhered to him. They live in Kittredge, Colorado .

After graduating, Hart worked from 1964 to 1965 in the United States Department of Justice under Robert F. Kennedy and was from 1965 to 1967 assistant (special assistant) in the United States Department of the Interior under Stewart Udall . In 1967 the family moved to Denver , where Hart worked as an attorney for Davis, Graham & Stubbs , one of the city's most prestigious law firms, until 1974 , after being inducted into the bar in 1965 there and in the District of Columbia .

Political career

Activist and campaign organizer

Hart began to get involved in protests against the Vietnam War in Denver and organized phone calls for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign for the 1968 election . In 1972 he became the campaign manager of the Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern for the 1972 election and successfully organized hundreds of thousands of activists. His campaign succeeded in capitalizing on the shift in the pre-election system away from influential political bosses with their "political machines" to voting by focusing on the 28 states that have either a caucus or a party meeting and are more easily influenced by activists could be as real primaries ( primarys ). After this seminal campaign for later election campaigns had been successful, the main election ended in a clear defeat against Republican Richard Nixon .

In the Senate

Hart ran for the United States Senate in the 1974 election , which was under the influence of the Watergate affair , and opposed Republican mandate holder Peter H. Dominick , who had remained loyal to President Richard Nixon , with 57 to 40 percent by. Hart was quickly seen as the coming man of his party and was given a seat on the important defense committee , in which he advocated reform of the procurement of the military and arming with smaller, more flexible systems. He was also a member of the committees for the environment and public buildings and intelligence services . In 1975/76 he was a member of the Church Committee that investigated the Watergate affair. He was chairman of the subcommittee on nuclear regulation and as such flew several times in a helicopter over the site in March 1979 during the reactor accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant . He was accompanied by the Republican ranking member of the committee, Senator Alan K. Simpson . Both worked out the subsequent investigation report. Even then, there was speculation about Hart's presidential ambitions.

In November 1980, Hart ran for re-election and stood against the moderate Republican Secretary of State Mary Estill Buchanan, who attacked him for the unpopular Democratic President Jimmy Carter and especially for his support for the Torrijos Carter treaties . Hart prevailed in a generally difficult environment for Democrats, in which Ronald Reagan was elected president with a large majority at the same time , with just 50.2 to 49.8 percent of the vote; he himself attributed his victory to the unexpected declaration of support from the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater . In his second term in office, Hart opposed, among other things, the sharp increase in military spending by the Reagan administration and in 1984 obtained the first copyright protection for semiconductor chips, which promoted the development of Silicon Valley and made him one of the leaders of the so-called Atari Democrats , a direction within it Party that advocated the unideological promotion of technological progress.

Hart's admission to the United States Navy Reserve on December 4, 1980 (Navy Secretary of State Edward Hidalgo left )

From the late 1970s, Hart tried in the face of tensions in the Middle East because of the oil crisis to be accepted into the United States Navy , which was criticized by political opponents as a cynical attempt to be able to give military experience in the event of a presidential campaign. In addition, it became public that Hart had reduced his date of birth by a year on the registration documents - as had been the case for over two decades on various official documents. Nevertheless, Hart was older than the maximum entry limit of 38 years. The then Navy Liaison Officer to the Senate, John McCain , who was to become a personal friend of Hart, stood up for him, so that Hart was accepted into the United States Navy Reserve at the end of 1980 , served there for ten days in the Mediterranean in August 1981 and rose to the rank of lieutenant in January 1982.

Presidential candidacies

Hart at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles

Hart took part in the Democratic primary election for the 1984 presidential election, in which he was barely defeated by Walter Mondale . Hart, at 45 years the youngest in the field of candidates, embodied the departure of the new generation of Democrats from the traditional programs of the New Deal and the Great Society and, in view of the ongoing economic crises, advocated a greater distance from the unions and a free market economy. He thus became a front-line figure in the de-ideologized neoliberal policy direction that President Bill Clinton would later lead. Hart's quote from 1984 is often cited as an example: “We're not just a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys” (“We're not just a few little Hubert Humphreys ”). With his slogan “New Ideas” - instead of old ideologies, Hart managed to endanger favorite Walter Mondale despite the poor starting conditions - little money, supporters and clout. After Mondale mid-January 1984 caucus of Iowa had clearly won, Hart's victory surprised at the primary in New Hampshire two weeks later with ten percent points clear political observers. According to surveys, his election prospects have increased. During a debate in March 1984, Mondale objected to Hart's “new ideas” that he was always reminded of a commercial: “ Where's the beef? " (the substance). Finally, Mondale narrowly prevailed and lost the main election against Ronald Reagan by a large margin.

Hart at a 1987 election event

"For Hart from the Re-Start": campaign button 1988

For the Senate election in 1986 Hart did not occur again, and resigned from the Congress on January 3, 1987th Instead, despite outstanding debts from the 1984 campaign, he again ran for the Democratic nomination for the 1988 presidency . He announced his candidacy in April 1987 in the Red Rocks Amphitheater and was considered the favorite with around 35 percent in the polls in the first few months of 1987. Hart, who is regarded as aloof and secretive, was reluctant to answer questions about himself and on May 3rd 1987 on rumors of extramarital affairs in a famous portrait of the New York Times magazine that one should run after him ("Follow me around. I don't care"). After the Miami Herald had investigated an alleged Harts affair and made it public at the end of May 1987, Hart, a pious man who demanded morality in politics, suspended his campaign five days later, but was unable to make up for the loss of public confidence. His alleged affair, debts, and glossing over his résumé became dominant topics. It was one of the first sex scandals of a politician who ensured that the intimate and private life of politicians became a public issue, for example the Bill Clinton affairs in the 1992 presidential election campaign . Although Hart got back into the area code in December 1987 and achieved relatively good poll numbers, he did not receive a delegate in the individual votes in the states that followed from January 1988 and withdrew from the race after Super Tuesday on March 13, 1988 back from politics.

In the fall of 2018, Democratic campaign manager Raymond Strother made public that Republican campaign manager Lee Atwater stood on his deathbed in 1991 after luring Hart into a trap in March 1987. At that time, a photo from Hart was taken on a boat trip with a young woman posing on his lap. The photo was used in May 1987 to make plausible a Hart affair with this woman. The following scandal was also called Monkey Business after the name of the boat .

Before the 2004 presidential election , Hart considered running for a third time in the Democratic primary, but decided against it and supported the eventual nominee John Kerry .

According to politics

After retiring from day-to-day politics in 1987, Hart worked again as a lawyer, became a consultant for the external security of his country and gave speeches on the environment and internal security . Among other things, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations . In 2001 he received at the University of Oxford the doctorate in political science . In January 2001, a commission headed by Hart and former Senator Warren Rudman drew up proposals for changing the security architecture in the USA and considered a terrorist attack in the country to be likely, which was hardly noticed at the time. In 2006 Hart accepted an endowed professorship at the University of Colorado in Denver and gave guest lectures at several other universities.

He has authored and co-authored numerous books, both fiction and specialist literature, and articles. Of his four novels , he published two under the pseudonym John Blackthorn . Hart comments on current issues on his blog Matters of Principle and as an author on The Huffington Post .

Gary Hart (2019)

In 2014, he was named United States Special Envoy to Northern Ireland by President Barack Obama . He resigned in January 2017 after taking over the presidency by Donald Trump out of this office. Later that year he criticized Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's plan to remove that special envoy's position.

reception

Hart's 1988 presidential campaign was the subject of the non-fiction book All the Truth is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid by Matt Bai , who sees the media handling of Hart's alleged affair as the starting point for a trivialization and tabloidization of American politics. The book was filmed in 2018 under the title The Leading Candidate by Jason Reitman ; in the main role played Hugh Jackman Hart.

Fonts

Non-fiction

• Right from the Start: A Chronicle of the McGovern Campaign (1973).
• A New Democracy: new approaches to the challenges of the 1980s (1983).
• America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform (1985).
• Russia Shakes the World: The Second Russian Revolution (1991).

• The Good Fight: The Education of an American Reformer (1995).
• The Patriot: An Exhortation to Liberate America from the Barbarians (1996).
• The Minuteman: Restoring an Army of the People (1998).
• Restoration of the Republic: the Jeffersonian Ideal in 21st Century America (2002, also dissertation, University of Oxford).
• The Fourth Power: a new grand strategy for the United States in the 21st century (Oxford University Press, 2004).
• The Presidency of James Monroe, in the American Presidency series edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (Time Books / Henry Holt, 2005).
• God and Caesar in America: an essay on religion and politics (Fulcrum Books, 2005).

• The Shield and The Cloak: The Security of the Commons (Oxford University Press, 2006).
• The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats by Gary Hart (Time Books / Henry Holt, 2006).
• Under The Eagle's Wing: A National Security Strategy of the United States for 2009 (Speaker's Corner, 2008).
• The Thunder and the Sunshine: Four Seasons in a Burnished Life (Fulcrum Publishing, 2010).

Novels

• with William Cohen : The Double Man (1984).
• The Strategies of Zeus (1985).
• Sins of the Fathers (1999) (under his pseudonym John Blackthorn)
• I, Che Guevara (2000) (under his pseudonym John Blackthorn)

literature

• Laura Stoker: Judging Presidential Character. The Demise of Gary Hart. In: Political Behavior. Volume 15, 1993, No. 2, pp. 193-223 (PDF) .
• Matt Bai: All the Truth Is Out. The Week Politics Went Tabloid. Knopf, New York City 2014, ISBN 978-0-3072-7338-3 .

Web links

Commons : Gary Hart  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Gary Hart in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Gary Hart in the nndb (English)
• Ariana Harner: The Watershed Campaign of Gary Hart. In: Colorado Heritage Magazine. Volume 19, 1999, No. 1, adapted as entry Gary Hart. In: Colorado Encyclopedia.
• Gary Hart. In: Kansaspedia , Kansas Historical Society, July 2017.
• Gary Hart. In: C-Span (Videos).

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Garry Clifford, Peter Carlson: Gary Hart. In: People , August 22, 1983
2. ^ ^{A b} Gary Hart. In: Kansaspedia , Kansas Historical Society, July 2017.
3. ↑ Michelle Green: After Sticking with a Troubled Marriage, Lee Hart Watches a Dream Die. In: People , May 25, 1987.
4. ↑ Todd S. Purdum: Indulging Iowa. In: Vanity Fair , November 17, 2011.
5. ^ Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. In: Senate.gov.
6. ^ Donald Loren Hardy: Shooting from the Lip. The Life of Senator Al Simpson. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 2011, p. 39 f.
7. ↑ David Burnham: Six Inquiries Seek the Lessons of Three Mile Island. In: The New York Times , September 24, 1979.
8. ↑ Ira Shapiro: The Last Great Senate. Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD 2012, p. 351 .
9. ↑ Eric Francisco: Who Was Gary Hart? The “Atari Democrat” is the subject of 'The Front Runner'. In: Inverse.com , August 30, 2018.
10. ↑ David Shribman: Persistent Question about Discrepancies on Hart Background. In: The New York Times , March 24, 1984.
11. ↑ See the announcement of the candidacy: Hart Presidential Announcement. In: C-Span , February 17, 1983.
12. ^ Walter Goodman: As Neoliberals Search for Closest Fit, Hart is Often Mentioned. In: The New York Times , May 15, 1984
13. ↑ Corey Robin: The First Neoliberals. In: Jacobin Mag , April 28, 2016.
14. ↑ Ira Shapiro: The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD 2012, p. 18 .
15. ↑ "I can rule this country". In: Der Spiegel , March 5, 1984.
16. ^ Alan I. Abramowitz: Viability, Electability, and Candidate Choice in a Presidential Primary Election. A Test of Competing Models. In: Journal of Politics. Volume 51, 1989, No. 4, pp. 977-992, here pp. 977 f. (PDF)
17. ^ Ariana Harner: The Watershed Campaign of Gary Hart. In: Colorado Heritage Magazine. Volume 19, 1999, No. 1, adapted as entry Gary Hart. In: Colorado Encyclopedia
18. ^ Jeff Greenfield, How to Recover from a Big Loss in the Early Primaries. In: Slate , January 8, 2008.
19. ^ Nate Silver : A Brief History of Primary Polling, Part II. In: FiveThirtyEight , April 4, 2011.
20. ^ EJ Dionne : Gary Hart, the Elusive Front-Runner. In: The New York Times , May 3, 1987.
21. ^ EJ Dionne: Courting Danger: The Fall of Gary Hart. In: The New York Times , May 9, 1987; Ken Auletta: Why the Media Doesn't Want to Remember Gary Hart. In: The New Yorker , January 27, 2015.
22. ↑ Quits Campaign: The People 'Have Decided,' Hart Declares. In: The Los Angeles Times , March 13, 1988; Laura Stoker: Judging Presidential Character. The Demise of Gary Hart. In: Political Behavior. Volume 15, 1993, No. 2, pp. 193-223 (PDF) .
23. ↑ James Fallows: What Was Gary Hart Set Up? In: The Atlantic , November 2018. See photo in Famous Political Sex Scandals 1988: Gary Hart and Donna Rice. In: CBS News .
24. ^ Rudman-Hart Commission Warns of Terrorist Attack: Why Did the News Media Ignore It? In: Brookings Institution , February 6, 2002.
25. ^ Ariana Harner: The Watershed Campaign of Gary Hart. In: Colorado Heritage Magazine. Volume 19, 1999, No. 1, adapted as entry Gary Hart. In: Colorado Encyclopedia.
26. ↑ James Fallows: Gary Hart on Bombing Iran. In: The Atlantic , 23 August 2010.
27. ^ Former senator Gary Hart named as US special envoy to Northern Ireland. In: The Guardian , October 21, 2014.
28. ^ Gary Hart denounces US abolition of NI special envoy role as 'tragic'. In: The Irish Times , August 31, 2017.
29. ↑ Ted Koppel: Book Review: 'All The Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid'. In: National Public Radio , September 29, 2014
30. ↑ Michiko Kakutani: Political Feeding Frenzy as a Turning Point. In: The New York Times , November 3, 2014; Gregor Peter Schmitz : All the truth is out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. In: Deutschlandfunk , January 26, 2015.
31. ↑ Dave McNary: Hugh Jackman Faces Political Sex Scandal in 'The Front Runner' First Trailer. In: Variety , August 30, 2018.
32. ^ Andrew Ferguson: Gary Hart comes out: The former Senator and ex-presidential candidate reveals that he's thriller writer John Blackthorn. In: CNN.com , Jan. 17, 2000.