No reporter coverup: Kennedy kept sex secret
Advice from a seasoned Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter to Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and other pols with a wandering eye: The next time you get the urge, pick a paramour who won't blab. And, adds retired Associated Press legend Walter Mears, don't blame the press when you get caught. Mears should know. He covered every presidential campaign from JFK to George W. Bush and reveals in his juicy memoir, Deadlines Past, that Kennedy got away with it because he kept his sex life secret, not because reporters covered up for their presidential pal. "Even if they can't prove it, reporters trade gossip," says Mears. "Even at last call in the bar, I didn't hear any," he tells us. Be assured, he adds, if reporters had the skinny on JFK and Marilyn Monroe, "it would have been nuclear." But "his affairs were secret because he saw to it," Mears says in the book, out in October. "Not so with Gary Hart or Bill Clinton--they got involved with talkative women." Sure, Mears concedes, times have changed and news has become more gossipy. But, "A story is no story unless you can prove it."
One Hog of A Presidential Token
To the politically desirable "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads" add "Harley-Davidson couples." These aging wild-thing baby boomers are fast becoming the target of presidential candidates because they're active voters, hip, independent, and relatively wealthy. It should come as no shock, for example, that Sen. John Kerry is wooing them from the back of his own Harley. But you've got to give the edge to the Bush team and biker-in-chief Josh Bolten, the president's budget Boss Hog, for turning the vote George W. Bush's way. He owns three motorcycles, two Harley Fat Boys--one brand-new--and an Iowa-built Victory that he parks at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch. But Bolten's more than just show. He brought a 100th-anniversary Harley-Davidson gas tank to the latest cabinet meeting for Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the agency heads to autograph. And after he clear-coats it, Bolton plans to present it to Harley officials at the company's 100th birthday party in Milwaukee this month. "That's called," said an insider, "political giddyap."
No, Not Gitmo
One word used by special operations forces in Iraq seems to have captive disciples of ex-prez Saddam Hussein crying uncle: "Gitmo." Looks like the 200 or so Iraqis caught by special forces would rather fess up at home than be shipped to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to face tough military interrogators. "They usually start squealing like the mice they are when an interrogator mentions Gitmo," we're told in a military source's E-mail.
Nader's 9/11 Plan
Get a load of this: Likely 2004 third-party presidential hopeful Ralph Nader thinks the 9/11 terrorist attacks wouldn't have happened if he had been president. He claims that amid all the big decisions new presidents have to make after inauguration, he would have ordered cockpit doors to be hardened against attack. He says an old report warning about how easy it is to get in the cockpit still sticks with him. What's more, he would have wiped out Osama bin Laden and his gang without a shot being fired. How? Bribe Osama's friends to hand him over.
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