Hart, Gary (1936—)

Gary W. Hart is a former two-term senator from Colorado and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and 1988. Although he was the frontrunner going into the 1988 Democratic primaries, he may be best remembered for an act of hubris. Responding to rumors that he was having an extramarital affair, he dared the press to follow him around. Reporters for the Miami Herald took up his challenge and caught his mistress, Donna Rice, leaving Hart's residence one evening. Hart initially fought back. But a photo eventually surfaced showing Rice sitting on Hart's lap on a yacht aptly named Monkey Business. The photo story broke in early May 1987, causing Hart to drop out of the race. He briefly returned to the race toward the end of the year, but he received little support and lost to the eventual Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis.

The drama of Hart's personal fall overshadows his many significant accomplishments and his expertise in international affairs. A graduate of Yale Law School in 1964, Hart went on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree in politics at Oxford University in 2001. Before becoming a senator, Hart served as a lawyer for the Department of Justice in 1964 and 1965, an assistant for the solicitor of the Interior Department from 1965 to 1967, and he was the national campaign manager for George McGovern's run for the presidency in 1972. Hart served on multiple international policy boards, including the Defense Policy Board and the Council on Foreign Relations. Many of Hart's recommendations as a presidential candidate in the 1980s for reform of national defenses have been taken up by President George W. Bush's administration. Hart served on a bipartisan National Commission on Terrorism, appointed in 1998 by President Bill Clinton to examine domestic security against foreign attacks. The commission's recommendations, based largely on fears of globalization's sweeping changes to world economies that were bringing people with conflicting values into greater contact with each other, went largely ignored until reinforced by the commission investigating American security failures during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Hart and fellow commission member Warren B. Rudman warned that the end of the Cold War brought the need for a change in approach to American security, shifting from bipolar calculation to multipolar acknowledgment of emerging superpowers as well as rogue states that would eventually be getting their hands on rapidly spreading technologies of mass murder. Hart's predictions about terror attacks on the United States prior to September 11, 2001, have brought him greater prominence than at any time since his 1987 debacle. [Page 299]Hart now sees himself as a “Paul Revere,” decrying the nation's continued lack of preparedness for another attack. Hart's name has come up as a possible cabinet member should the Democratic Party retake the presidency.