The news of the death of Happy Rockefeller, the second wife and widow of former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, brings to mind the issue of “domestic bliss” or the lack of it in our politicians, past and present.
Rockefeller was thought to be the leading Republican candidate for President in 1964, but when he divorced his first wife and married his second wife, his chances for the nomination evaporated very quickly.
Only Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, had been a nominee and been divorced before Rockefeller’s situation came along a decade later.
This did not mean that there were never liaisons and love triangles before, as Warren G. Harding had been cheating on his wife, but never had thought of divorce.
And Franklin D. Roosevelt had stayed with Eleanor Roosevelt, knowing that if he divorced her, his chances for a political career were over.
There was plenty of sexual “hanky panky” throughout American history, without any thought of divorce, including, besides Harding and FDR the following: Franklin Pierce, James A. Garfield, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Bill Clinton, and others.
But none of them ever considered divorce seriously, and Stevenson was hurt by his divorce, as was Rockefeller.
But that changed when Ronald Reagan ran in 1980, and had been divorced more than 30 years earlier.
And since Reagan, we have had Bob Dole, John Kerry, and John McCain, all divorced, but nominated by their parties, although no other divorced person has been elected President.
So divorce, so common in politics now, is no longer an issue, as it was throughout our history!
As a side note Reagan was furious when anyone suggested that he had divorced someone. “She divorced me,†he made clear. (Bill Buckley witnessed such a reaction personally.) Jane Wyman, of course, had an affair with an actor named Lew Ayres on the set of a movie called “Johnny Belinda.†Reagan was sidelined for a long while, knocked for a loop. Later, Jane married a bandleader, twice. To her credit, she was gracious about Reagan when he was president. The press tried to get her to badmouth him. She wouldn’t. There were bumper stickers that said, “Jane Wyman Was Right.†Charming people, who put that sticker on their cars. Jane Wyman was many things, but hardly right.