20. President Bush’s Mistresses
President George H. W. Bush came across as pretty bland, but there was at least some spice and salacious fodder in his private life: the long-term mistresses he kept for decades. Before he became Ronald Reagan’s vice president and succeeded him in the Oval Office, Bush I’s public service life included stints as a Congressman, an ambassador, and as CIA Director. Throughout his public career, few knew that Bush, whose campaign platform included a family values plank, and who had been endorsed by The Moral Majority, had mistresses.
Bush was not a compulsive womanizer – nowhere close to the levels of a JFK or LBJ. Instead, he maintained a few discrete relationships, which his wife Barbara tolerated because he was discrete, never humiliated her, and usually carried on his affairs out of town so as not to jeopardize his marriage. But he did carry on affairs – and they tended to be long-term ones. An example was one he carried out with an Italian woman, whom he kept in a New York City apartment in the 1960s.
Also Read: 10 Historic Presidential Affair Scandals.
