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Full Title: Sen. John McCain's pallbearers to include Warren Beatty, Joe Biden, Gary Hart, plus billionaire Michael Bloomberg and FedEx CEO while his ushers include health and telecom execs McCain's office announced his pallbearers and other aspects of three days of services for hero Actor Warren Beatty will be among those serving as pall bearers Vice President Joe Biden, a friend from the Senate, also will be there Former Sens. Gary Hart, Phil Gramm, and Russ Feingold will join, as well Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Among those paying tribute to McCain at his memorial services will be Jeff Flake, Joe...

Hollywood's a bit inconsistent when the topic is the press. It was a righteous guardian of the truth against the Catholic Church in "Spotlight" and against Richard Nixon in "The Post." But now, in the new movie "The Front Runner," it is painted as the villain -- when its target was Gary Hart. He was expected to be the Democratic nominee in 1988 before those photos surfaced of him on the yacht Monkey Business with Donna Rice sitting on his lap. They surfaced after he challenged reporters to tail him and see he wasn't cheating on his wife. No matter....

In the spring of 1990, after he had helped the first George Bush reach the presidency, the political consultant Lee Atwater learned that he was dying. Atwater, who had just turned 39 and was the head of the Republican National Committee, had suffered a seizure while at a political fund-raising breakfast and had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. In a year he was dead. Atwater put some of that year to use making amends. Throughout his meteoric political rise he had been known for both his effectiveness and his brutality. In South Carolina, where he grew up, he...

I was transfixed by the Gary Hart movie The Front Runner: It has a lot of levels, and it’s a failure on every one of them. Mistake gets piled atop error atop cliché atop banality. It’s a skyscraper of wrong, an hour-and-53-minute lesson in how not to make a movie. Vigorously borrowing from The Candidate, Nashville, and The West Wing, The Front Runner covers the three weeks of Colorado Senator Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign, which ended in humiliation shortly after reporters staking out his D.C. apartment discovered a mistress, who turned out to be Donna Rice. Watching the co-writer and...

Hugh Jackman has been cast as former George McGovern campaign manager, Colorado senator, and failed Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart in director Jason Reitman’s upcoming political drama The Frontrunner. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 48-year-old Logan star will play Hart, who was widely considered the frontrunner to secure the Democratic nomination for president in 1988 before news reports alleging an extramarital affair between the Colorado senator and Donna Rice sank his campaign. In May of 1987, Hart famously told the New York Times to “follow me around” after rumors had surfaced about the candidate’s alleged affair; the Miami Herald...

Welcome to the age of vanity politics and campaigns-for-hire. What would our founders make of this nightmare? Four qualities have distinguished republican government from ancient Athens forward: the sovereignty of the people; a sense of the common good; government dedicated to the commonwealth; and resistance to corruption. Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt. From Plato and Aristotle forward, corruption was meant to describe actions and decisions that put a narrow, special, or personal interest ahead of the interest of the public or commonwealth. Corruption did not have to stoop to...

Gary Hart has serious reservations about a Hillary Clinton candidacy. The prospect of a billion-dollar Clinton campaign “ought to frighten every American,” he said in an interview with POLITICO, and Democrats would be better served by a competitive primary that forced her to speak in more depth about the issues. Hart, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate, offered his opinions in a phone interview Wednesday where he also expressed admiration of Elizabeth Warren and gave advice to prospective challenger Martin O’Malley, a former Hart campaign staffer. “I like Hillary Clinton. I really appreciate what she and her husband have done …...

The prospect of a billion-dollar Clinton campaign “ought to frighten every American,” the two-time Democratic presidential candidate said......The post-Citizens United campaign finance environment has sullied the presidential process, benefiting establishment politicians who cater to financial backers. He pointed to his own experience; he and his wife mortgaged their home for $50-$75,000 — which made a significant difference in his 1984 primary campaign where he finished Hart finished second to Mondale. “If you need a billion dollars, how many people can do that? Only the Clintons and the Bushes and one or two others,” he said. Hart is alarmed by current...

It's heresy I tell you. Heresy! A generally liberal newspaper must never be allowed the thought crime of endorsing a conservative Republican candidate in a major political race. Such was the attitude of former presidential candidate Gary Hart(pence) in his angry letter to the editor of the Denver Post denouncing them for the high heresy of endorsing Cory Gardner over Mark Udall in the senate race from Colorado. What is most interesting about Hart's letter is what is not in it, namely any complaint about biased coverage on the part of the Denver Post. Instead Hart throws a conniption fit...