Condit Affair: The Latest D.C. Sex Scandal

July 11 -- The graying politician and the young female intern — the scandal consuming Washington these days has a familiar ring.

The fury surrounding Rep. Gary Condit's relationship with Chandra Levy is distinct from many Washington sex scandals because it stems from the disturbing disappearance of the former intern. But even if Condit has absolutely nothing to do with Levy's disappearance, as he has stated repeatedly in the weeks since she was last seen, his ties to her cement his place in a long line of politicians who've found their sex lives exposed to the public eye.

For sure, male politicians have had romantic dalliances outside of marriage since the founding of the republic.

Ben Franklin was well known for his extramarital peccadilloes. Slave Sally Hemings is believed by many to have been the mother of several of Thomas Jefferson's children. When Franklin D. Roosevelt died, his lover Lucy Mercer and not his wife Eleanor, was present.

But until the early 1970s, reporters and close associates of politicians were more apt to ignore such affairs than make a story of them. Even the many love interests of President John F. Kennedy, which included such famous paramours as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Angie Dickinson, weren't widely known until well after his death.

Wilbur Mills' Saga

"Before the age of Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, the rule in journalism used to be that the private lives of politicians were usually ignored, unless it affected their work," says historian Michael Beschloss.

All of that changed, though, with Wilbur Mills. When the then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee was stopped for speeding one early morning in October 1974 near the Jefferson Memorial, he likely had no idea the incident would lead to the end of his career.

When Mills' car stopped, the well-known stripper Fanne Fox, aka the "Argentine Firecracker," jumped out of the vehicle and into the Potomac River tidal basin. Mills, a long-married Arkansas Democrat, won re-election despite the publicity that ensued.