Effects of Wilbur Mills' Political Scandal

In Mills' case, this increased test revealed an extramarital affair that had been going on for some time. In the governmental environment following Watergate, this was a major outrage that caused great humiliation for Mills and eventually led to his capitulation from the Ways and Means Committee. The consequences of his actions, both for himself and for the American political system, argon examined in this paper.

The Mills scandal involved Mills, 65, being stop for d exerciseken driving at 2 a.m. with a neighbor, Mrs. Eduardo Battistella, 38, in the motorcar with him; both were drunk, and Mills' face was cut as a result of his trying to stop Mrs. Battistella from leaving the vehicle. Mrs. Battistella, an Argentine exotic belly dancer who had worked at the Silver Slipper until shortly after have got involved with Mills, and whose stage name was Fanne Fox, had apparently tried to possess out of the car due to being ill. After the car was stopped, she jumped out of the car and into the Tidal Basin, where she was rescued by police.

resultant further questioning about the incident revealed that Mills had leftover his wife Polly at home with a broken groundwork at her own request that night, but that he and Mrs. Battistella had been beholding each other since 1973. Mills and his wife had recently travel to the apartment building where Mrs. Battistella lived with her husband.

An digest of the Wilbur Mills situation reveals a number of things about the political scene in the post-Watergate years. First of all, Mills' only actual plague drinking while intoxicated was an infraction normally overlooked in Washington, traditionally understood to be a haven of debauchery for politicians. The increased sensitivity of the media to political chicanery is evidence by the contrast between this incident and one a few years earlier in which someone genuinely died a young woman riding in pillowcase Kennedy's car at the time, Mary Jo Kopechne. Although the incident was investigated, Kennedy did non accept nearly the embarrassment that Mills did only a few years later, post-Watergate.

Furthermore, Kennedy's drinking and "raffish behavior" are the textile legend is made of, betokening what has been called "the character issue," yet his political life history continues unscathed, 35 years later. Mills, however, ended his career in let down and never lived down the unfortunate incident with his mistress.

Curiously, in outrage of the potentially devastating political impact of the incident, Mills was missed his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee but was reelected for another confines following the incident and served out his time; he declined to run for another term, however. Historians may wonder why Mills seemed to "get off easy" in the wake of so many an(prenominal) dashed political careers, and the answer seems to be that Mills was apparently good at what he did, and the constituency knew it: "If you wanted a transmute in the tax code, for example, you really needed only to contain one person Wilbur Mills, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. You did not have to worry about the other two xii committee members."

Atkinson, Rick. "Why Ted Kennedy Can't Stand Still," The Washington Post, Sunday, April 29, 1990, W11.

Green, Stephen; Hornblower, Margot. "Mills Admits existence Present During Tidal Basin Scuffle." The Washington Post, October 11, 1974. < http://
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