Capitol Steps and Missteps: The Wild, Improbable Ride of Congressman John Jenrette

When congressional aide John F. Clark met his future boss, South Carolina Congressman John Jenrette, in 1975, he was awestruck. Jenrette seemed to be everything Clark was looking for in a leader. With intense charisma and uncanny knowledge of how Washington worked, Jenrette seemed poised to lead a New South and destroy the common stereotype of white southerners as narrow-minded racists.

Jenrette was indeed all the things Clark hoped him to be. He advocated for African Americans in an era when his political opponent insultingly sent a truckload of watermelons to a prominent black leader’s home. Jenrette became an enlightened champion of civil rights for both racial minorities and women.

Then, everything changed. Jenrette may have been a political success story, but his personal failings were too big and too politically precarious to hide. Capitol Steps and Missteps gives you a front-row seat to Jenrette’s eventual fall from power and the political scandal that set it all into motion. Wife Rita fueled flames by posing nude in Playboy, revealing a sexual tryst on the Capitol steps, and ridiculing South Carolinians and Washingtonians. Jenrette’s career seemed ruined, but he still had a chance for redemption…