Public trust, private lust: Sex, power, and corruption on Capitol Hill Hardcover by Marion Clark (William Morrow)

One of the vanities of youth is that each discovery is a revelation, and a year or two ago Marion Clark and Rudy Maxa, "two young Washington Post investigative reporters," after months of exhaustive research and hundreds of interviews with thousands of sources on land, sea and in the air, concluded that various members of Congress are known to have mistresses whom they sometimes employ in their offices. As with everyone else before Watergate, Clark and Maxa undoubtedly thought the world of their elected officials, and were therefore so astonished by the sleazy truth that they could ever after only write sentences that resembled Mickey Spillane's, refer to themselves in the third person (just like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein) and thank God that The Washington Post, at least, is above such arrangements

This book will serve as a warning to indiscreet congressmen, but leaves unsolved the problem of maniacal ascetics in office. For that matter, what is worse — Liz Ray playing backgammon at government expense, or journalists who assert that in the '50s it was fashionable to be a dumb blonde? Who whom, anyway? The penultimate line of Public Trust. Private Lust says, ". . . the reaction to the congressional scandals of 1976 held the promise of better government in Washington: campaign speeches everywhere were filled with pledges of a new political morality." Even a dumb blonde wouldn't pay $8.95 to read that.