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…