Scandals are events committed by particular individuals that create public concern, indignation, and outrage. While misbehavior by movie stars or rock stars produces little public outcry, political leaders are a different matter. Historical context complicates the situation. Public norms change. What is happening in the nation can influence the impact of a political scandal and its consequences. Since scandal means a damaged reputation or even imprisonment in extreme cases, public officials suppress or manipulate information given to the media and employ spokespeople who try to spin the issue out of existence. But cable television news programs and tabloids are eager to feed the public's hunger for bad news, and scandals do happen. At best Americans are ambivalent about government. Many Americans distrust government since it is the most powerful institution in the society; hence the potential for scandal is great. History gives us several examples.
Sources of Scandals
Although the political culture changes, two sources of scandal are constant. First, government at all levels has vast resources, from taxing power to franchises, endless contracts, and material resources. Many officials have discretionary power over their use and distribution. The use of political office for personal financial gain was impressive in the nineteenth century—from land schemes to the Crédit Mobilier, from corrupt federal agents in places such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the post office Star Route scandals in the Gilded Age.
Preferential treatment is a staple element in political scandals. In the 1950s the Federal Communication Commission improperly awarded television licenses on the basis of personal friendship. Money has often been the means of gaining political influence, and in the twentieth century campaign funds were the preferred method of influence rather than the kind of straight cash payments that forced Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to resign in 1973.
Sex is another contributor to political scandal. It has been used for material gain or to get preferential treatment, but more often sexual misconduct has allowed a politician's opponents to take the high moral ground. From Alexander Hamilton's confession of his affair with Maria Reynolds during George Washington's administration to Congressman Gary Condit's liaison with a legislative intern at the turn of the twenty-first century, the political consequences have varied but the incidents are interesting. Andrew Jackson's marriage to Rachel before her divorce was final and the ostracizing of Peggy Eaton during the Jackson administration, which eventually led to Vice President John Calhoun's resignation, were nineteenth-century examples. Grover Cleveland and Warren G. Harding were both accused of fathering illegitimate children. With the rise of feminism, sexual harassment became a feature of scandal, as Senator Robert Packwood discovered in the 1990s. Women were not hesitant about revealing their roles in sexual scandals while they "worked" for political and financial leverage. Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky used their positions effectively regarding William Jefferson Clinton. All of these events have their moments in politics with advantages and disadvantages gained and lost, seriously damaging the fabric of governance.
Reform
In the early twentieth century progressive legislation regarding the direct election of United States senators, closer regulation of campaign expenditures and their use, and the general idealism of domestic reform all contributed to the hope of clean government guided by men of integrity. For some Americans, the United States' entry into World War I suggested a new beginning for a virtuous domestic society and a moral world order, but the hope was not realized. President Warren Harding's appointment of his friends and supporters, the Ohio Gang, to his cabinet led to several scandals, the largest being the Teapot Dome scandal, when Harding's secretary of the interior made a fortune off of government oil contracts. The scandals spawned only modest reforms, and the political fallout for the Republicans was minor, since they retained the presidency until the Great Depression gave Franklin Roosevelt victory in 1932. No major scandal touched Roosevelt's New Deal. During World War II, Harry Truman's senate committee investigating war contracts was generally successful in keeping scandal to a minimum.
The influence-peddling incidents in the Truman and Eisenhower White House were minor. The probe into influence peddling by the congressional aide Bobby Baker did not touch President Lyndon Johnson. The Watergate affair was different, and its consequences shaped politics and the public's perception of government for the remainder of the century and into the future.
Significance of Watergate
Watergate had unique repercussions in that Richard Nixon resigned as president, and its scope was extensive, including criminal behavior, cover-up, illegal political contributions, and the compromising of the FBI. Eventually the many investigations involved all three branches of the federal government and television covered it all. Television was present at the Alger Hiss case and the Army-McCarthy hearings, but those situations were issues of national security. Joseph McCarthy's methods provided the scandal in that case.
The historical significance of Watergate was how it became the "model" for future revelations of misdeeds. Every circumstance would have a "gate" attached to it, and everyone wanted to be in the spotlight investigating or defending. All investigations would become political grist for the mills of partisanship, and it was all on television. The tragic result was a rise in public cynicism as people guilty of serious crimes eventually went unpunished.
The Iran-Contra affair involved many misdeeds: misuse of federal funds, corruption of the CIA, direct violation of the law and a congressional resolution, the wanton destruction of government documents, and a systematic cover-up from President Reagan to other members of the administration. The illegal selling of arms to Iran to underwrite the Reagan administration's subversion of the Nicaraguan government on behalf of the Contra rebels was at least as big a scandal as Watergate. Oliver North and John Poindexter never went to prison because their limited testimony before Congress prevented their being charged with criminal behavior, as Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel, warned at the time. The important point for all concerned was that the spectacle was on television.
Scandals and rumors of scandals marked the Clinton presidency. Clinton served the same function for conservatives as Richard Nixon did for liberals. The essence of Whitewater, a land deal in which Bill and Hilary Clinton took part fifteen years before he became president, was a synthetic event that existed in the minds of their political enemies. To be sure, the Clinton administration provided much material for scandal—the behavior of cabinet members, personnel issues in the White House, the suicide of Vince Foster, and so on. The conviction of Clinton's business associates in the savings and loan scandals did not help the president's image. The wildest of rumors and charges whirled through the Internet as political forces used scandal rather than ideology in an attempted discrediting of the Clinton era. Congressional scandals also abounded in that era. The scandals leading to Representatives James Wright's and Newt Gingrich's loss of power and position had a major impact on the political makeup of Congress in the last part of the twentieth century.
Bibliography
Kutler, Stanley I. The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon. New York: Knopf, 1990. A detailed, first-rate analysis.
Markovits, Andrei S., and Mark Silverstein, eds. The Politics of Scandal: Power and Process in Liberal Democracies. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988.
Thompson, Dennis F. Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995. Effectively explores the context of congressional misdeeds.
Uslaner, Eric M. The Decline of Comity in Congress. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. A good account of a major consequence of the post-Watergate years.
Walsh, Lawrence E. Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up. New York: Norton, 1997. An inside account of the scandal.
Williams, Robert. Political Scandals in the USA. Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1998. A brief and insightful history of Watergate and later scandals.
