Scandal!: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Consequences, Outcomes, and Significance of Political Scandals 9781472535207, 9781501300639, 9781623562229

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Scandal!

Scandal! An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Consequences, Outcomes, and Significance of Political Scandals Edited by Alison Dagnes and Mark Sachleben

N E W YOR K • LON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Alison Dagnes, Mark Sachleben, and Contributors 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the editors. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scandal! : an interdisciplinary approach to the consequences, outcomes, and significance of political scandals / edited by Alison Dagnes and Mark Sachleben. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4725-3520-7 (hardback) 1. Political corruption. 2. Political ethics. I. Dagnes, Alison. II. Sachleben, Mark, 1965JK2249.S22 2013 364.1’323 – dc23 2013029942 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-3520-7 ePub: 978-1-6235-6608-1 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6222-9 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Contents Acknowledgments Contributors Introduction  Alison Dagnes

vii viii xi

Section I Congress Preface: Counting and Classifying Congressional Scandals  Scott Basinger, Lara Brown, Douglas B. Harris, and Girish J. “Jeff ” Gulati 3 1 2 3

Sack the Quarterback: The Strategies and Implications of Congressional Leadership Scandals  Douglas B. Harris

29

Spending More Time with My Family: Scandals and Premature Departures from the House  Lara Brown and Girish J. “Jeff ” Gulati

51

The Electoral Effects of Congressional Scandals  Scott Basinger

67

Section II Historical Accounts, Modern Implications Introduction  Mark Sachleben 4 5 6

7

Tom Clark under Fire: The Consequences of Congressional Investigations of Supreme Court Justices  Craig Alan Smith

83

87

Sherman Adams’s Fall, and the Scandal behind the Scandal  Michael J. Birkner

127

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Explaining the Persistence of Scandal in the Pennsylvania General Assembly  George E. Hale

155

Sex, Scandal, and Catholic Politics during Italy’s Dolce Vita  Roy Domenico

179

Section II Conclusions Paralleling History: Scandal and the Lessons of the 2012 Election  Neal Allen

201

Contents

vi

Section III Shaping the Perceptions of Scandal Introduction  Stephanie Jirard 8

209

Scandal in the Politics of Race: From Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama  Neal Allen

211

He “Can’t Say with Certitude”: Framing the Anthony Weiner Scandal in Political Cartoons  Joan L. Conners

231

10 Shattered Dignity: The Apologia of John Edwards  Misty L. Knight

251

Conclusions Index

275

9

278

Acknowledgments The editors would like to thank our Shippensburg University colleagues for their continued help, advice, and support. Special thanks go to the Political Science Department faculty and staff.

Contributors Neal Allen is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wichita State University. He studies American political history, law and courts, Southern politics, and the politics of race. Scott Basinger is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. He teaches courses in statistics, mathematics, and game theory. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California at San Diego. Michael J. Birkner is Professor of History at Gettysburg College and Benjamin Franklin Professor of Liberal Arts. He has taught at Gettysburg since 1989, chairing the department from 1993–2003. Birkner is the author or editor of twelve books, including two books on the presidency of James Buchanan and a young adult biography on Dwight D. Eisenhower. He is currently completing a book titled Electing Ike: Sherman Adams and the Making of the President, 1952. Lara M. Brown is Associate Professor and Program Director of the Political Management Program, Graduate School of Political Management, the George Washington University. She received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Along with journal articles and invited essays, she is the author of Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants and a co-editor and contributor to The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party. Prior to completing her doctorate, she served in President William J. Clinton’s administration at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. Joan L. Conners (PhD, Mass Communication, University of Minnesota) is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. Her research on portrayals in political cartoons has been published in American Behavioral Scientist, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics.

Contributors

ix

Alison Dagnes is Professor of Political Science at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of Politics on Demand: The Effects of 24-Hour News on American Politics (2010) and she frequently speaks on the topic of the modern media. She has already edited one book on political scandal, and her current research examines ideology and political satire. Her new book A Conservative Walks into a Bar was published in 2012. Prior to receiving her doctorate in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Dr. Dagnes was a producer for C-SPAN in Washington, DC. Roy Domenico is a professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, where he is also chair of the History Department. He is the Executive Secretary of the Society for Italian Historical Studies and is working on post–World War II Catholic cultural politics in Italy. Girish J. “Jeff ” Gulati is Associate Professor of Political Science at Bentley University and earned his PhD from the University of Virginia. Dr. Gulati’s areas of expertise are on the U.S. Congress, campaigns and elections, scandals, e-government, and telecommunications policy. His recent work has appeared in New Media & Society, Telecommunications Policy, Social Science Computer Review, Electronic Government, An International Journal, and Human Rights Quarterly. He is also an elected member of the Executive Board for the Informational Technology & Politics section of the American Political Science Association and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics and Journal of Political Marketing. George E. Hale joined Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2009 following a 30-year career in federal, state, and local government. He is the author of the book The Politics of Federal Grants and several articles on state budgets and intergovernmental relations. Douglas B. Harris, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, is Associate Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland. His research on Congress, political parties, and media politics includes articles in numerous scholarly journals and edited collections. He is co-author of The Austin-Boston Connection: Fifty Years of House Democratic Leadership and co-editor of Doing Archival Research in Political Science.

x

Contributors

Stephanie Jirard is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Shippensburg University where she specializes in teaching criminal law and procedure, evidence, mock trial, and criminal justice policy. Her academic research and publications focus on the connection between law, political science, and history. Misty L. Knight is Associate Professor of Human Communication Studies at Shippensburg University. Her primary research involves strategies in teaching the basic communication course, political rhetoric, self-defense rhetoric, and humor in communication. She teaches courses such as Human Communication Theory, Interpersonal Communication, Public Speaking, and Political Rhetoric. Mark Sachleben is Associate Professor of Political Science at Shippensburg University. He teaches courses on international relations, comparative politics, international law, and European politics. He is the author of Human Rights Treaties: Considering Patterns of Participation 1948–2000 and World Politics on Screen: Understanding International Relations through Popular Culture; he is also the co-author of Seeing the Bigger Picture: American and International Politics in Film and Popular Culture. In addition to his published work on international politics, he regularly researches and writes in the field of pedagogy. Craig Alan Smith teaches history and political science at California University of Pennsylvania. His first book, Failing Justice: Charles Evans Whittaker on the Supreme Court, won the best book award for Missouri History. He has previously written about the law clerks of Supreme Court Justices Charles Whittaker (In Chambers) and Tom Clark (Journal of Supreme Court History), and he is currently working on a new biography on Justice Tom Clark.

Introduction Alison Dagnes

The examination of political scandal is enticing to undertake because there are so many facets to explore. The very word “scandal” implies something far more tantalizing than just “politics” or “current events” or “news.” Scandal portends shame, humiliation, outrage, disgrace: the mother lode of schadenfreude. As an audience, we gasp when we hear the word “scandal” and then collectively clap out hands together and think: “Oh goodie.” There are, however, serious consequences when political scandals occur, and these aftereffects are as far-reaching as they are important. Americans already have a dreadful image of politicians: In general we think they are awful. A 2011 poll showed Congress had a 9% approval rating, lower than Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, lower than Paris Hilton, and lower than the IRS. The IRS! Although we need them and although Americans drag ourselves to the polls to vote, we do not like politicians, nor do we trust them. As a result, when politicians are caught in scandal, the presumption that our elected leaders are corrupt grows exponentially. The nation was founded in no small part thanks to a healthy skepticism toward power, and embedded in our Constitution are checks against authority rooted in the assumption that men are not angels. When scandals occur, there are mechanisms in place to address the wrongdoing, and consequently, rarely is the security of the union called into question due to a political indignity. But that said, the lasting effects of scandal linger because the failures of our elected leaders play into our distrust of the powerful and our closely held belief that those elected to office are vain, pusillanimous, and easily fouled. These consequences of scandal are the most pernicious because the loss of public trust is dangerous to a democracy. And yet we pay more attention to scandal than to policy because it is clearly more entertaining, it plays into our most base of emotions, and because at its root scandal is easy to understand. This book takes a hard view of political scandal to more thoroughly understand its consequences and the costs of public outrage. There are a wide variety of scandal types, because man has come up with so many different ways to screw up. Our previous work examined political sex

xii

Introduction

scandals in depth, which inevitably led to both spurious jokes and reasonable questions: Why is the book so small? Why no pictures? And most importantly: What about other sorts of political scandal – why limit it to the prurient? We took the serious queries into consideration and determined that more research was necessary in order to tackle the sheer magnitude of the broader topic. Hence, this volume follows our last, and here we discuss the consequences, implications, and perceptions of political scandal writ large. We have moved from a sole examination of the sexual and broadened our scope to the financial and the programmatic in order to hone our focus on the politicians and institutions that are most affected by political scandal. We acknowledge the limits here as well. Certainly, as we explore the institutional, historical, and cultural implications of scandal, we know we are only scratching the surface. We continue this effort here while we recognize there is more to discover and address. One of the more interesting facets of the American political system is our legislative branch that brings 535 men and women (but mostly men) to Washington to represent us. This branch could be looked at as a sizable petri dish in which to examine the behavior of elected officials, and thus the first section of this book looks specifically at Congress. Arguably a hotbed of American political scandal, Congress as an institution is not in itself scandalinducing. Rather, when you get this many elected officials together in one place, the odds are that scandal will occur. The causes of congressional scandal are not addressed here as much as the players and the outcome: What happens to lawmakers as scandals unfold, and what happens after the fact? Chapter 1 of the book, from Douglas B. Harris, examines congressional leadership who have themselves been embroiled in scandal. This chapter argues that three factors – the nature of a scandal, the institutional importance of the member involved in scandal, and the context of other scandals – determine whether or not a personal scandal becomes institutionally consequential. Harris begins with a macro view of the outcome of scandal to see how Congress reacts to internal failure. The second chapter, from Lara Brown and Girish J. “Jeff ” Gulati, examines how the specifics of a scandal affect the electoral impact afterwards, on how a congressional incumbent’s party affiliation, type of scandal, and media coverage vary and sometimes converge, so as to produce different patterns of incumbent resignations, retirements, or primary election losses. In other words, while much of the literature on congressional scandals investigates the effects of scandals on general election outcomes, this chapter examines how scandals impact incumbents earlier in the electoral cycle. The third chapter in this section,

Introduction

xiii

written by Scott Basinger, continues this examination of electoral consequence and demonstrates that scandals directly impacted election outcomes, subtracting nearly 2% of the vote from a House incumbent and nearly 5% of the vote from an incumbent senator. Scandals also increase challenger expenditures, which subtracts an additional 2% of the vote from a scandal-tainted incumbent. All put together, the first part of this book takes the largest American political institution and explores the varying consequences of scandal on our legislative body and on the body politic. Section II looks back and moves on to several historical accounts of political scandal, because although the ubiquity of the news media makes it seem that scandals are big, new, and exciting things, we know they are not. The concept of political scandal is as old as the first idea of government, and so we review several important political scandals and their impact on the development of the American political system. This section of the book surveys historical accounts of scandal, including one from outside the United States (Italy). Chapter 4, from Craig Smith, examines the causes and consequences of congressional investigations of sitting Supreme Court justices, particularly the controversy surrounding Tom Clark’s refusal to testify before Congress regarding his position as attorney general. After four years as President Harry Truman’s attorney general, Clark was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he came under fire for his handling of certain high-profile cases once a congressional committee began investigating the Justice Department. Using contemporary news coverage and archival records in the Tom Clark papers, this chapter examines the media’s role in reporting on this political scandal while analyzing whether Clark’s defense of separation of powers was convincing. Our historical examination continues in Chapter 5, written by Michael Birkner, with a peek into the Eisenhower administration and the Sherman Adams scandal. In 1958 revelations came forth about Adams’s relationship with a shady New England industrialist, Bernard Goldfine, and his acceptance of gifts from Goldfine, on whose behalf Adams made inquiries to various federal regulatory agencies investigating Goldfine’s enterprises. This chapter examines both the unfolding of the famous “vicuna coat” scandal and the scandal beneath that scandal, Adams’s ongoing acceptance of cash during his service in the White House, gifts that led to tax troubles, and ultimately to a remarkable deal struck between Eisenhower and his two successors to keep Adams from being indicted. The next chapter from George Hale turns its gaze to Pennsylvania, examining the long history of political corruption and scandal in the Pennsylvania legislature. It demonstrates that as standards

xiv

Introduction

and regulations to combat corruption evolve, this corruption is redirected and takes on new forms. In the current era, some conventional cures to legislative corruption, such as competitive two-party politics and a professional legislature, are found to actually raise the stakes of political combat, giving rise to systematic scandals aimed at the preservation of political power. The persistence of scandal results from the interaction of the state’s individualistic political culture, the insulation of the General Assembly from public control, and the latent functions of corruption that allow the legislature to function without fundamental change decade after decade. Finally, in Chapter 7 Roy Domenico goes international and historical, as he examines a scandal over moral issues in a nation dominated by a political party, the Italian Christian Democrats, which is closely identified with the Catholic Church. Recently liberated from Fascist dictatorship, the nation’s press, particularly its tabloids, played a novel and uncharted role in the Montesi Affair. There are many other major historical scandals to examine, but these four case studies take one step in the consideration of the lasting impact of scandal on the public. There are significant consequences that emerge from perpetuating the narrative that our politicians are corrupt. When scandal occurs, the legitimacy of the entire political system is called into question. It is rare in the American federal system that political corruption poses such an institutional threat. In the United States there are myriad mechanisms in place to right a ship that seems to steer off course, and we have repeatedly found solutions in these institutional remedies. The Watergate scandal notwithstanding, U.S. government has been tested and found sufficient to handle crisis. You would not know this from the media, both popular and news. For example, Chicago is so uniformly considered a haven of corruption that a TV show called Boss airs with the Windy City’s corruption as its basic premise. More to the point, a show actually called Scandal centers on a corrupt White House and a DC “fixer” who solves the problems of the scandal-laden denizens of DC. This attention to scandal makes sense: Scandal is a juicy topic, one that begets attention, both fictional and documentarian. As a result, the third section of this book looks at the perception of scandal and how this assessment reaches well beyond the immediate crisis. Chapter 8, from Neal Allen, analyzes the effect of scandal on the politics of race, focusing on the Civil Rights Movement and minority candidates running for office. It demonstrates how the FBI unsuccessfully sought to eliminate Martin Luther King Jr. as a movement leader by investigating his sexual behavior and ties to leftist groups. It also examines the role of scandal in the process of African American

Introduction

xv

candidates running for president, focusing on the effect of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal on the campaign of Barack Obama in 2008. In Chapter 9, Joan Conners moves to the impact of modern technology on scandal and on its coverage. The unfolding of the Twitter-photo scandal involving Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is analyzed in its portrayals in political cartoons in U.S. newspapers in Spring 2011. Given the nature of political cartoons to provide a commentary in visual form, typically in the form of a criticism, it is no surprise the representations are unsympathetic toward the congressman. A framing analysis of the representations of Anthony Weiner in the work of more than 50 American political cartoonists found themes that implicated Weiner using his own words, that associated this scandal with previous political sex scandals, and that raised questions about the use of technology in contemporary politics. Finally, Chapter 10 from Misty Knight examines the delicate art of saying sorry. This chapter analyzes the self-defense rhetoric, or apologia, of former U.S. senator John Edwards in regard to accusations of marital infidelity and legal charges of campaign finance violations. B. L. Ware and W. A. Linkugel’s (1973) critical method of generic criticism as applied to apologia, W. L. Benoit’s (1995) theory of image restoration, and K. M. Hearit’s (2001) prescriptive tools of crisis management through apologia are applied to Edwards’s attempts at self-defense rhetoric since 2008. The analysis of Edwards’s statements suggests that his attempts to create apologetic discourse to rebuild his credibility were unsuccessful and implications for political rhetoric and apologia are discussed. The final section of the book observes how scandal is perceived by the public, and the consequences of these perceptions. All told, this multidisciplinary examination aims to approach the singular topic of scandal from diverse angles. Both the blessing and the curse of studying scandal is that there is an abundance of material to cover: On the one hand, each angle allows a fresh perspective on this important and yet salacious subject. On the other hand, we know there is more to cover from many more perspectives. Additionally, as man continues to behave with devilish intent, instead of angelic purpose, there is always a new scandal to examine. Researching scandals is like playing a gigantic round of whack-a-mole: There is always another one popping up, just begging to be thumped down. And so this book continues our previous examination of scandal, and we look forward to continuing this interesting and provocative conversation as time marches on. We would especially like to thank those elected to offices who fail to see the possible consequences of their crooked actions as they wrap themselves

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Introduction

in entitled, sanctimonious, righteous indignation. To these gentlemen, we say, “Thank you. You make our jobs easier and more fun. Keep up the bad work. We will continue to watch with bated breath, just to see what happens next.” Yet at the same time, we caution against lumping all politicians into the category of “scandal” and remind Americans of the good done by our leaders. By examining the causes, consequences, and costs of political scandal, we hope to shed light on a topic that demands inquiry and thoughtful consideration in a political climate that occasionally falls short of this mark.

Section I

Congress

Preface: Counting and Classifying Congressional Scandals Scott Basinger, Lara Brown, Douglas B. Harris, and Girish J. “Jeff ” Gulati

From Preston Brooks’s beating of Charles Sumner with a cane, and Daniel Sickles’s killing of Philip Barton Key, to Edward Kennedy’s traffic accident on Chappaquiddick Island, the personal animosities, poor decisions, and deep personal failings of members of Congress have affected their lives and careers throughout American history, and have had tragic consequences for others. In the contemporary Congress, barely a month passes without a member of the House or Senate being publicly accused of violating some law, rule, or social norm. Subsequent chapters in this volume address the consequences of scandals for members of Congress. As straightforward as this subject seems, scholars have faced significant hurdles both in identifying scandals and in differentiating between scandals. The lack of an established database of scandals has impeded systematic study of their properties and effects. We dedicate this chapter to conceptualizing scandal, providing a taxonomy of scandals, and then listing 250 scandals involving members of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1973. A good starting point for this chapter is to draw a boundary around scandals, separating them from other forms of congressional news making. The Oxford American English Dictionary defines a scandal as, “an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage.” We believe this definition is too broad, however. Use of the term “political scandal” should identify a distinct category of misdeeds that obviously includes criminal behavior and official malfeasance, but that excludes gaffes, controversial statements, hypocrisy, and broken campaign promises. The most systematic attempt to define political scandals is that of Thompson (2000), who identifies their four essential components. First, there must be a transgression. Second, the transgressor must engage in concealment, attempting to keep the transgression a secret, because

4

Scandal!

the public would disapprove or be offended by the transgression. Once the secret transgression is revealed, the third element is public denunciation. The fourth element of a political scandal is that the transgressor’s reputation is damaged as a result of the revelation and denunciation. The degree of damage might depend on the type of transgression, how the transgressor reacts when it is revealed, and whether the scandal ignites a media firestorm. Adut (2008) adds that scandals create a moral disturbance (i.e., the public is “scandalized”), which can lead to restoring or redrawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Congressional scandals can be classified along at least two dimensions. The first dimension categorizes scandals according to the type of transgression that­­ is alleged. The first category, financial scandals, includes bribery, corruption, ethical violations involving personal finances, and irregularities in spending campaign funds. The second category, political scandals, includes electoral violations, including vote fraud and irregularities in raising campaign funds, as well as various misuses of congressional offices, stationery, fax machines, and so forth. The third category, sexual scandals, includes extramarital affairs, solicitation, and sexual harassment. The fourth category of “other” scandals includes such immoral behavior as driving under the influence, drug use or possession, perjury, disturbing the peace, and no small number of assaults. We highlight some major congressional scandals in each category below, and then we discuss the frequency of different types of scandals.1 As an appendix to this chapter, we provide four tables that list all the congressional scandals in each category that we have been able to identify, in a period spanning the past four decades. Although our attention is on categorizing scandals by the type of transgression, scandals could also be classified along a second dimension that would emphasize whether and how severely power was abused by the member of Congress. Within the category of financial scandals, for instance, corruption involves the abuse of legislative powers, such as selling one’s vote in exchange for a bribe, which magnifies the perceived severity of the transgression. Within the category of sexual scandals, an extramarital tryst with a paid congressional staffer can be viewed as a more serious violation because of the intra-office power relationship. A sexual assignation with an under-age House page or campaign volunteer can be viewed as an even more serious transgression because one party is not a consenting adult. A recent experimental study suggested that public reaction to scandals will be mediated by abuse-of-power considerations (Doherty, Dowling and Miller 2011). This chapter stops short of coding each scandal according to the severity of abuse of power, but we believe this would be a profitable direction

Preface

5

for future scholars to pursue, and we hope that providing our lists of various types of scandals will provide some impetus in that direction.

Financial scandals Corruption charges have a long history of generating public suspicion that congressional influence was being peddled, perhaps even on an institutional basis. In 1872, the Credit Mobilier scandal resulted in the censure of two congressmen, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, who had distributed shares of stock to 30 other members of both political parties in order to secure their assistance to the Union Pacific Railroad. One century later, a probe of defense contractors revealed that dozens of members of Congress had received gratuities, in the form of visits to company-owned hunting lodges, in exchange for assistance in securing arms contracts. In 1976, the Koreagate scandal revealed that a socialite and agent of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, Tongsun Park, had provided gifts to members of Congress in exchange for favorable official treatment of South Korea. Several Democratic House members, including the future Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, were initially under suspicion, accused of receiving gratuities from Park. O’Neill was cleared of any wrongdoing, but Koreagate’s impact was felt by House Majority Whip John McFall (D-CA), whose bid for Majority Leader in 1976 was halted by the scandal. Despite O’Neill support, McFall was eliminated on the first ballot, his leadership career a victim of the scandal. Soon thereafter, the ABSCAM scandal reinforced the skeptical public’s fears about corruption. An FBI sting operation caught seven congressmen and one senator agreeing to exert their influence on behalf of an Arab businessman in exchange for envelopes stuffed with cash. Senator Harrison Williams (D-NJ) was implicated along with several House members; all faced removal from Congress and criminal trials. The Senate was again forced to confront a significant corruption scandal beginning in 1991. The so-called “Keating Five” scandal originated with two meetings in April 1987 between five senators and federal regulators investigating Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings & Loan. The five senators received campaign contributions from Keating. Four of the senators, John McCain and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, John Glenn of Ohio, and Donald Riegle of Michigan, were rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for having exercised “poor judgment”

6

Scandal!

or for having improperly interfered with an investigation. The fifth senator, Alan Cranston of California, received a reprimand before the full Senate. The public’s attention would be focused intently on congressional corruption by a series of scandals during 2005 and 2006. Randy “Duke”  Cunningham (R-CA) pleaded guilty in November 2005 to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. Similarly, revelations of the web of influence wielded by Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff implicated the Bush administration as well as the congressional offices of Bob Ney (R-OH), John Doolittle (R-CA), and, most significantly, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), who was widely considered one of the most powerful congressional leaders in recent memory. The Abramoff scandal was the highest profile scandal involving DeLay, but a separate political scandal and indictment on money laundering charges in Texas compelled DeLay to step down as House Majority Leader in 2005 (CNN 2006). In 2006, Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) reportedly stored $90,000 of bribe money in his freezer (Hulse 2006). Scandals involving personal finances are usefully differentiated from corruption scandals. In the late 1960s, tax evasion charges and censure were leveled at Senator Thomas Dodd (D-CT), leading to the first censure proceedings in that chamber since 1954, and at Representative Adam Clayton Powell  (D-NY), leading the House to deny him his seat (though he won the special election to fill the vacancy, and was ultimately re-admitted to the chamber). In 1989, both House Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX) and Majority Whip Tony Coelho (D-CA) abruptly resigned their posts in separate scandals. We discuss the Wright episode below, but Coelho abandoned his campaign for Majority Leader and resigned from Congress, preempting a more complete investigation into a questionable “junk bond” deal. Another influential member of the House to be forced from office in a financial scandal was the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL), who was convicted in 1994 of fraud connected to the mismanagement of his office and abuse of the House ­post office. Sandwiched between these high-level resignations, the House of Representatives was forced to confront its broadest financial scandal when, in September of 1991, it was revealed that representatives had been overdrawing their checking accounts in the House Bank without penalty. The practice had carried on for decades (the House Bank existed since 1830), but a General Accounting Office investigation found that in one twelve-month period in 1989 and 1990, House members wrote a stunning 8,331 bad checks. Members were

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7

required to repay defaults, and some blame was due to the Bank’s loose operating standards: it failed to post deposits quickly, provide regular account statements, or promptly notify members that they were overdrawn. The House Ethics Committee identified 17 members who appeared to take advantage of the system deliberately. Of these 17 serial violators, eleven retired or were defeated in their bids for reelection, and two of those were convicted of crimes that ranged from a misdemeanor campaign finance violation (converting contributions to personal use) to felony bribery and conspiracy. Six months before the 1992 election, all House members’ overdrafts were disclosed to the public, showing that some representatives had bounced more than 900 checks. Charges of congressional perquisite abuse in the House Bank and House Post Office scandals led some in the press and the public to think that the institution itself was built around the special, even illicit, treatment of its members. Over a 40-year period, numerous House members have been investigated for tax evasion, including House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), conflicts of interest, and misusing official resources. Although many of these allegations involve minor offenses such as excess reimbursement for travel expenses, some allegations are more severe, as was the case when Representative James Hastings (R-NY) was accused of engaging in a “kickback” scheme in which his staffers were expected to give the Representative part of their salaries. Press and public attention was drawn to this scandal when it was further alleged that Hastings used these funds to pay for his children’s college education and to buy a car and a snowmobile. Many financial scandals have involved the diverting of campaign funds to personal use, including the scandal that recently resulted in Jesse Jackson Jr.’s (D-IL) conviction and resignation. Each scandal adds to the press’s and public’s suspicion that Congress is deeply corrupt, and interestingly, the amounts of money involved seem not to be too important. When Andrew Hinshaw (R-CA) was accused in 1976 of accepting bribes in the form of $1000 worth of Radio Shack/Tandy stereo equipment, the public could infer that this one instance reflected a larger pattern of self-enrichment by our elected representatives, and was exceptional only in that the congressman was caught. To some, the larger amounts of the Cunningham or the Abramoff scandals amplify the scandalous nature of the misdeeds; to others, the notion that a congressman can be bought as cheaply as a fancy stereo system may be equally disheartening. Our list of 136 financial scandals involving House members is included as Table 1.

Scandal!

8

Table 1  Financial scandals involving members of the House of Representatives Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

93

Edward Garmatz D

MD – 3

Corruption

Indicted; dropped

93

Angelo Roncallo R

NY – 3

Corruption

Indicted; acquitted

93

Frank Brasco

D

NY – 11

Corruption

Conviction

93

Bertram Podell

D

NY – 13

Corruption

Conviction

94

William Nichols D

AL – 3

Financial

94

Robert Leggett

CA – 4

Financial

94

Andrew Hinshaw R

CA – 40

Corruption, Financial

Conviction

94

Robert Sikes

D

FL – 1

Financial

Reprimand Forfeits chairmanship

94

Dawson Mathis

D

GA – 2

Financial

94

John James Flynt Jr.

D

GA – 6

Financial

94

Silvio Conte

R

MA – 1

Financial

94

John Dingell

D

MI – 16

Financial

94

Joseph Karth

D

MN – 4

Financial

94

William Clay

D

MO – 1

Financial

Reimbursement

94

Henry Helstoski D

NJ – 9

Corruption

Indicted; dismissed

94

James Hastings

R

NY – 39

Financial

Conviction; Resignation

94

William Harsha

R

OH – 6

Financial

94

Carl Albert

D

OK – 3

Financial

94

Ray Roberts

D

TX – 4

Financial

94

Olin Teague

D

TX – 6

Financial

94

Henry Reuss

D

WI – 5

Financial

95

John McFall

D

CA –14

Financial

Reprimand

95

Edward Roybal

D

CA – 25

Financial

Reprimand NO censure

95

Charles H. Wilson D

CA –31

Financial

Reprimand

95

Charles Diggs

MI –13

Financial

Conviction; resignation

D

D

(Continued)

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Table 1  Financial scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

 95

Joshua Eilberg

D

PA – 4

Corruption

Conviction

 95

Daniel Flood

D

PA – 11

Corruption

Conviction; resignation

 95

Jim Wright

D

TX – 12

Financial

 96

Charles H. Wilson

D

CA – 31

Financial

Censured

 96

Richard Kelly

R

FL – 5

Corruption – Abscam

Conviction

 96

Frank Thompson D

NJ – 4

Corruption – Abscam

Forfeits chairmanship Conviction

 96

John Murphy

D

NY – 17

Corruption – Abscam

Conviction

 96

Michael Myers

D

PA – 1

Corruption – Abscam

Conviction; expulsion

 96

Raymond Lederer

D

PA – 3

Corruption – Abscam

Conviction; resignation

 96

John Jenrette

D

SC – 6

Corruption – Abscam

Conviction; resignation

 97

Frederick Richmond

D

NY – 14

Financial

Conviction resignation

 97

John Murtha

D

PA – 12

Corruption – Abscam

 98

George Hansen

R

ID – 2

Financial

 98

Geraldine Ferraro

D

NY – 9

Financial

 98

W.C. “Dan” Daniel

D

VA – 5

Financial

 99

James Weaver

D

OR – 4

Financial

 99

Fernand St. Germain

D

RI – 1

Financial

100

Tony Coelho

D

CA – 15

Financial

Resignation

100

Richard Stallings D

ID – 2

Financial

Letter of rebuke

100

Robert Garcia

NY – 18

Corruption, Financial

Forfeits chairmanship Conviction

D

Reprimand; conviction

Restitution

(Continued)

Scandal!

10

Table 1  Financial scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

100

Mario Biaggi

D

NY – 19

Corruption, Financial

100

Charles Rose

D

NC – 7

Financial

100

Mary Rose Oakar D

OH–20

Financial

Restitution

100

Austin Murphy

D

PA – 22

Financial

Reprimand

100

William Boner

D

TN – 5

Financial

Resignation

100

Harold Ford

D

TN – 9

Financial

Indictment; forfeits chairmanship

100

James Wright

D

TX – 12

Financial

Resignation

101

Julian Dixon

D

CA – 28

Financial

101

Newt Gingrich

R

GA – 6

Financial

101

Floyd Flake

D

NY – 6

Financial

101

Gerald Solomon R

NY – 24

Financial

101

William H. Gray D III

PA – 2

Financial

102

William Alexander

D

AR – 1

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Charles Hatcher D

GA – 2

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Lawrence Smith

D

FL – 16

Financial

102

Charles Hayes

D

IL – 1

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Carroll Hubbard D

KY – 1

Financial

102

Carl C. Perkins

D

KY – 7

Financial (House Conviction Bank scandal)

102

Joseph Early

D

MA – 3

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Nicholas Mavroules

D

MA – 6

Financial

102

John Conyers

D

MI – 1

Financial (House Bank scandal)

Conviction; resignation

Indicted; dropped

Conviction

Conviction

Forfeits chairmanship Conviction

(Continued)

Preface

11

Table 1  Financial scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

102

Robert Davis

R

MI – 11

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

William Clay

D

MO – 1

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Robert Mrazek

D

NY – 3

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Edolphus Towns D

NY – 11

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Steven Solarz

NY – 13

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Edward Feighan D

OH–19

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Mickey Edwards R

OK – 5

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Joseph Kolter

D

PA – 4

Financial (House Post Office)

Conviction

102

Joseph McDade

R

PA – 10

Corruption

Forfeits chairmanship Indicted; acquitted

102

William Goodling

R

PA – 19

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Harold Ford

D

TN – 9

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Ronald Coleman D

TX – 16

Financial (House Bank scandal)

102

Albert Bustamante

TX – 23

Corruption

103

Dan D Rostenkowski

IL – 5

Financial (House Conviction Post Office), fraud, witness tampering, perjury, embezzlement, conspiracy

D

D

Conviction

(Continued)

Scandal!

12

Table 1  Financial scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

104

Walter Tucker

D

CA – 37

Financial

104

David Bonior

D

MI – 10

Financial

104

Barbara RoseCollins

D

MI – 15

Financial

104

Richard Gephardt

D

MO – 3

Financial

104

Charles Wilson

D

TX – 2

Financial

104

Enid Waldholtz

R

UT – 2

Financial

104

Thomas Bliley

R

VA – 7

Corruption

105

E.G. “Bud” Shuster

R

PA – 9

Corruption

105

Tom DeLay

R

TX – 22

Corruption

106

Earl Hilliard

D

AL – 7

Financial

106

Corrine Brown

D

FL – 3

Financial

107

James Trafficant

D

OH–17

Corruption, Financial

108

Karen McCarthy D

MO – 5

Financial

108

Tom DeLay

R

TX – 22

Corruption

109

JD Hayworth

R

AZ – 5

Financial

109

John Doolittle

R

CA – 4

Corruption (earmarks), Financial

109

Richard Pombo

R

CA – 11

Corruption

109

Jerry Lewis

R

CA – 41

Corruption (earmarks)

109

Gary Miller

R

CA – 42

Financial

109

Ken Calvert

R

CA – 44

Corruption (earmarks), Financial

109

Randy R Cunningham

CA – 50

Corruption (earmarks, bribery), Financial

Resignation

Reimbursement

Letter of reproval Letter of reproval Conviction Expulsion

Admonished

Resignation; conviction

(Continued)

Preface

13

Table 1  Financial scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

109

Katherine Harris R

FL – 13

Corruption (earmarks)

109

Tom Feeney

FL – 24

Financial

Reimbursement

109

William Jefferson D

LA – 2

Corruption

Conviction

109

Vito Fossella

R

NY – 13

Financial

Amended FEC forms back to 2000

109

John Sweeney

R

NY – 20

Financial

109

Robert Ney

R

OH–18

Corruption

Resignation; conviction

109

Curt Weldon

R

PA – 7

Corruption

DOJ investigation Reimbursement

109

Virgil Goode

R

VA – 5

Corruption (earmarks)

109

Allen Mollohan

D

WV – 1

Financial

110

Don Young

R

AK – 1

Corruption

110

Rick Renzi

R

AZ – 1

Corruption (extortion, wire fraud), Financial

110

Laura Richardson

D

CA – 37

Financial

110

David Scott

D

GA – 13

Financial

110

Jerry Weller

R

IL – 11

Financial

110

Charles Rangel

D

NY – 15

Financial

110

John Murtha

D

PA – 12

Corruption (earmarks)

110

Marsha Blackburn

R

TN – 7

Financial

111

Maxine Waters

D

CA – 35

Financial

111

Sanford Bishop

D

GA – 2

Financial

111

Nathan Deal

R

GA – 9

Financial

111

Jesse Jackson Jr.

D

IL – 2

Corruption

R

Forfeits seat on Ethics Committee Indictment; forfeits seat

Censure; forfeits chairmanship

Repayment

(Continued)

Scandal!

14

Table 1  Financial scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

111

Pete Visclosky

D

IN – 1

Corruption (earmarks)

111

C.W. Bill Young

R

FL – 10

Corruption (earmarks)

111

Todd Tiahrt

R

KS – 4

Corruption (earmarks)

111

Carolyn C.Kilpatrick

D

MI – 13

Financial

111

Bennie Thompson

D

MS – 2

Financial

111

Sam Graves

R

MO – 6

Financial

111

Donald Payne

D

NJ – 10

Financial

111

Yvette Clark

D

NY – 11

Financial

111

Charles Rangel

D

NY – 15

Financial

111

Marcy Kaptur

D

OH – 9

Corruption (earmarks)

111

Jack Murtha

D

PA – 12

Corruption (earmarks)

111

Eddie B. Johnson D

TX – 30

Financial

111

Jim Moran

D

VA – 8

Corruption (earmarks)

111

Norm Dicks

D

WA – 6

Corruption (earmarks)

Repayment

Political scandals Political scandals range from the relatively minor, such as two members from New Jersey using their fax machines to duel over the outcome of a staff softball game, to the serious. The largest subcategory of political scandals, representing one-third of those that we identified, alleged misuse of official resources, including fax machines, stationery, and the congressional seal. In many cases, a member is accused of carrying out campaign activities in a district office or using phones that are reserved for official business. The second largest subcategory of political scandals, representing one-fourth of those we identified, alleged

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15

campaign finance violations, including inadequate disclosure of contributions or contributors. Because the Federal Election Commission is tasked with regulating campaign finance, alleged violations are often formally investigated by the Commission or by U.S. attorneys, and some of these allegations are taken up by the House Ethics Committee as well. Thus, lists of scandals that are built from Ethics Committee investigations and reports are heavily weighted toward finding large numbers and a high frequency of political scandals. The most significant political scandals, called so due to the high rank of the persons involved, were those surrounding Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Gingrich’s successor as Republican Whip, and later majority leader, Tom DeLay. Democrats questioned Gingrich’s ethics partly in retaliation for Gingrich’s role in persecuting Jim Wright in 1988. Dozens of ethics complaints were filed against Gingrich, but only one resulted in an official sanction: Gingrich was reprimanded for using tax-exempt funds to distribute campaign materials. He was charged with lying to investigators and the ethics panel and required to pay $300,000, and the evidence uncovered by the Ethics Committee was forwarded to the Internal Revenue Service. While the accusations may seem insignificant, the scandal resulted in the first ever disciplining of the Speaker for ethics violations. The Committee continued to investigate other complaints against Gingrich through October 1998; Gingrich resigned the speakership and then announced his intention to retire from the House in November 1998. DeLay was embroiled in at least four separate political scandals, three of which occurred during his years as majority leader. In 1999, Delay was privately reprimanded by the Ethics Committee for retaliating against the Electronics Industries Alliance, pulling an intellectual-property bill from the House floor, after the industry association had hired a former Democratic congressman as a lobbyist. DeLay was reprimanded twice in one week in 2004 for two separate scandals. In one scandal, DeLay was accused of contacting the Federal Aviation Administration, directing them to track eleven Democratic state legislators who were attempting to flee Texas to deny a legislative quorum, and thereby to block a DeLay-backed redistricting plan that would have favored Republican candidates. In another scandal, DeLay and Candice Miller (R-MI) were admonished for attempting to influence Nick Smith (R-MI) to change his vote on Medicare prescription drug legislation. DeLay promised to help Smith’s son, who was running for Congress at the time, if Smith voted in favor of the bill, while Miller and Randy Cunningham (R-CA) threatened to retaliate against Smith’s son if Smith voted against the bill. Separately, DeLay faced a criminal indictment

Scandal!

16

in the state of Texas for money laundering, specifically by sending corporate donations to the Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, then directing the PAC to make contributions to Texas state legislative candidates, in violation of state law. With the Abramoff scandal accelerating and a trial in Texas impending, DeLay resigned in 2006 and was found guilty of conspiracy in 2010. In addition to the misuse of office and official resources and campaign finance scandals discussed above, the political scandals category is rounded out by a handful of cases involving vote fraud and leaking classified or confidential information. Our list of 40 political scandals involving House members is included as Table 2. Table 2  Political scandals involving members of the House of Representatives Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

 93

Wendell Wyatt

R

OR – 1

Campaign finance Fine

 94

George Hansen

R

ID – 2

Inadequate disclosure

 94

Michael Harrington

D

MA – 6

Classified information

 94

James Jones

D

OK – 1

Inadequate disclosure

Fine

 95

Richard Tonry

D

LA – 1

Vote fraud

Resignation

 95

Charles Diggs

D

MI –13

Voting misconduct Censured; forfeits chairmanship

 95

Edward Patten

D

NJ – 15

Campaign finance

 96

Claude Leach

D

LA – 4

Vote fraud

 99

Tony Coelho

D

CA – 15

Misuse of office

 99

Bobbi Fiedler

R

CA – 21

Offered bribe to Indictment rival candidate

 99

Mac Sweeney

R

TX – 14

Misuse of office

 99

Michael Andrews D

TX – 25

Misuse of office

100

Austin Murphy

D

PA – 22

Vote fraud

Reprimand

100

James Wright

D

TX – 12

Classified information

Resignation

Fine

(Continued)

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17

Table 2  Political scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

102

Mary Rose Oakar D

OH–20

Campaign finance Conviction

103

Jay Kim

R

CA – 41

Campaign finance

103

Martin Frost

D

TX – 24

Misuse of office

104

Jay Kim

R

CA – 41

Inadequate disclosure

Conviction

104

Newt Gingrich

R

GA – 6

Misuse of office, perjury

Reprimand

104

Helen Chenoweth R

ID – 1

Campaign finance

104

David McIntosh R

IN – 2

Various

104

Robert Torricelli D

NJ – 9

Misuse of official resources

104

Dick Zimmer

NJ – 12

Misuse of official resources

104

Gerald Solomon R

NY – 22

Threatened retaliation

104

Richard Armey

TX-26

Misuse of stationery

104

Jim McDermott D

WA – 7

Conflict of interest

105

Dan Burton

R

IN – 6

Campaign finance

107

Steve Buyer

R

IN – 4

Misuse of official resources

108

Nick Smith

R

MI – 7

“Statements risked Admonished impugning reputation of the House”

108

Candice Miller

R

MI – 10

Improper attempt Admonished to influence another Member

108

Tom DeLay

R

TX – 22

Improper attempt Admonished to influence another Member

108

Tom DeLay

R

TX – 22

Campaign finance Admonished

R

R

Apology

Letter

Letter

Letter

(Continued)

Scandal!

18

Table 2  Political scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

108

Jim McDermott D

WA – 7

Confidential information

109

John Conyers

D

MI – 14

Misuse of office

110

Vern Buchanan

R

FL – 13

Campaign finance

110

David Scott

D

GA – 13

Misuse of office

110

Heather Wilson R

NM – 1

Misuse of office

110

John Murtha

D

PA – 12

Improper attempt to influence another Member

110

Timothy Murphy R

PA – 18

Misuse of office

111

Laura Richardson D

CA – 37

Misuse of office

Letter

Reprimand; fine

Sexual scandals Just as financial and political scandals take varying forms and have varying degrees of gravity, sexual scandals can be grouped into more specific categories depending on whether they involve an extramarital affair, sexual harassment, solicitation, or sodomy. Despite the personal nature of sex scandals, even these, too, can take on institutional dimensions when they involve prominent committee and party leaders. Just as the financial and political scandals involving Jim Wright, Tony Coelho, Newt Gingrich, and Tom DeLay convinced many observers that the ethics process was being manipulated for partisan gain, two sex scandals involving Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hays in the mid-1970s confirmed to many observers that the House’s seniority system had produced unaccountable and uncontrollable committee barons. In October of 1974, Ways and Means Committee chairman Wilbur Mills (D-AR) was stopped by police near the tidal basin after an apparent altercation with a stripper, Fanne Foxe, who had been riding in his car. The incident was illtimed, just four weeks before Election Day, although Mills won reelection. The scandal’s consequences were exacerbated when, on November 30, Mills joined the stripper on stage at a performance in Boston. Soon thereafter the Democratic Caucus stripped the Ways and Means Committee of its control over committee

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19

assignments, which it had held since 1911, and diluted Mills’s authority by expanding the committee’s membership. Mills would soon step down from his post as the House’s most powerful chairman. Two years later, a sex scandal that linked sex with the abuse of official resources, ensnared Wayne Hays (D-OH), chairman of both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the House Administration Committee. Hays was known both as the “mayor of Capitol Hill” and as “the second speaker,” and used a staff position to hire his mistress, Elizabeth Ray. When Hays proposed marriage to another former staff member and failed to invite Ray to the wedding, she approached reporters from the Washington Post, who reported in a front page story that her salary was not justified by her office work and abilities, stating memorably, “I can’t type, I can’t file. I can’t even answer the phone.” Embarrassed by the incident, Democratic leaders worked quickly to push Hays out of his positions of authority. Majority Leader O’Neill “bluntly told Hays that he had to step down from the campaign committee and the House Administration Committee chairmanships immediately” (CQ Almanac 1976, p. 25). Hays held on to his committee chairmanship for two more weeks, and during this interval he narrowly won a primary election. When Hays did step down, he was replaced as chairman of the House Administration Committee by Frank Thompson (D-NJ), who was a longtime reformer with a sterling reputation; still, Thompson would be consumed by the ABSCAM scandal only a few years later, ultimately serving jail time for accepting an “illegal gratuity” and on bribery charges (Congressional Ethics 1992, 66). Less than three weeks after the Hays scandal broke, Representative John­ Young (D-TX) was accused by a former secretary, Colleen Gardner, of having increased her salary only after she “reluctantly submitted to his advances” (New York Times, 1976). Another former secretary alleged that Young made repeated sexual advances to her, and offered her a “substantial” raise, but she declined and soon left Young’s employ. Approximately one month after these revelations, in July of 1976, Young’s wife (and mother of his five children) was found dead, apparently having committed suicide with a. 22-caliber pistol. Young, who had not faced a general election opponent in the previous five elections, won reelection to his House seat with 61% of the vote, but lost a primary election in 1978. The combination of sex and abuse of power was repeated in two separate instances of scandal involving underage House pages. In 1983, Representatives Gerry Studds (D-MA) and Daniel Crane (R-IL) were censured by the House for having improper relationships with House pages, a fact which resulted in

20

Scandal!

Congress revising the page system, “to tighten control over the pages’ housing and schooling” (Congressional Ethics 1992, 41). In 2006, Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) was accused of making sexual advances to House pages. The Foley scandal was particularly noteworthy because of accusations that top Republican leaders looked the other way or failed to follow up when the allegations against Foley first came to light. The Ethics Committee conducted an extensive investigation that reached all the way up to Speaker Dennis Hastert. Although there were calls for Hastert to resign his leadership post, enough rallied to the Speaker’s defense to contain the damage to Foley alone (Kiely and Jackson 2006). Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) was also accused of interfering in the Foley investigation and of having improper contact with House pages, but he retired from Congress and was subsequently exonerated. Foley’s successor in Florida’s 16th congressional district, Tim Mahoney (D-FL) was embroiled in his own sex scandal two years later.  Similar bad fortune struck Illinois’s 2nd congressional district. Representative Gus Savage (D-IL) lost reelection in 1992, after he was accused of attempted sexual assault of a Peace Corps worker in Zaire. A House Ethics Committee investigation substantiated the charge, and Savage barely escaped formal discipline. Savage was defeated by Mel Reynolds (D-IL), who had twice sought to dislodge Savage in the primary elections of 1988 and 1990. But Reynolds was indicted for sexual assault and criminal sexual abuse in 1994, for having had a sexual relationship with a 16-yearold campaign volunteer. Reynolds won reelection but was convicted on multiple counts of assault, obstruction of justice, and solicitation of child pornography; Reynolds resigned his seat in 1995. He was not the only congressman whose congressional career ended due to a sex scandal with a teenager; Representative Donald “Buz” Lukens (R-OH) lost a primary election to John Boehner in 1990 after a television crew filmed Lukens talking with the mother of a 16-year-old girl, discussing paying the girl $40 for sex. Although Lukens planned to serve the remainder of his term, he resigned in October 1990, a week after being accused by a Capitol elevator operator of groping her twice and making repeated sexual advances. In a number of cases, members of Congress have turned their attention to prostitutes rather than House employees, House pages, and campaign volunteers. In 1976, two Democratic congressmen, Allan Howe (D-UT) and Joe Waggoner (D-LA), were both arrested for solicitation of prostitution. In a scandal that still boggles the mind, it was uncovered in 1990 that a man named Steve Gobie was running a prostitution service out of the apartment of Representative Barney

Preface

21

Frank (D-MA). The scandal resulted in Frank being reprimanded by the House for improper use of his office (Congressional Ethics 1992, 43). In a few recent cases, members have vacated their seats without ever consummating sexual relationships. Christopher Lee (R-NY), a married congressman from upstate New York, resigned in February 2011 after a shirtless photograph that he sent to a woman on Craigslist was made public. In May 2011, Anthony Weiner (D-NY) found himself in the crosshairs of the national media after it was alleged that he had sent inappropriate and sexually suggestive photos of himself via Twitter and Facebook. The fact that his wife was pregnant at the time of the scandal made matters far worse, and events played out in national newspapers and on television for over three weeks before he resigned from office in June 2011. Lest one fall under the misconception that these most recent sex scandals were a product of the digital information age, it is worth noting that two scandals more than two decades before were equally driven by photographic images. In 1987, Democratic presidential candidate and former senator Gary Hart’s affair with model Donna Rice was revealed. Rumors of Hart’s extracurricular activities had been persistent, but when he challenged news organizations to investigate him, they discovered incriminating evidence that drove Hart out of the 1988 Democratic presidential primary. The photograph of Hart and Rice posing together, on a ship named “Monkey Business,” captures the scandal perfectly. Senator Charles Robb of Virginia was soon embroiled in a sex scandal when a former Miss Virginia, Tai Collins, alleged that she had carried on a seven-year-long affair with Robb. She made her revelations in the pages of the October 1991 issue of Playboy, which also included a pictorial of Ms. Collins. Robb admitted only to having received a massage from Collins, and he even won reelection in 1994. Congressional sex scandals were also prominently on display in the aftermath of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Amidst the charges that Clinton had an improper relationship with a White House intern, charges of sexual impropriety surfaced against Clinton’s Republican accusers in the House of Representatives. First, it was revealed that Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), who as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee was charged with leading the inquiry, had had a long-term extramarital affair. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, ran an advertisement in the Washington Post offering a $1 million bounty to anyone with proof of infidelity by a member of Congress (Foerstel 1998, p. 3336). House Appropriations chairman Bob Livingston (RLA) next stepped down after revelations of extramarital affairs in his own past;

22

Scandal!

Livingston dramatically announced his own resignation, declaring to colleagues, “I was Flynted” (Foerstel 1998, p. 3336). In addition to Hyde and Livingston, allegations of affairs ensnared Representatives Bob Barr (R-GA), Dan Burton (R-IN), Helen Chenoweth (R-ID), and J.C. Watts (R-OK). And, though it was unknown at the time, Speaker Gingrich, too, was engaged in an extramarital affair with a congressional staffer, Callista Bisek (later Callista Gingrich). Bisek testified during Gingrich’s divorce proceedings with his second wife, Marianne, that their affair began in 1993, even before President Clinton first had relations with Monica Lewinsky. Although Republicans would claim that infidelity was not the main issue driving Clinton’s impeachment, the optics of these scandals harmed their credibility as they continued to press the constitutional process. A new variety of congressional sex scandal was concocted following the Senate’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1990. When law professor Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment, the term entered most Americans’ vocabulary for the first time. Though Thomas was confirmed, senators soon discovered that their own behavior was under a microscope. In March 1992, the Seattle Times published allegations by eight women that over a period of several decades, Senator Brock Adams of Washington had made frequent, unwelcome advances and had been sexually aggressive toward lobbyists, staff, etc. The most serious charge was a former aide’s accusation that Adams secretly provided her a date-rape drug and molested her. Adams chose not ­to seek reelection. Immediately after the 1992 election, the Washington Post published allegations that Oregon’s Senator Robert Packwood had sexually harassed ten women, mostly in the 1970s. The Senate Ethics Committee investigated, and found evidence to substantiate the accusations in Packwood’s own diaries. After a nearly three-year fight over Packwood’s behavior and access to the notes in his diaries, the Senate prepared a motion to expel Packwood, at which point Packwood announced his resignation. In the House, Buz Lukens resigned in 1990 when confronted with allegations of sexual harassment, as discussed above, and Jim Bates lost reelection to Randy “Duke” Cunningham in 1990 after allegations that he had harassed at least two, and possibly more than a dozen, female staffers (Los Angeles Times 1988). Majority Leader Dick Armey (D-TX) faced sexual harassment allegations that dated to his time as an economics professor, before entering Congress. More recently, Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) was investigated for sexual harassment of male staff members, and resigned in 2010. Overall, in a nearly 40-year period, we identified 43 sex scandals involving House members, a frequency of more than one per year. More than half of those scandals involved extramarital affairs. Our list is included as Table 3.

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23

Table 3  Sex scandals involving members of the House of Representatives Congress Representative Party State – CD Type of Violation Result  93

Wilbur Mills

D

AR – 2

Extramarital affair

 93

Otto Passman

D

LA – 5

Sexual harassment suit

 94

Robert Leggett

D

CA – 4

Extramarital affair

 94

Joe Wagonner

D

LA – 4

Solicitation

 94

Donald Riegle

D

MI – 7

Extramarital affair

 94

Wayne Hays

D

OH– 18

Extramarital affair Forfeits chairmanship; resignation

 94

John Young

D

TX – 14

Extramarital affair Forfeits chairmanship

 94

Allen Howe

D

UT – 2

Solicitation

 95

Robert Leggett

D

CA – 4

Extramarital affair

 95

Frederick Richmond

D

NY – 14

Solicitation

Dismissed

 96

Robert Bauman R

MD – 1

Solicitation

Dismissed

 96

Jon Hinson

R

MS – 4

Attempted sodomy

 97

Thomas Evans

R

DE – 1

Extramarital affair

 97

Tom Railsback

R

IL – 19

Extramarital affair

 97

Jon Hinson

R

MS – 4

Attempted sodomy

Resignation

 98

Daniel Crane

R

IL – 19

House page scandal

Censure

 98

Gerry Studds

D

MA –10

House page scandal

Censure

100

Ernie Konnyu

R

CA – 12

Sexual harassment suit

100

Jim Bates

D

CA – 44

Sexual harassment Letter of reproval

101

Gus Savage

D

IL – 2

Sexual harassment

101

Barney Frank

D

MA – 4

Discrediting House

101

Arlan Stangeland

R

MN – 7

Extramarital affair

101

Donald Lukens R

OH – 8

Solicitation; sexual Resignation harassment

Reprimand

(Continued)

Scandal!

24

Table 3  Sex scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative Party State – CD Type of Violation Result 103

Ken Calvert

R

CA – 43

Solicitation

104

Newt Gingrich

R

GA – 6

Extramarital affair

104

Mel Reynolds

D

IL – 2

Aggravated sexual assault, abuse, child pornography

104

Jim Bunn

R

OR – 5

Extramarital affair

104

Richard Armey R

TX – 26

Sexual harassment

105

Charles Canady R

FL – 12

Extramarital affair

105

Helen Chenoweth

R

ID – 1

Extramarital affair

105

Henry Hyde

R

IL – 6

Extramarital affair

105

Dan Burton

R

IN – 6

Extramarital affair

105

Bob Livingston R

LA – 1

Extramarital affair Resignation

105

J.C. Watts

R

OK – 4

Extramarital affair

106

Bob Barr

R

GA – 7

Extramarital affair

107

Gary Condit

D

CA – 15

Extramarital affair

108

Bill Thomas

R

CA – 22

Extramarital affair

108

Steven LaTourette

R

OH–14

Extramarital affair

108

Ed Schrock

R

VA – 2

Solicitation

109

Jim Kolbe

R

AZ – 8

House page scandal

US Attorney’s office investigation

109

Mark Foley

R

FL – 16

House page scandal

Resignation

109

Don Sherwood R

PA – 10

Extramarital affair

110

Tim Mahoney

D

FL – 16

Extramarital affair; sexual harassment

Resignation

110

Vito Fossella

R

NY – 13

Extramarital affair; bigamy

Resignation

111

Mark Souder

R

IN – 3

Extramarital affair Resignation

111

Eric Massa

D

NY – 29

Sexual harassment Resignation

Resignation

Preface

25

Other scandals Members of Congress have been embroiled in a variety of other scandals involving drug use, driving under the influence, other vehicular violations such as speeding and driving with a suspended license, and various assaults of spouses, mistresses, and one Capitol police operator (we could include the Capitol elevator operator here as well). One of the more colorful members of this category is J. Herbert Burke (R-FL), whose antics in a Florida strip club in 1978 provided the inspiration for Cal Hiaasen’s novel Strip Tease (later made into a movie, with Burke portrayed by Burt Reynolds). Burke lost reelection in 1978. A more resilient member of this category is Charlie Wilson (D-TX), who barely survived an Ethics Committee investigation into his alleged drug use in a hot tub at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, as depicted in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War. Nicknamed “Good Time Charlie,” Wilson also faced allegations that he had driven drunk and fled the scene of an automobile accident in 1980. Our list of­ 28 “other” scandals involving House members is included as Table 4. Table 4  Other scandals involving members of the House of Representatives Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

94

Wilbur Mills

D

AR – 2

Driving under the Forfeits influence chairmanship

94

Frank Horton

R

NY – 34

Speeding

95

J. Herbert Burke R

FL – 12

Public intoxication, Misdemeanor; resisting arrest fine

96

Michael Myers

D

PA – 1

Disorderly conduct Misdemeanor

97

John Burton

D

CA – 5

Drug use

Resigned

97

Barry Goldwater, R Jr

CA – 20

Drug use

Resigned

97

Frederick Richmond

D

NY – 14

Drug use

Conviction; resignation

97

Ike Andrews

D

NC – 4

Driving under the Conviction influence

98

Ronald Dellums D

CA – 8

Drug use

98

Louis Stokes

OH– 21

Driving under the Pleads guilty; fine influence

D

Pleads guilty; jail

(Continued)

Scandal!

26

Table 4  Other scandals involving members of the House of Representatives (Continued) Congress Representative

Party State – CD Type of Violation Result

98

Charles Wilson

D

99

TX – 2

Driving under the influence; Drug use

Dan D Rostenkowski

IL – 5

Driving under the Pleads guilty; influence fine; suspended license

99

Henry Gonzalez D

TX – 20

Assault

100

Patrick Swindall R

GA – 4

Perjury

101

Roy Dyson

D

MD – 1

Sexual discrimination

104

David Funderburk

R

NC – 2

Driving under the influence, accident

104

Wes Cooley

R

OR – 2

Lying about military service

104

Gerald Kleczka

D

WI – 4

Driving under the influence

106

James Moran

D

VA – 8

Assault – Spousal abuse

108

David Wu

D

OR – 1

Assault

108

William Janklow R

SD – 1

Driving under the influence, manslaughter

Conviction; resignation

109

Cynthia McKinney

D

GA – 4

Assault of Capitol Police officer

Apology on floor

109

John Sweeney

R

NY – 20

Assault – spousal abuse

109

Don Sherwood

R

PA – 10

Assault – partner abuse

109

Patrick Kennedy D

RI – 1

Driving under the Conviction influence

110

Bob Filner

D

CA – 51

Assault and Misdemeanor, battery; trespass fine

110

Vito Fossella

R

NY – 13

Driving under the influence

111

Zack Space

D

OH–18

Driving with expired license

Misdemeanor; fine

Settlement

Misdemeanor

Preface

27

Summarizing congressional scandals When one combines the scandals listed in the four Appendix tables,2 some of which were described above, the sum is 250 scandals involving members of the House of Representatives between 1973 and 2010. Table S1.1 collects the scandals by Congress – a two-year period – in which each scandal broke. These numbers are slightly higher than in Basinger (2013) for two reasons: a handful of additional scandals were identified, and each scandal is counted separately here even when one member of Congress is involved in multiple simultaneous scandals. Note that when a scandal is formally investigated, it may take two or even three congresses before it is finally resolved, as the case of Maxine

Table S1.1  Scandals involving members of the House of Representatives, by Congress Congress

Years

Members of Congress in scandals

 93

1973–74

7

 94

1975–76

28

 95

1977–78

13

 96

1979–80

11

 97

1981–82

9

 98

1983–84

8

 99

1985–86

8

100

1987–88

15

101

1989–90

10

102

1991–92

23

103

1993–94

4

104

1995–96

23

105

1997–98

9

106

1999–00

4

107

2001–02

3

108

2003–04

12

109

2005–06

24

110

2007–08

17

111

2009–10

22

Total

1973–2010

250

Scandal!

28

Table S1.2  Scandals involving members of the House of Representatives, by type Type

Number

Proportion (%)

Financial

136

54

Political

40

16

Sexual

46

18

Other

28

11

Total

250

Waters (D-CA) exemplifies. The average number of scandals is 6.5 per year or 13 per Congress. Five congresses had more than 20 scandals apiece. The three congresses in which the most members were involved in scandals were the 94th (the Koreagate scandal), the 102nd (the House Bank scandal), and the 109th (the Abramoff scandal). Table S1.2 collects the scandals by the type of transgression. Of the 250 scandals that we identified involving members of the House of Representatives, 54% were financial, 16% were political, 18% were sexual, and 11% involved forms of misbehavior that fit into none of the above categories. These frequencies align well with studies of presidential scandals, which find that over half of scandals involving the president, presidential appointees, and nominees involve financial misdeeds (Basinger and Rottinghaus 2013).

Notes 1 Examples are drawn primarily from Congressional Quarterly (1980, 1992), supplemented by Kessler (1997), Hilton and Testa (1998), Thompson (1995), and Tolchin and Tolchin (2001). 2 In addition to the sources cited earlier, to compile these lists we referenced the Congressional Quarterly Almanac (annually from 1972 to the present), plus newspaper archives and scholarly works by Grossman (2008), Long (2007), Marion (2010), Roberts (2001), and Zelizer (2004).

1

Sack the Quarterback: The Strategies and Implications of Congressional Leadership Scandals Douglas B. Harris

You ought to understand what this crowd is trying to do to you, Jim. It’s a game called ‘sack the quarterback.’ Congressman William H. Gray III to Speaker Jim Wright, undated circa 19881 Although Speaker Jim Wright would not resign the speakership until May of 1989, as early as the beginning of the prior year, Wright’s allies in the House Democratic Caucus spotted trouble and steeled themselves for a Republican assault on the speaker. In fact, since 1987, House Republicans, frustrated by what would soon be 40 consecutive years in the minority, were bent on targeting Wright for ethics investigation at least to tarnish the speaker’s image for electoral use and, perhaps, to topple his speakership. Leading the charge was longtime backbench gadfly and emerging Republican leader Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who, at least behind the scenes, was quite clear in his intentions to make Wright a symbol of Democratic arrogance and malfeasance (Barry, 1990). Despite the claims of Gingrich and others at the time, Wright was not the first speaker to be caught up in scandal.2 Twenty years before, Speaker John W.  McCormack’s office was implicated in influence-peddling that led to a suspended sentence and hefty fine for longtime McCormack associate Nathan Voloshen and a conviction and jail time for McCormack’s top aide, Martin Sweig. Allegations concerned whether Voloshen and others had passed thousands of dollars to Sweig in exchange for his use of the speaker’s name, office, and influence to intervene with federal agencies and, specifically, to secure military

30

Scandal!

discharges in particular cases (Asbury, 1970; CQ Almanac 1970, 66). Voloshen, it was claimed, had free reign of the speaker’s office when in Washington and Sweig freely used McCormack’s name – even imitating the speaker’s voice on the telephone – to accomplish his aims. Although the general view was that this pattern of behavior was happening under McCormack’s nose, he (and the House more generally) was spared most of the criticism. Fitting a broader perception that the aging speaker had been out of touch for some time, the fact that a top advisor might be trading on McCormack’s name was well within the realm of possibility to McCormack’s critics. Indeed, even McCormack’s best defense, it seems, was as he put it at Sweig’s trial, that he was “not an inquiring fellow” (CQ Almanac 1970, 66). Notably, the Sweig–Voloshen affair, which resulted in indictments, convictions, and jail time for Sweig and, at least, influenced McCormack’s retirement (which, at age 79, was impending anyway), had little broader impact on the institution and the House Democratic Party. By contrast, Jim Wright’s resignation was a major moment in the career of Newt Gingrich, which catapulted him to prominence; his pursuit of Wright had enhanced his credibility in the Whip race he won earlier in 1989, and it continued to be a talking point for Republicans who argued that Democrats’ 40 years in control of the House of Representatives led them to be corrupt and arrogant, and even adopt “banana-republic style” tactics inside the House (Fried and Harris, 2001). That is to say, it was an early step toward the Republican revolution in the House. It was clearly consequential institutionally. What causes some congressional scandals to be institutionally consequential while others are contained in their impact? Is it the nature of the alleged offense? Is it the prominence of the leader? Is it the political narrative that develops around the allegation? Or, like many other aspects of congressional politics, have leadership scandals been caught up in the tide of hyper-partisanship that has emerged in recent decades? To what extent, that is, are ethics complaints an overt political strategy designed to use personal failings and allegations for partisan and institutional ends? This chapter addresses these questions by (1) developing a typology of congressional scandals in regard to their personal and institutional consequences, and (2) examining an increasingly prevalent type of congressional scandal – products of a “sack the quarterback” strategy – in which opposition forces provoke and exploit personal scandals precisely because of the institutional impact the scandal might have with special attention to the cases of Speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich.

Sack the Quarterback

31

Toward a typology of congressional scandals Congressional leaders have not been immune to the scandal, gaffes, inappropriate (sometimes even criminal) behavior, and official malfeasance that have always been part of congressional history. Indeed, since John McCormack’s involvement in the Sweig–Voloshen affair, there have been several ignominious falls of congressional leaders. Although their retirements were imminent, both Speaker McCormack and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA) retired under ethical clouds and Majority Whip John McFall (D-CA), implicated in a scandal in which Tongsun Park was accused of providing gifts to members of Congress in exchange for favorable official treatment of South Korea, failed in his attempt to ascend the leadership ladder to Majority Leader in 1976. Majority Whip Tony Coelho and Speaker Jim Wright both resigned from Congress in rapid succession in 1989. By the same token, Speaker Newt Gingrich faced an official reprimand and paid a $300,000 fine in 1997. More recently, longtime Senate Republican leader Trent Lott (R-MS) resigned his leadership position in 2002 in the face of criticism of what many took to be racially charged remarks he made at Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. And, if the Jack Abramoff scandal was the highest profile scandal involving Tom DeLay, it was an indictment on money laundering charges in Texas that compelled DeLay to step down as House Majority Leader in 2005 (CNN, 2006). Scandals involving congressional leaders are particularly important because of the institutional position these leaders hold and the increased potential that the scandal will have fallout for the broader institution. Indeed, several factors seem to influence the extent to which a particular scandal takes on institutional consequences: (1) The nature of the scandal – Is the alleged act of impropriety about sex or money? And, if the subject is money, was the financial impropriety a violation of campaign financing laws and regulations or was it for personal use? As problematic as a campaign finance violation is for the institution and the broader political system, the public reserves its worst condemnation for politicians “on the take.” To be sure, sex stories sell to the media and the public and have the potential to ruin political careers and lives. Still, inasmuch as each of sex scandals might result in the demise of a career, they generally fail to be taken as an indictment of Congress itself. Run-of-the-mill sex scandals – even when in rapidfire succession – are eminently containable and the fallout tends to be personal.

32

Scandal!

On occasion, however, sex scandals do provoke institutional consequences but typically only when there is some added institutional angle to the story. For example, if the media and some conservatives, ultimately, were more interested in the “gay sex angle” of the Barney Frank ethics case in which a man named Steve Gobie was running a prostitution ring out of Frank’s apartment, the House itself was more concerned with the fact that Frank had used his office to help Gobie fix parking tickets; this was an official act and an abuse of congressional resources and it was for this that Frank was reprimanded. By the same token, it was the institutional nature of the Mark Foley scandal – and the bad light it threw on Speaker Hastert and the House Republican leadership accused of covering it up or at least looking the other way – that made it more likely that the matter would take its toll on the GOP in the 2006 elections. These examples notwithstanding, all other things being equal, scandals involving financial dealings are far more likely to do institutional damage as they may reveal not only deep character flaws but also the potential for the corruption of public business. (2) The institutional importance of the member – Does the member accused of improper action hold a position of extraordinary influence or otherwise high profile in Congress? Two logics seem important here. First, following on the previous point regarding the nature of the scandal, if an implicated member wields a great deal of influence in the chamber, then his/her ability to corrupt public business and affect public policy is all the greater. Second, if a leader is elected by his or her followers, then the followers have some accountability for the leader’s actions. Committee and subcommittee chairs in Congress and, especially, party leaders are selected by and chosen to represent their colleagues. Where these representational ties between leader and followers are strongest and clearest and as the influence of the position increases, the institutional consequences are likely to be significant. Two key changes, one each related to party leaders and committee chairs, have strengthened the representational ties between congressional leaders and followers in recent decades. First, in regard to committee chairs, the decline of the seniority rule and the rise of caucus/conference votes for selecting committee chair positions made those positions more of a collective choice thus implicating colleagues, if indirectly, in the actions of the chair. Since the democratization of the House in the 1970s, really anyone who holds a position of influence in the House’s party or committee system does so as a result of standing for (often actively campaigning for) that position before one’s colleagues. Second, since the O’Neill era, party leaders have become more visible media figures representing their colleagues, parties, and institutions in the media (Harris, 1998). As a result

Sack the Quarterback

33

of the increased media presence, public congressional leaders are potent symbols of not only their institutions but their parties and a negative public image is a potent weapon the opposition uses for electoral gains.3 (3) The context of other scandals – How does the scandal fit in a broader narrative of personal, institutional, or partisan problems? Like points in a mosaic, scandals can take on greater prominence given their relationship to other prominent scandals of the time. Although the context of each individual scandal is unique, there are two typical contexts that “help” a personal scandal become institutional. In one type, the final straw, the scandalous behavior in question solidifies the negative reputation that a member or the Congress already has. A second context that feeds public perception of the significance of a scandal is the appearance of hypocrisy. Has an officeholder engaged in acts for which he or she has condemned other politicians or which runs counter to the ideology of his or her party? There is little reason to expect, for example, that revelations of Henry Hyde’s decades-old extramarital affair would have registered more than a blip in the press and the public had Hyde not chaired the Judiciary Committee that was overseeing the impeachment of Bill Clinton. By the same token, gay sex scandals in the Republican Party are typically more damaging than in the Democratic Party where gay and lesbian rights are more generally accepted. For the purposes of gauging the political import of a scandal, context matters. Ultimately, a scandal will take on institutional importance only if a narrative is constructed (by the press, the public, or the political actors themselves) that makes satisfactory links between the individual’s actions and the institution. These discrete factors – the nature of the act, the institutional importance of the member, and the context of other scandals – are potentially linkable by careful framing or woven narratives. Scandals concerning money that involve leaders and that seem to implicate other broader narratives of power abuse and/ or hypocrisy in Washington are more likely to become institutional, whereas scandals involving sex, particularly those involving little known, rank-andfile members, are likely to remain contained having implications only for that individual member. Those implications may be great for that individual and his/ her family but they are less likely to negatively impact (at least in any sustained way) the party’s image or one’s colleagues. The typology presented in Table 1.1 provides the various permutations when one poses two crucial questions to separate out congressional scandals: the first related to the cause of the scandal and the second regarding the scope of its consequences for the leader and the institution.

34

Scandal!

Table 1.1  Typology of congressional scandals Personal consequence

Institutional consequence

Personal act

Isolated incident

Sack the quarterback

Institutional pattern

Martyred leader

Systemic flaw

Isolated Incident. Quite often individual members’ scandals are left just as that and are treated as isolated incidents that might weaken or end an individual career but do not have significant broader consequences for the party or the institution. The spate of scandals from Bob Sikes (D-FL) and Bertram Podell (D-NY) to Ed Garmatz (D-MD) and Buzz Lukens (R-OH) (or even the page sex scandals of Gerry Studds and Daniel Crane) seems to come and go perhaps with some institutional turmoil but with relatively little political consequence for the parties or the institution outside of Washington. Examining the history of congressional scandals, the isolated incident seems to be the norm. If the scandal does not involve multiple members, if the member involved is not particularly prominent, and if there is no particularly noteworthy context – final straw or hypocrisy – then the scandal is likely to be contained. Martyred Leader. There is an alternative scenario, though quite rare, in which a particular leader will take personal responsibility for his misdeeds or that of others to avoid broader institutional fallout. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is the least likely scenario, though, occasionally leaders do take the fall either unwittingly or when it becomes apparent that they have no other choice. One possible example of a martyred leader was Tony Coelho’s abrupt resignation from the Whip’s office and from Congress in 1989 amidst allegations of a questionable “junk bond” deal. In the context of the high-profile investigation of Jim Wright, the Majority Whip’s resignation was a surprise and was portrayed as a selfless act to protect the party. In announcing the resignation, Coelho said, “I don’t intend to put my party through more turmoil. . . I don’t intend to put this institution through more turmoil” (Coelho as quoted in Kuntz, 1989). His colleagues, too, saw it this way. John Dingell claimed Coelho’s departure was “done with real grace and real class,” while Charlie Wilson (D-TX) thought it “appeared so selfless” (Kuntz, 1989). A much higher-profile example concerns Representative Bob Livingston’s resignation from Congress as the House was considering the Clinton impeachment. Livingston had become the clear favorite to succeed to the

Sack the Quarterback

35

speakership in the wake of Newt Gingrich’s announcement that he would resign, but, in the midst of the Clinton impeachment, revelations that Livingston had conducted his own extramarital affair led the presumptive speaker to relinquish the top post before officially assuming it; continuing the case for removing Clinton, his colleagues called on the president to follow suit. Although there are few instances of outright selfless martyrdom in the world of congressional scandals, if nothing else, in relinquishing the post, the martyred leader takes away one of the three elements – the member holds a position of institutional importance – likely to make a personal scandal institutionally important. In recent years, both parties have instituted guidelines for the removal from committee or party leadership posts those members under formal investigation or indictment.4 Systemic Flaw. It is difficult to keep a scandal contained when the context reveals a broader pattern of similar behavior by multiple members of Congress and, especially, when those members hold positions of authority. The major system scandals of the last 40 years – Koreagate, ABSCAM, the Keating Five, and the House Banking and Post Office Scandals – were taken by the press and the public as representative of flaws of the congressional system in which public trusts were abused and/or congressional privileges were exploited. Again, sometimes the benefits, though not insignificant, seem relatively picayune. When lobbyists and other interested parties offer members of Congress small gifts, throw parties in their honor, and invite them on gratis golf and hunting trips, the benefits seem meager enough. Still, these revelations can be explosive if they are viewed as the tip of an iceberg. Systemic flaws are revealed, too, when the pattern of illicit behavior seems to follow the internal structures of congressional power. The strong committee era, dominated by seniority and in which committees were so influential legislatively, was ripe for abuse. One small example illustrates the point. In 1970, it was revealed that 19 House and Senate members were offered an arrangement to get cut-rate leases for the use of Lincoln Continentals, leading to charges of favoritism for the most influential, including those who oversaw legislation relating to the auto industry; indeed, Ford notably confirmed that “its offer was open only to committee chairmen and senior Republican Members” (CQ Almanac 1970, 67). Favoritism or financial impropriety, however small, can seem big if it follows official patterns of influence within the House. Sack the Quarterback. Occasionally (and perhaps increasingly), individual personal scandals are exploited by the opposition precisely because they can have

36

Scandal!

broader institutional consequences. That is, important political actors seek to resist the containment of a personal scandal and, instead, promote it to the press and the public as an indicator of a broader institutional problem. In the “sack the quarterback” category, the press and the political opposition play important roles both in investigating allegations and, especially, in constructing and advancing an institutional or partisan narrative designed not only to damage the member in question but also his/her party and the institution more generally. Why is this strategy on the rise? First, the press has exhibited an increased appetite for scandal politics. Explaining how it gathered its yearly list of congressional scandals in 1970, CQ Almanac explained that it covered both official and unofficial scandals: “Some of the accusations came through official proceedings; others were made by the news media, which had become more aggressive in investigating off-the-floor activities of Members” (66). This new trend was no doubt spurred by Watergate. Indeed, Michael Malbin (1976) claimed that Watergate’s influence even expanded the press’s interest in sex scandals: “The one kind of scandal that seems more common this year is the sex scandal. Sex doubtless existed in the past, but reporters seem to feel a greater urge to write about it now, perhaps because Mr. Nixon convinced them that personal character and public performance somehow are connected.” Whatever the nature of the scandal, political actors, particularly those under fire, are apt to attribute aggressive media investigations to a sea change in media norms. Citing Woodward and Bernstein’s long-term impact on investigative journalists in Washington, Jim Wright told me, “The only heroes they [contemporary journalists] have are good at taking people down.”5 Second, the rise of public congressional leadership has made leaders symbols of their parties and the institutions they represent (Harris, 1998). On the positive side, leaders work to develop their own images but they are also symbols for the opposition. Low approval ratings can just as easily be used by opponents for policy and electoral purposes; and, negative images constructed by the other side and, yes, scandals can be used to weaken a leader and his/her majority. This is part of a more general pattern of using legal and ethical processes in institutional combat. In Politics by Other Means, Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter (1990) claim that the rise of scandal politics is institutionally and historically located: [B]oth the issue of government ethics and the growing use of criminal sanctions against public officials have been closely linked to struggles for political power

Sack the Quarterback

37

in the United States. In the aftermath of Watergate, institutions were established and processes created to investigate allegations of unethical conduct on the part of public figures. Increasingly, political forces have sought to make use of these mechanisms to discredit their opponents. (7)

A kind of institutional conflict where provoking the scandal is aimed more at broader electoral and institutional consequences, the pattern of “revelationinvestigation-prosecution” is the personal means to achieve an institutional end (Ginsberg and Shefter 1990).

Sack the quarterback: Politics by other means on Capitol Hill Plotting the strategies of both sides in a “sack the quarterback” scenario is straightforward, then. When there is a scandal revelation, fellow partisans of the implicated member work to contain the incident, whereas opposition forces work to construct a narrative that represents the behavior as of broader institutional consequence. Quite often the institutional consequence of a scandal hinges on what story, frame, or dominant explanations emerge as the predominant narrative surrounding the scandal. Still, quite naturally, the “sack the quarterback” strategy is hard to pin down as it is open to highly partisan interpretation. Leaders accused of improper behavior are likely to turn the tables on their accusers by claiming that the issue at hand is merely trumped-up charges for political effect, whereas the opposition is likely to deny its political calculations and claim instead that they are merely “following the facts” and seeking to hold accountable the leader in question. The internal politics of scandals is, thus, difficult to appreciate and we know little about the anatomy of partisan scandal politics. Leveraging behind-thescenes information uncovered in congressional leadership archives, we are able to pull back the curtain in order to shed new light on the strategic calculations underlying a “sack the quarterback” strategy.6 Examining the cases of Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich, the patterns are clear: the opposition does target leaders for their political importance (and they are clear about this, at least behind the scenes), the political strategizing goes both ways as the accuser and the accused are as concerned with political fallout as they are with the appropriateness and the truth of the allegations themselves, and the factors cited above – the nature of the scandal, the importance of the leader, and the context of other prominent scandals – are crucial.

38

Scandal!

“Mindless cannibalism”: Jim Wright and the politics of personal destruction When Jim Wright became speaker at the beginning of the 100th Congress, he quickly developed a reputation as one of the most influential speakers in memory (Rohde, 1991; Sinclair, 1995). Like many others, Newt Gingrich sensed Wright’s growing influence, and, as early as 1987, Gingrich launched ethics attacks against the speaker largely for institutional purposes. Tellingly, Gingrich said, “If Wright survives this ethics thing, he may become the greatest speaker since Henry Clay” (Barry, 1990, 6). And, he stated these intentions even more clearly: “Wright’s a useful keystone to a much bigger structure. I’ll just keep pounding and pounding on his ethics” (Barry, 1990, 369). To be sure, Wright, although he acknowledged mistakes, thought that the charges were politically motivated. During his resignation speech, he called for “both political parties . . . to bring this period of mindless cannibalism to an end” (Wright, 1989, 1347). There were several allegations at the root of the Wright scandal, including that Wright had an improper business relationship with George Mallick, which included Mallick’s hiring Wright’s wife and making available to Wright’s wife the use of a company car and to Wright a Fort Worth apartment which he paid for on a per diem basis; and, that Wright’s deal for his book Reflections of a Public Man included a high per copy author’s royalty and that Wright had benefited from bulk book purchases by groups and associations, allowing him to circumvent House limits on honoraria. More generally, Republicans had tried to press other points as well including allegations that he had leaked sensitive information to the press and that Wright had intervened improperly for a Savings and Loan institution. Ultimately, the Ethics Committee focused on the charges related to Mallick and Reflections of a Public Man. But public opinion and electoral politics as much as formal ethics processes are the aims of a “sack the quarterback” strategy. Although Republicans are apt to simply observe that Wright caused his own downfall, documents uncovered in the archives reveal that Republicans were bent on provoking and exploiting the scandal and did so with careful, planned strategic aims. As media savvy as any recent congressional leader, Newt Gingrich understood the importance of press accounts in weakening Wright. Compiling some press accounts critical of Wright’s practices, Gingrich would then promote those stories to other reporters and media outlets challenging them as to why they had not investigated Wright

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(Barry, 1990, 240–3). He ultimately helped the media find the importance of covering Wright’s ethics and contributed to, if not produced, a multiplier effect. Gingrich engaged these political efforts inside the House as well. Ignoring the Credit Mobilier and Sweig–Voloshen scandals, Gingrich made one of his patented historian’s claims in a “Dear Colleague” letter: “The House has never before had to deal with allegations of unethical conduct at the Speaker’s level . . . We owe it to our constitution, to the institution of the House, and to our sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution to insist on a thorough and fair investigation.”7 Continuing to drum up support among House Republicans, by February, Gingrich invited colleagues to send staff to a briefing he would lead to educate them on his charges against Wright: “Because the allegations levied against Speaker Wright are so numerous and the web of corruption so complex, I would like to invite your staff to attend. . . I will outline for your staff the various charges of unethical conduct and ethics violations levied by the press against Speaker Wright and Democratic Whip Tony Coelho.”8 The House Republican leadership also distributed “Talking Points on the Ethics Committee Process with Regard to the Wright Inquiry” to all House Republicans “to assist you in constituent or press inquiries.”9 All of the weapons of a burgeoning public congressional leadership apparatus – engaging the press, educating colleagues, and distributing talking points – were put to an early test in the Wright scandal. Guided less by history and propriety, however, behind-the-scenes Republicans were open about the political advantages of pursuing Wright. Citing prior polling that showed that “Wright can be a significant liability to a Democratic congressional candidate,” the NRCC began testing television campaign spots which could “be used to capitalize on the Speaker Wright potential in selected congressional districts.”10 Part of the Republican effort, then, was to strengthen the representational ties between Jim Wright and rank-and-file Democratic House members running for reelection: We must document our charges to help elevate the voters’ awareness of Jim Wright and the whole scandal surrounding his behavior. While voters may not realize that the first vote their representative casts is the one to elect the Speaker, we must communicate this without even hinting at a goal of electing a Republican Speaker or creating a Republican majority in the House. . .. Any and all help you can give in making Wright’s situation better known will translate into direct assistance for our challengers.11

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Although Gingrich’s long-term efforts to take over the House were clearly at play in the attack on Wright, short-term practical politics occupied the NRCC. Thinking Wright “a serious liability” for Democrats, NRCC executive director (and Gingrich associate) Joe Gaylord wrote clearly to House Republican leadership staff that “Our interest in Wright is motivated by the fact that no other issue is moving the congressional electorate.”12 As the political pressure of the scandal mounted, Wright fought a war on two fronts: outside of Congress with the press and inside of Congress with an increasingly aggressive Republican minority. For years, Jim Wright had made it a practice to write to reporters and editors to encourage positive coverage and to rebuke coverage with which he disagreed. As allegations surrounding Wright’s book deal mounted, Wright went back to this well-worn strategy to encourage positive press and “correct” his critics. Responding to a positive piece, Wright wrote to Carolyn Barta of the Dallas Morning News praising her coverage while taking a swipe at the rest of the press: “You were kind enough to read the book itself – not just the royalty contract – for which I’m grateful . . . Would that more could judge it on that basis.”13 If his local press was more complimentary, the national press took aim at the speaker. When Time magazine ran a piece quite critical of the speaker’s conduct, Wright returned fire at reporters Margaret Carlson and Hays Gorey in a letter to Gorey: “I just read your piece in the April 17 issue of Time. I suspect that some of the more snide and judgmental wording was supplied by Margaret Carlson whom I don’t know or maybe by an editor.”14 Wright understood from the first that much of the ethics fight would be fought in the news media. Simultaneously fighting back inside the House, the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) levied charges against Gingrich of “mail fraud” in regard to his political action committee, thus beginning a long-term challenge to Gingrich’s own ethics.15 Moreover, the Wright forces were trying to convince Republicans, the press, and the public that the Wright matter was an empty issue politically. When Democrat Jill Long won a special election in Indiana despite Republican efforts to tie her to the Wright issue, in March 1989, the speaker’s office issued a press release that included the following: “Her victory should serve as an early warning signal that attacks on Speaker Wright will prove as ineffective in 1990 as they were in 1988.”16 Following soon after this victory, DCCC chairman Beryl Anthony (D-AR) circulated among House Democrats articles from several publications “discussing the plan by ‘Million Dollar’ Ed Rollins and the NRCC

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to make Speaker Wright ‘Target No. 1’ in 1990”; dubbing the plan “just more smoke and mirrors from the Republicans,” Anthony cited the Long victory to bolster Democrats’ confidence and support for the speaker.17 Ultimately, however, the combination of the facts, the press, and the Republican “sack the quarterback” strategy consumed Wright in May 1989. In early May, the media reported that John Mack, a top Wright aide, had been convicted years prior of a violent attack on a woman. Although Mack had served prison time and risen in the ranks of the House staff over many years, the revelation – wholly unrelated in content to the allegations against Wright – proved devastating politically (Toner, 1989). Weeks later, Majority Whip Tony Coelho announced that he would resign his post (Oreskes, 1989b); his quick resignation to spare the party turmoil increased the pressure within the Caucus for Wright to follow suit (Rosenbaum, 1989). Republican leader Bob Michel argued that Wright’s troubles had become a distraction to the work of the House, which was in a “state of suspended animation” until the matter was resolved. And, House Democrats were wondering just how much Wright and the party could take. As Representative David Obey (D-WI) put it, “The tactical problem he faces is that the actions he takes to defend himself on one battlefield are entirely different from the actions he may need to take to defend himself on another” (Oreskes, 1989a). Even if Democrats were unsure as to how the Ethics Committee would rule, it was increasingly clear that politics was taking its toll on Wright’s image and, by extension, the House Democratic Party. By the last week of May, it was widely understood that Wright would address the House on May 31 and resign the speakership. Hoping to transition from “sacked quarterback” to “martyred leader,” Wright offered in his resignation speech to “bring this period of mindless cannibalism to an end:” I’m going to make you a proposition. Let me give you back this job you gave me as a propitiation for all of this season of bad will that has grown up among us; give it back to you. I will resign as Speaker of the House effective upon the election of my successor . . . I don’t want to be a party to tearing up the institution. I love it.

Continuing, the Speaker pleaded with his colleagues to allow his resignation to be “a total payment for the anger and hostility that we feel for each other:” Let’s not try to get even with each other. Republicans, please don’t get in your heads you need to get somebody else because of John Tower. Democrats, please don’t feel you need to get somebody on the other side because of me. We ought to be more mature than that. (Wright, 1989)

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Wright’s pleas would go unheeded, however. Less than two weeks later, Republicans at the RNC and in the House engaged in a smear campaign designed to insinuate that Wright’s successor, Tom Foley, married for decades, was gay. Leaks of innuendo about Foley to the press were followed up by the circulation of an RNC memorandum entitled “Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet,” which compared Foley’s voting record to that of Barney Frank. Notably, a Gingrich staff member was identified as a New York Daily News source regarding “rumors about Foley’s sexual orientation” (Alston, 1989, 1374). Although the Republican establishment rejected the over-reach and fired the RNC staffer and Foley would survive his speakership without serious ethics charges, the “sack the quarterback” strategy had proven its use and become a model for both parties going forward.

What goes around comes around: The case of Newt Gingrich Making ethics charges “institutional” had been a part of Newt Gingrich’s political playbook well before he drove the press and congressional investigations that brought Jim Wright’s speakership to an end. When Gingrich ran for Congress in 1976, it was in his second run against Democratic incumbent and Ethics Committee chairman John Flynt of Georgia where Gingrich’s affinity for using ethics complaints to make broader claims of institutional corruption was forged. In a 1976 news conference statement, the Gingrich campaign foreshadowed the strategy and rhetoric of a Gingrich the nation would come to know over the next decades: Two years ago the people of the United States breathed a sigh of relief that hopefully the political scandals of this country were over. They sent to Washington the freshest . . . and newest . . . Congress in recent history. But public hope has decayed. The scandals are not over. . . . The reason is simple. Over the past two years, through one front page scandal after another, the House Ethics Committee has failed to act. They have made only three feeble moves to correct the abuses, efforts that would seem comic if we were not talking about the U.S. Congress.18

Citing the Hays and Sikes’s scandals as examples of the committee weakly punishing members, Gingrich went on to list criminal indictments, some convictions, and general accusations against current House members (labeled “The Ten Most Suspect”) for which the Ethics Committee had failed to act at all. Laying the responsibility for the committee’s inaction at the feet of Chairman

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Flynt (and citing recent charges against Flynt himself), Gingrich called for “A clean sweep of the Ethics Committee and its corrupt and incompetent Chairman.”19 Thus, when charges of ethics violations were levied against Gingrich 20 years later, those allegations represented the culmination of a new style of institutional-ethics combat Gingrich had pioneered even before his congressional career began. In Congress, Gingrich would continue this confrontational style in his longstanding efforts to build a House Republican majority, including, of course, his pursuit of Jim Wright. Climbing within the House GOP, Gingrich pushed the ethics strategy, first, in the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS) rump group that he had formed and, later, as whip (Barry, 1990, 165–8). Internal COS meeting notes reveal that using the ethics process was a key part of the group’s effort to polarize the House in the broader hope of winning majority control. A summary document entitled “Laying the Groundwork” included the following: “The COS forced four separate votes on ethics in 1987 and used the Independent Counsel Law as a forum to further discuss ethics as applied to Members of Congress . . .. In addition, COS institutionalized the ethics challenge: ethics has become a mainstream irrepressible and party-unifying issue.”20 Touting these successes, the COS claimed credit for driving the top House Republican leadership, including Minority Leader Bob Michel, to take up ethics and broader institutional reforms. Perhaps an even bigger political success was the fact that the COS had interested the mainstream media in the ethics issue: “The media, too, finding corruption a natural issue, continues to pursue the ethics debate on its own.”21 Even after these efforts had proven fruitful and Republicans won their House majority in 1994, Gingrich continued his challenge to the legitimacy of Democratic rule of the House when, upon being elected speaker, he issued a public call demanding that the outgoing Democratic leadership not destroy or remove official papers and to “clearly inform the Democrat staff of the legal consequences of destruction of documents” even though there had been no suggestion that Speaker Foley or others had any plans to do so; the insinuation was enough to complete the narrative of 40 years of corrupt Democratic control. Indeed, he also indicated that Republicans would distribute new passes and security credentials “to further safeguard the physical security of the [Capitol] complex” (Burger, 1994). Overwhelmed by the Republican tsunami in 1994 and stinging from these rebukes, House Democrats quickly set about examining the propriety and legality

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of Gingrich’s long-term efforts to take over the House and his own personal dealings as he had for Jim Wright. In September 1994, an ethics complaint was lodged by former congressman Ben Jones (D-GA), whom Gingrich defeated, who claimed that Gingrich had violated tax laws to support a college course he taught. Perhaps, most notably, upon election, Speaker Gingrich was offered a multimillion dollar book deal from the Rupert Murdoch–owned HarperCollins publisher while Murdoch “had interests before Congress” (Salant, 1995). Of course, the symmetry between Gingrich’s “book deal” and that for which Gingrich had targeted Wright led to charges of hypocrisy and heightened the potential import of the allegations. Inspired by the new dimension that Gingrich had brought to the minority whip role, Democratic Whip David Bonior (D-MI) pursued an ethics strategy against the speaker. Bonior held four news conferences between the November 1994 elections and the beginning of the 104th Congress in January 1995 in which he criticized a nascent GOP plan to assert more majority party control over the Ethics process in the House; championed Ben Jones’s ethics complaint; criticized the $4.5 million book deal; and celebrated when Gingrich announced that he would forego the book advance (Bonior said that Gingrich “didn’t see the light so much as he felt the heat”) (Merida, 1995). Bonior continued this role throughout Gingrich’s speakership proving a constant nuisance to the speaker. As if they had just discovered the “sack the quarterback” strategy, the Gingrich forces decried Bonior’s efforts and called on him to stop. In January 1996, top Republican leaders wrote to Bonior on Gingrich’s behalf “implor[ing]” him “to stop using the Ethics Committee as a political weapon. Enough is enough . . . The Democrats have publicly admitted that they have a calculated effort underway to destroy Newt and reverse the results of the 1994 election.”22 Still, in the shadow of continued ethics complaints and mounting evidence that the Ethics Committee would find Gingrich culpable at least on some charges, support for Gingrich’s reelection as speaker was fraying. Moderate Republican Jim Leach of Iowa announced that he would not support the speaker’s reelection insisting that a speaker “must be free of any shadow concerning allegiance to the law or the truth”; more practically, Leach said, “The party’s future and the reputation of the Congress are clearly jeopardized by his continued stewardship of the House” (Clymer, 1997a). As other moderates considered the implications of voting for Gingrich for speaker on the first vote of the 105th Congress, Gingrich expended considerable effort rounding up commitments from his Republican

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colleagues in advance of the speaker vote; with his weakness evident, several looked to get in exchange promises of greater access to the speaker, his support for their own legislative priorities, and assurances about his own political stature coming out of the investigation.23 Gingrich survived the speakership vote, though not all House Republicans voted in lockstep as is typically the case on speakership votes. The political storm behind him, Gingrich still faced judgment from the Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee felt that the book deal “create[d] the impression of exploiting one’s office for personal gain. Such a perception is especially troubling when it pertains to the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives, a constitutional office requiring the highest standards of ethical behavior” (Clymer, 1997c). The process culminated in what was called a “reprimand plus” in which Gingrich was not only officially reprimanded but was fined $300,000. Gingrich knew, however, that the politically consequential fight was still in the media. The Ethics Committee knew this, too. As part of Gingrich’s plea arrangement he had agreed not to take part in any media campaign to characterize the Committee’s findings and the punishments. But a leaked conference call revealed that Gingrich was participating in some discussions about how to spin the effort (New York Times, 1997). It was later revealed that Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) leaked the intercepted phone conversation to the press. Continuing the fight, Republicans turned to attacking McDermott, but the revelation helped to solidify negative impressions of the speaker and the reprimand in the media. Somewhat later, bristling against press criticism of his reprimand and fine, Gingrich encouraged business owners who “control [the media] with your advertising” to apply pressure to editorial boards and newsrooms (Sack, 1997) to fight back against the liberal mainstream media’s attacks. Despite “reprimand-plus” and the political toll of the scandal, Gingrich continued in the speakership, though he was clearly weakened. Ethics Committee Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland said, “We have never had a speaker before who was sitting and reprimanded by the House. I don’t think any of us know what that means as far as the speaker’s ability to run the House” (Clymer, 1997b). Some Republicans, too, were unsettled not simply by the allegations but by the seriousness of the charges exemplified by the large fine levied by the bipartisan Ethics Committee. Even some of those who did support Gingrich on the speakership vote expressed regret. Conservative Republican Mark Sanford (R-SC) complained, “I would not have voted for Gingrich as speaker if I’d been

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able to read this [the committee’s report] before . . . We didn’t have all the facts and yet we had to vote” (Clymer, 1997c). The Ethics complaints and the damage to Gingrich’s public image were surely factors in the subsequent challenges to his speakership. In July 1997, an abortive coup attempt against Gingrich was an early sign that Republicans felt that he had become a political liability. And, in Fall 1998, it was clear that Republicans had had their fill of Gingrich’s politics and the effort to dump him after the disappointing midterm elections was stopped only by Gingrich’s announcement that he would resign.

Conclusions As the internal dynamics of the Wright and Gingrich cases reveal, scandal politics is strategic politics. Whereas accused politicians employ “damage control” strategies to insulate themselves from scandal’s fallout, there is also another strategic side to scandal: increasingly political actors strategize to inflict scandal-based damage on their political opponents in order to weaken the opposition and, under certain circumstances, the political institutions they influence or control. At its core, this “sack the quarterback” strategy is an exercise in narrative construction wherein a politician’s accusers weave a story that explores how the interaction between the nature of the alleged offense and the institutional importance of the member connects to other, broader narratives in the Washington scene. When successful, such scandal stories take what could have been an isolated incident of a personal failing and connect them to broader patterns of politics with significant institutional consequences. Although such efforts to taint one’s colleagues and political rivals have been rare in the past (particularly in Congress where collegiality once ruled), given the high public profile of contemporary leaders and the hyper-partisan political environment, the political allure of scandal politics has proven too great for politicians to resist. Jim Wright fell to scandal and Newt Gingrich rose. Gingrich, in turn, was weakened by scandal and Republicans retaliated by filing ethics charges against David Bonior (D-MI) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) for actions they took against Gingrich. The persistence of such efforts stands as testament to the perceived effectiveness of the “sack the quarterback” strategy in the new era of polarization in Congress. Investigating ethics and exploiting scandal has become just another weapon in the partisan conflict consuming Capitol Hill.

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Works cited Alston, Chuck. 1989. “Smear Tactics Overshadow Election of New Speaker”. CQ Weekly, June 10, 1373–1375. Asbury, Edith Evans. 1970. “Jury Finds Sweig Guilty of Single Perjury Count: Clears Him of Six Other Charges of Misusing Speaker’s Office”. New York Times, July 10, p. 1. Barry, John. 1990. The Ambition and the Power. New York: Penguin. Burger, Timothy J., 1994. “Gingrich Asks Dems Not to Destroy Papers”. Roll Call, November 10, p. 1. Clymer, Adam. 1997a. “Gingrich Makes Appeal to Party; Moderate Urges Him to Step Down”. New York Times, January 7, p. 1. ———. 1997b. “Gingrich is Chastened but Still in Charge”. Penalties and Power, January 19, p. 1. ———. 1997c. “Even after Committee Vote, Gingrich Case Is Unsettled”. New York Times, January 20, p. B6. CNN. 2005. “DeLay Indicted, Steps Down as Majority Leader”. CNN, September 29, http://articles.cnn.com/2005-09-28/politics/delay.indict_1_district-attorney-ronnieearle-delay-conspiracy-charge?_s=PM:POLITICS, accessed 6/15/2012. ———. 2006. “Crooked Congressman Going to Prison”. CNN, March 3, http://articles. cnn.com/2006-03-03/justice/cunningham.sentenced_1_congressman-cunninghamjason-forge-mitchell-wade?_s=PM:LAW, accessed 6/15/2012. Congressional Quarterly. 1980. Congressional Ethics. 2nd edition. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly. ———. 1992. Congressional Ethics: History, Facts, and Controversy. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly. Ferrechio, Susan. 2006. “DeLay Decides Enough is Enough”. CQ Weekly, p. 976, April 10. Fried, Amy and Douglas B. Harris. 2001. “On Red Capes and Charging Bulls: How and Why Conservative Politicians Promoted Public Anger.” In John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, eds., What is It About Government that Americans Dislike? New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 157–74. Ginsberg, Benjamin and Martin Shefter. 1990. Politics by Other Means. New York: W.W. Norton. Green, Mark J., James M. Fallows, and David R. Zwick. 1972. Who Runs Congress? The President, Big Business, Or You? New York: Bantam Books. Grossman, Mark. 2003. Political Corruption in America: An Encyclopedia of Scandals, Power, and Greed. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Harris, Douglas B., 1998. “The Rise of the Public Speakership”. Political Science Quarterly, 113 (Summer): 193–212. ———. 2010. “Partisan Framing in Legislative Debates.” In Brian F. Schaffner and Patrick J. Sellers, eds., Winning with Words: The Origins and Impact of Framing. New York: Routledge, pp. 41–59.

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———. 2012. “Behavioral Reality and Institutional Change: Historical Methods for Political Science’s Historical-Institutional Turn.” In Scott Frisch, Douglas B. Harris, Sean Q Kelly, and David Parker, eds., Doing Archival Research in Political Science. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. Hulse, Carl. 2006. “For Democrats, a Scandal of Their Own”. New York Times, May 23, p. A18. Kiely, Kathy and David Jackson. 2006. “Hastert Says He’s Not Going to Quit”. USA Today, October 4, p. 5A. Kuntz, Phil. 1989. “Coelho’s Sudden Departure”. CQ Weekly, June 3, p. 1295. Malbin, Michael. 1976. “Many Races for Congress are Contests in Morality”. New York Times, October 31, p. E3. Merida, Kevin. 1995. “Bonior Barks at the Capitol’s New Masters”. Washington Post, January 9, p. A4. New York Times. 1997. “Excerpts from Republican Leaders’ Conference Call”. New York Times, January 10, p. A20. Oreskes, Michael. 1989a. “Gloom on Wright Shakes Gathering of Key Democrats”. New York Times, May 18, p. A1. ———. 1989b. “Coelho to Resign His Seat in House in Face of Inquiry”. New York Times, May 27, p. 1. Remini, Robert. 2006. The House: The History of the House of Representatives. New York: HarperCollins. Rohde, David. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rosenbaum, David E., 1989. “Coelho Underpaid ’86 Tax by $2,000 in Sale of Bond”. New York Times, May 18, p. B6. Sack, Kevin. 1997. “Gingrich Attacks Press as Out of Touch”. New York Times, April 23, p. D21. Salant, Jonathan. 1995. “Murdoch to Talk About Book Deal”. CQ Weekly, July 29, 2244. Sinclair, Barbara. 1995. Legislators, Leaders and Lawmaking. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Toner, Robin. 1989. “Wright Aide Quits Amid Furor on ’73 Crime”. New York Times, May 12, p. A1. Wright, James C., Jr. 1989. Transcribed Resignation Speech. “Wright Offers Back His Job: ‘Propitiation for Bad Will’ ”. CQ Weekly, June 3, p. 1343. Zelizer, Julian. 2004. On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948–2000. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Notes   1 Bill Gray to Speaker Wright (circa 1988), Folder “Sack the Quarterback” Box RC 1/17(b), JCW. Here and throughout this chapter references are made to documents

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uncovered in the archived papers of congressional leaders. The collections cited herein include the Carl Albert Collection, the Carl Albert Congressional Research Center, University of Oklahoma (CAC); the Jim Wright Collection, Mary Couts Burnett Library, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas (JCW); the Robert H. Michel Collection, Dirksen Congressional Research Center, Pekin, Illinois (RHM); and the Papers of Representative Newt Gingrich, Special Collections, University of West Georgia (NLG). I wish to acknowledge the support of the Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Research Center and the Caterpillar Foundation and Loyola University Maryland, which supported travel to archives and interviews with congressional staff. Thanks also to Speaker Newt Gingrich and the staff at newt.org who allowed me early access to the Gingrich papers as well as to Speaker Jim Wright.   2 In addition to the Sweig–Voloshen affair discussed above, both former speaker, then vice president, Schuyler Colfax (R-IN) and current speaker James G. Blaine (R-ME) were implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s; Remini 2006; Grossman 2003, 84–5; Congressional Ethics 1992, 7. More recently, indictments were handed down involving a secretary to Speaker Carl Albert in which the secretary sought money for offering influence in getting criminal charges dropped; Richard Lyons, “Albert Aide Indicted in Influence Scheme” New York Times, February 22, 1975. And, Speaker Tip O’Neill faced scrutiny (but emerged largely unscathed) about his tangential involvement in the Tongsun Park “Koreagate” scandal of the mid-1970s; Congressional Ethics 1992, 20–1.   3 In addition to formal institutional position, a member’s public visibility and media profile can also heighten the importance of a particular scandal. Take for example the sex scandals that plagued the New York House delegation in 2010 and 2011. Although he did not hold an important chairmanship (he was, however, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee), Anthony Weiner’s high-profile media visibility and outspoken policy statements on health care and other issues made his downfall seem more institutionally consequential than either Eric Massa (D-NY) or Christopher Lee (R-NY), both of whom also were implicated in (and resigned over) sex scandals.   4 Sometimes, even where leaders are involved, an incident might be contained. Lott’s resignation is a rare instance of resignation in what would otherwise be an isolated incident. Far from what we might expect in this hyper-partisan era, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) seemed to want to help Lott get through the storm, but more long-standing internecine conflicts in the Republican Party led the Bush White House to abandon Lott and quickly back Bill Frist for Republican leader. Lott gave up his leadership post and the Republicans moved on. This was a unique case, to be sure, but this and other incidents might be so isolated that they may not even merit the term “scandal.”

50   5   6   7   8   9 10

11

12

13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Scandal! Personal interview with Speaker Jim Wright, July 28, 2000. On the value of archival research for such purposes, see Harris 2010, 2012. Newt Gingrich “Dear Colleague” 12/15/87, Folder “Newt Gingrich” Box 18, JCW. Newt Gingrich “Dear Colleague” 2/17/88, Folder “Newt Gingrich” Box 18, JCW. Robert H. Michel “Dear Republican Colleague” 3/21/89, Folder “Dear Republican Colleague Notebook, 1989 (1)” Leadership Files Box 13, RHM. Joe Gaylord to House Republican Leadership Staff 10/18/88, Folder “Kehl, D. Legislative Republican Party – House (1),” Staff Files – David Kehl Files Box 12, RHM. Joe Gaylord to House Republican Leadership Staff 10/18/88, Folder “Kehl, D. Legislative Republican Party – House (1),” Staff Files – David Kehl Files Box 12, RHM. Joe Gaylord to House Republican Leadership Staff 10/18/88, Folder “Kehl, D. Legislative Republican Party – House (1),” Staff Files – David Kehl Files Box 12, RHM. Wright to Barta 6/27/88, Folder “Press Letters – Correspondence” R/C Box 3/8, JCW. Margaret Carlson and Hays Gorey, “A Case of Wright and Wrong: Despite Alleged Wrongdoing, the Speaker Is Likely to Survive” Time 4/17/1989; Wright to Hays Gorey April 1989, Folder “Press Letters – Correspondence” R/C Box 3/8, JCW. Beryl Anthony “Dear Colleague” 1/26/88, Folder “Democratic Party” Box 18–13, JCW. “Speaker Wright Responds to Indiana Special Election” 3/29/89, Folder “Press Releases 1989” RC Box 1/20, 3/2, 3/12, 6/1, JCW. Beryl Anthony “Dear Colleague” 4/4/89, Box 17–99, JCW. Newt Gingrich for Congress, “Gingrich News Conference Statement” 9/22/76 Folder 18, Campaign Series Box 21, CAC. Newt Gingrich for Congress, “Gingrich News Conference Statement” 9/22/76 Folder 18, Campaign Series Box 21, CAC. Conservative Opportunity Society, “1987 – Laying the Groundwork” Folder “Weekly COS 1988”, Box 1063, NLG. Conservative Opportunity Society, “1987 – Laying the Groundwork” Folder “Weekly COS 1988”, Box 1063, NLG. Armey, DeLay, Boehner, Livingson, Linder, Paxon, Walker, and Emerson to David Bonior, 1/26/96, Folder “Joint Statements” Box 2213, NLG. Folder “Newt Investigation Information,” Box 2629, NLG.

2

Spending More Time with My Family: Scandals and Premature Departures from the House Lara Brown and Girish J. “Jeff ” Gulati

Shortly after the 2010 midterm elections, Representative Eric Cantor (VA), in his new role as the majority leader for House Republicans, prepared “a 144-page how-to House guidebook” for members of the large incoming freshman class. While the manual advised members to “read and re-read the U.S. Constitution,” it also stressed that they “become very familiar with congressional ethics rules.”1 The guidebook further reminded, “If you don’t want to see an activity or event reported on the front page of the local newspaper, don’t do it.” Despite this warning, less than ninety days later, Republican Representative Chris Lee (NY) became embroiled in a sex scandal whereby he had e-mailed a shirtless photograph of himself to a woman on Craigslist. Lee resigned the day his behavior was revealed. Amazingly, four months later, Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner (NY) was caught sending sexually suggestive pictures and messages to multiple “followers” of his on Twitter. Weiner’s “sexting scandal” played out in the newspapers and on television for over three weeks before he resigned from office.2 During the previous Congress, Democratic Representative Charles Rangel (NY) was charged by the House Ethics Committee with numerous financially related violations, including breaking the “public trust,” yet he refused to resign his seat.3 He has since won reelection twice. In 2006, Republican Representative Bob Ney (Ohio) was investigated by the Justice Department for accepting illegal gifts as part of the scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Like Rangel, Ney denied the charges and pursued reelection. Ney won his primary, but before the general election, he resigned his seat, saying, “his family was his overriding consideration.”4 The next month, Ney pled guilty and checked-in for treatment at “an alcohol

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rehabilitation facility.”5 These widely varying stories all suggest that while scandals, as Scott Basinger details in the following chapter, “are associated with higher rates of general election defeats,”6 they also affect which congressional incumbents make it to the general election. Using data from six recent election cycles (2000–2010), this study investigates the effect of scandals on incumbent members’ exit rates prior to the general election. We find that the presence of a scandal increases the likelihood of an incumbent member’s “premature departure” (resignation, retirement, and primary loss) from Congress and that the volume of media coverage of the scandal also affects the likelihood of an early exit. More specifically, we show that both the type of scandal and the partisan affiliation of the member matter in terms of whether an incumbent member pursues reelection or departs Congress. Hence, the details of an incumbent’s scandal and the context in which it erupts are important for understanding its impact on the electoral cycle. Prior to discussing our methodology and presenting the statistical models that explore the scandal-related “premature departures” from the House of Representatives, we review some of the literature on congressional scandals and strategic retirements.

Literature review While there are a number of studies that investigate congressional incumbent departures (retirements and resignations) and candidate entries, the majority of this research assumes that incumbents leave voluntarily.7 As such, both incumbents and challengers are understood to assess rationally and strategically their individual probabilities of winning, and then make their candidate decisions accordingly. For instance, Jennifer Wolak found that “rates of retirement [from Congress] are strongly influenced by context – not only the climate on Capitol Hill, but the trends in the national political environment. . .[thus] retirement reflects the costs and benefits of continued congressional service, as well as the probability of member reelection as captured by changing public preferences.”8 Further, most of these “strategic retirement” models include scandal as just one individual-level variable among many that may affect an incumbent’s decision to pursue reelection or retire, but they only rarely explore how varying types of scandals or those more highly publicized may differentially impact a member’s departure decision.9 One exception that

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is focused on the Senate found that members were more likely to retire when their scandals were severe enough that they believed they would be expelled from the chamber.10 In short, not all incumbent scandals are equal and more investigation needs to be done in order to understand how incumbent members weigh their ethical transgressions against their electoral chances. The emphasis in prior research on other incumbent attributes (e.g., seniority and age) and political conditions (e.g., redistricting and party fortunes) fails to fully explain the strategic choices of incumbents and challengers in congressional elections. More broadly, our research claims that when it comes to scandal-tainted members, retirements, resignations, and primary losses should be grouped together as “involuntary departures.” Said another way, scandal-tainted incumbents may imperfectly calculate their probability of winning reelection and as such, they may make different decisions about whether or not to seek reelection. Nonetheless, in each of these three instances, the scandal appears to be “forcing” the incumbent out of office prior to the general election. Thus, the previous studies that examined “voluntary” departures and primary election losses separately were theoretically misspecified and likely minimized the overall impact of scandal on the electoral cycle. Beyond this past research, the literature on congressional scandals has primarily focused on understanding the relationship between incumbent scandals and the general election vote while ignoring the earlier stages of the electoral cycle.11 The majority of this scholarship has tended to narrowly investigate either one electoral cycle where scandals appeared to play a major role in the outcomes12 or one or two aspects of a scandal and its effect (incumbent’s party affiliation, type and/or severity of scandal, challenger quality, retirement rate, incumbent’s level of integrity, etc.) on congressional vote share.13 Most of these aggregate-level or individual-year studies conceptualize scandal as one piece of information in a “trade-offs” model of the vote, meaning that voters are thought to weigh “corruption charges” or moral transgressions against other factors (e.g., party affiliation, challenger quality, an incumbent’s perceived level of competence, and/or state of the economy) in determining their vote choice.14 Hence, voters discount a candidate’s “shady” character if they like the candidate’s policy issues or are loyal to her party. This research finds that scandal-tainted incumbents suffer modest electoral retribution (a loss of about 5–11% of vote share), but most are reelected. Scott Basinger extends this line of research and includes senators in his deft analysis in the next chapter. Along with statistical models describing the

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expected decline in incumbent vote share attributable to a scandal, he examines an incumbent’s likelihood of retaining his/her seat. While all incumbents have more than an even chance of winning reelection, scandals lower “the rate at which incumbents face an easy path to victory (i.e., uncontested elections and amateur challengers) and rais[e] the rate at which the incumbent or his party faces the need to fight more strenuously to hold a seat.”15 Hence, as both Basinger’s work and much of the literature finds that scandal adversely affects vote share, we expect (H1) scandal to increase the likelihood of an incumbent member’s premature departure (resignation, retirement, or primary election losses). Aside from the overall negative impact of scandal on incumbent vote share, some past research examined the factors, which may worsen or mitigate voter retribution. The type of scandal (personal or financial) is known to have differential effects on vote share, but as Doherty, Dowling, and Miller explain, “experimental research finds that people respond more negatively to financial scandals (Carlson, Ganiel, and Hyde 2000; Funk 1996), whereas observational work tends to either find no difference between the two or the reverse relationship (Brown 2001, 2006, 2007; Peters and Welch 1980; Welch and Hibbing 1997).”16 Another recent observational study,17 examining the 2006 election, also showed that personal scandals incurred greater electoral retribution than corruption scandals. Since our work is observational in nature, we expect our findings to be in accordance with past observational research. Our next two hypotheses reflect these expectations: (H2a) a public scandal (financial) will have no effect on the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure; (H2b) a private scandal will increase the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure. There are also a handful of studies that examine the media and political scandals, though most are focused on coverage decisions (e.g., content tone, volume of articles, possible biases), not coverage effects.18 Nevertheless, these scholars find that the media not only tend to cover scandals more than other issues, but also tend to cover private scandals more than public ones, unless the scandal involves legal proceedings, which can drive coverage decisions.19 Our next two hypotheses not only build from this past work, but also look to test the impact that media coverage of the scandal has on the incumbent embroiled in the scandal: (H3a) an increase in the media coverage of a scandal will increase the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure; (H3b) private scandal coverage will increase the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure

Scandals and Premature Departures from the House

55

more than public scandal coverage. This second hypothesis also stems from an assumption that the larger volume of private scandal coverage will be perceived by an incumbent as potentially more damaging to his/her reelection prospects and would then make him/her more likely to retire, resign, or lose a primary election. With the exception of Roberds’s research on the Senate and Herrick’s work on the long-term rates of scandal “survivability,” none of the past studies of either strategic retirements or primary defeats included media coverage or attempted to sort out the differential impacts that party affiliation or the type of scandal (private or public) might have on scandal-tainted members’ departures.20 Thus, the quantitative research on congressional scandals does not adequately describe what factors determine whether or not a scandal-tainted incumbent prematurely departs Congress.

Data and methodology We test our hypotheses by analyzing “premature departures” (retirement, resignation, or primary loss) from the House of Representatives between 2000 and 2010. Excluded from our analysis were those incumbents who either exited the House to seek a higher office or passed away while in office. Hence, for these six election cycles, we identified 2,560 races in which an incumbent began the electoral cycle poised for reelection. In 176 of these races, the incumbent member retired, resigned, or lost a primary election. In 23 of these 176 contests, the incumbent member was tainted by a scandal. As Table 2.1 describes, there were a total of 96 races with a scandal-tainted incumbent. Yet in two instances the incumbent ran for higher office (i.e., Republican Representatives Katherine Harris of Florida and Heather Wilson of New Mexico each resigned to pursue Senate races) and in another contest, the incumbent, Representative John Murtha (D-PA), passed away. In sum, our analysis included 93 races with a scandal-tainted incumbent. Putting these data together, the percentage of “premature departures” in races without a scandal-tainted incumbent is 6.2 (153/2467), whereas the percentage of “premature departures” in races with a scandal-tainted incumbent is 24.7 (23/93). This fourfold increase in “premature departures” suggests that scandal is a key variable in understanding not only the general election outcomes, but which incumbents make it to the general election.

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Table 2.1  Descriptive counts of scandal, media coverage, and election outcomes Group

All

Democrats

Republicans

All scandals

96

42

54

Private scandals

20

9

11

Public scandals

84

36

48

Members with multiple scandals or scandal over multiple years

19

9

10

Members with scandals who retired or resigned

18

3

15

Members with scandals who ran for reelection

75

38

37

Members with scandals who lost in the primaries

5

5

0

Members with scandals who lost in the general election

9

2

7

Members with scandals who won reelection

60

31

30

Mean percentage of media coverage of all scandals

55.4

56.0

54.9

Mean percentage of media coverage of private scandals

54.7

53.8

55.4

Mean percentage of media coverage of public scandals

50.3

51.9

49.1

As suggested by the above discussion, the dependent variable – premature departure – is a dummy (1 or 0), indicating whether or not the incumbent member retired, resigned, or lost a primary election. Our primary independent variable is the presence or absence of a scandal associated with the incumbent. Using Thompson’s criteria for classifying the actions or behavior as a scandal,21 we operationalize scandals by using the following distinctions: (1) unethical behavior that is private in nature (sexual misconduct, but also drug and alcohol abuse, messy divorces, car accidents, etc.); (2) unethical behavior that is public in nature (conflicts of interest, bribery, influence peddling, misuse of funds, etc.); and (3) unethical behavior that involves both private and public transgressions (e.g., Senator John Ensign who had an extramarital affair and then attempted to assist the husband of his mistress in winning lobbying contracts).22 With the above operationalization, we identified 96 contests that included a scandal-tainted incumbent (42 Democrats and 54 Republicans). Of these scandals,

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57

12 were exclusively private in nature, 76 were exclusively public in nature, and 8 were classified as involving both private and public transgressions. It should be noted that Table 2.1 assigns those scandals involving both types of transgressions to each of the private scandal and public scandal totals. Hence, the combined total of private scandals and public scandals (104) over-counts the actual total (96) by eight. To measure the media exposure of each incumbent’s scandal, we divided the number of articles in the New York Times and Washington Post that had the scandal as its main focus (i.e., reference to the scandal was made in the headline or first three paragraphs) by the number of articles that mentioned the incumbent from the beginning of the Congress until Election Day. Said another way, we were looking at the national exposure that the scandal received. We then multiplied the proportion of scandal coverage by each of our two scandal variables. Thus, we are able to estimate the effect that a scandal has on departure and how much more is the impact as the level of news media coverage increases. Of those with coverage, the mean percentage of articles where the scandal was the focus was 64.1 and the median was 65. There were 23 incumbent races where scandal was never the focus of any coverage in either the Times or the Post. While there is a case to be made for attempting to understand the local media coverage of scandal, there are several problems that arise when one attempts to systematically measure local media coverage. First, few members’ districts are neatly covered by one local newspaper. Second, there is wide variability in the quality of these local newspapers. Third, with the large numbers of newspaper closings and the more general consolidation in the media business over the past decade, there is little consistency of local news coverage. Hence, determining each member’s appropriate local newspaper is not only problematical, but it reduces the replicability of this measure for future Congresses because these local sources may well cease to exist. Thus, although relying on two national newspapers may mean that some scandals seem to have gone uncovered, past research has shown that the New York Times tends to cover any serious scandal and the Washington Post tends to act as the “local paper” of Congress, covering more (perhaps “trivial” stories) than even some local news outlets.23 To assess the relative impact of scandals on premature departures, we include additional variables in the model that have been linked both theoretically and empirically to explaining congressional election outcomes, including strategic retirements.24 The first of these variables is the Partisan Voting Index (PVI) in the incumbent’s district. Developed by election analyst Charlie Cook, the PVI for each incumbent is the average of their party’s presidential candidate’s vote in the district

58

Scandal!

in the two most recent previous presidential elections and then subtracting the average of the opposing presidential candidate’s vote in the district from the same years. For races in the 2004 elections, the PVI is based only on the 2000 presidential election since the district boundaries were different in 1996. Incumbents from districts with a greater PVI should be less likely to prematurely depart Congress. We also include in the model other variables that have been shown to influence incumbents’ decisions to retire: seniority, redistricting, and election cycle.25 We measure seniority as the number of years in office. If an incumbent is from a state that lost a seat due to reapportionment, we assume that the redrawing of district lines resulted in the incumbent running in a district that had a significant number of new voters and consider the incumbent to have been impacted by redistricting. For incumbents in states that gained seats, we reviewed commentary provided in the 2004 edition of The Almanac of American Politics to see whether or not the incumbent’s district was significantly altered. We used this same procedure in assessing the impact in Texas and Georgia after their mid-census round of re-redistricting. For each of the six election cycles, we created dummy variables to test whether one election cycle was particularly bad for incumbents. The 2006, 2008, and 2010 elections were predicted to be partisan “wave” elections because of the unfavorable poll ratings registered by the incumbent president and his party throughout the fall in all three elections. Because 2006 and 2008 were unfavorable cycles for Republicans and 2008 was unfavorable for Democrats, we split the data set by party and estimated separate models for Republicans and Democrats. This procedure allows us to uncover an interaction effect between election cycle and party and identify any other variables in our model that vary by party. Thus, we created dummy variables for each election cycle except for 2010, which serves as the reference category.

Analysis and findings Table 2.2 presents a general logistic regression model of premature departures from the House of Representatives. It shows that for all of the contests the presence of a scandal increases the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure, confirming H1. The pooled model also reveals that an increase in the proportion of scandal coverage to all media coverage increases the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure, confirming H3a. Intriguingly, however,

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59

when the contests are split by the party affiliation of the member, it appears that there are differences in how both the presence of a scandal and the media coverage of a scandal impact these incumbents. In sum, the presence of scandal affects Democratic incumbents, whereas the media coverage of a scandal affects Republican members. Although these results were unanticipated, they do not necessarily conflict with past research on congressional scandals, which has suggested that Democrats and Republicans are differently affected by scandals.26 Table 2.2  Logistic regression models of scandal and media coverage on premature departures for House incumbents by party, 2000–2010 Independent variables

Pooled

Democrats

Republicans

1.027*

1.707*

.574

.443

.688

.630

.011*

.001

.018*

.005 −.047* .009

009 −.030* .014

007 −.060* .012

.641

1.780*

−.372

2000 election cycle

.332 −0.24* .008 −.595* .281

.491 −.020 .011 −1.129* .493

.464 −.027* .013 −.277 .377

2002 election cycle

−.460

−.997*

.050

.319 −.848* .305 −1.079* .311

.509 −.958* .464 −1.199* .519

.416 −.786 .420 −.883* .425

−.396

−1.865*

.255

.276 .830* .174 90.193* 17.890

.632 ---

.366 ---

56.437* 27.997

117.100* 24.815

2,553

1,302

1,251

Scandal (1=Presence) Media coverage of scandal Seniority (year elected)

Redistricting (1=impacted) Partisan Voting Index (PVI)

2004 election cycle 2006 election cycle 2008 election cycle Party (1=Republican) Constant N

Bold entries are logistic regression coefficients; standard errors are in italics. * Indicates that coefficients are statistically significant at .05 level or less.

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Scandal!

Looking at the other variables in these three models, it further becomes clear that Democrats and Republicans prematurely depart from the House for different reasons. For while the pooled regressions reveal that both seniority and the district’s PVI significantly affect the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure, these relationships do not hold when the data are split by party affiliation. Both an increase in seniority and a decrease in the district’s PVI increase the likelihood of a Republican incumbent’s premature departure, whereas a Democratic incumbent’s departure is not affected by a decrease in the district’s PVI. Further, redistricting is only significant in the Democratic model, suggesting that the Democrats who retired, resigned, or lost a primary election were in seats that had been redistricted. As for the election cycles, it appears that 2010 stood out as the cycle in which Democratic departures were much higher than usual, while 2006 stood out as the cycle most problematic for Republicans. In an attempt to better understand these dynamics, Table 2.3 separates scandal into the two categories of private and public scandal. The pooled model shows that the presence of a private scandal significantly increases the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure from the House. While these are logistic regression coefficients and they cannot be interpreted in a linear fashion, the size of the private scandal coefficient relative to all of the coefficients in the model is striking and it suggests that members with private scandals are unlikely to make it to the general election. The models for both Democratic and Republican incumbents also show that the presence of a private scandal increases the likelihood of a premature departure. None of the models show that the presence of a public scandal affects the likelihood of an incumbent’s departure. These findings provide support for H2a and H2b, and further affirm the previously discussed observational studies that find that private scandals are more costly than public ones. While media coverage of a private scandal does not appear to affect the likelihood of an incumbent’s premature departure, media coverage of a public scandal in the pooled model and the Republican model does. In other words, an increase in the media coverage of a scandal (whether public or private) does not make it any more likely that a Democratic incumbent will prematurely depart from Congress. Although this is also true for Republicans embroiled in a private scandal, this is not the case for those Republican incumbents associated with a public scandal. These findings are opposite the posited hypothesis (H3b). This may well be the case because past research suggested that the presence of a private scandal hurts more than the amount of media coverage because it takes

Scandals and Premature Departures from the House

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Table 2.3  Logistic regression models of scandal type and media coverage on premature departures for House incumbents by party, 2000–2010 Independent Variables Private scandal (1=Presence) Media coverage of private scandal Public scandal (1=Presence) Media coverage of public scandal Seniority (year elected) Redistricting (1=impacted) Partisan Voting Index (PVI) 2000 election cycle 2002 election cycle 2004 election cycle 2006 election cycle 2008 election cycle Party (1=Republican) Constant N

Pooled

Democrats

Republicans

3.335*

4.764*

2.666*

.838

1.395

1.188

−.004

−.012

.007

.013

.021

.018

−.412

.817

−.774

.588 .020* .010 −.050* .009 .652* .333 −.023* .008 −.643* .283

1.068 −.009 .018 −.037* .014 1.873* .502 −.019 .011 −1.196* .494

1.043 .028* .013 −.061* .012 −.373 .422 −.028* .013 −.301 .381

−.488

−1.142*

.058

.321 −.868* .303 −1.075* .319

.526 −1.135* .480 −1.241* .527

.418 −.766 .422 −.854* .436

−.384

−2.165*

.306

.277 .847* .176 96.588* 17.880

.686 --70.604* 27.829

.369 --119.736* 24.767

2,553

1,302

1,251

Bold entries are logistic regression coefficients; standard errors are in italics. * Indicates that coefficients are statistically significant at .05 level or less.

few news stories for voters to comprehend the details of the transgressions. In short, the nature of private scandals is that they are relatively simple (e.g., an extramarital affair, a drunken driving arrest, hiring a prostitute). This is not the case with public scandals, where it may take several news stories to understand even the most basic facts about the incumbent’s financial violations or unethical

62

Scandal!

behaviors. Said another way, voters may judge more quickly (therefore, additional news stories may not matter) those members embroiled in a private scandal than those involved in a public scandal.27 It is also quite possible that incumbents have a more difficult time denying private scandals than public scandals. In sum, not only are the scandal’s facts likely to be simpler, but the guilt or innocence of the incumbent involved may also be more objectively clear. Presumably then, incumbents, such as Representative Rangel or Ney, do not believe they have done anything wrong and they believe they can overcome charges of corruption and take their chances in the general election. This certainly seemed to be the case for Democratic incumbents tainted by a public scandal. Only Eric Massa (NY), whose scandal involved sexual misconduct as well as an abuse of his public office (i.e., sexual harassment of his male aides), chose to retire. Further, media coverage of their public scandal had no effect on the likelihood of their premature departure. Over 90% of the coverage on Allan Mollohan (WV), William Jefferson (LA), and James Traficant (OH) were on their scandals, yet all three of these Democrats attempted to run for reelection. Mollohan was eventually defeated in a party primary in 2010 (after his scandal had been resolved in his favor); Jefferson in the general election in 2008; and Traficant was not only expelled from the House, but was denied a place on the Democratic primary ballot in 2002. For Republican incumbents, although the presence of a public scandal had no effect on their likelihood of retiring, media coverage of public scandals increased the likelihood that they would retire. For example, Republicans Randy “Duke” Cunningham (CA), Bob Ney (IL), and Tom DeLay (TX) were involved in serious scandals and over 90% of the media coverage that they received focused on their scandals. Although all three of them resigned their seats, only Cunningham did so soon after the scandal broke.

Conclusion The logistic regression models have suggested some of what may be happening. In the models, the presence of a private scandal significantly influenced whether an incumbent prematurely departed from the Congress, whereas the presence of a public scandal did not have a significant impact. We believe this is likely the case because those individuals with private instances of moral failure either believe their scandal is so severe that they must retire or resign (e.g., Foley) or

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63

they believe that they will not survive an election. Either way, the existence of a private scandal is enough for them to decide their fate. Public scandals may not have the same impact because, as was suggested at the outset, members not only believe they can weather the storm, but they also may not believe they have done anything wrong. In short, it may be more difficult to deny a moral failure than an abuse of one’s public office. Thus, it appears that private scandals seem to take their toll on incumbents early in the process. While we now have a better understanding of the relationship and the effects of scandal and the level of media coverage on the electoral cycle, the impact of private scandals and media coverage of public scandals suggest that most incumbents tarnished by scandal can survive reelection. This is the case because there are relatively few private scandals (20 in 12 years, or about three each Congress) and those with public scandals receive less media coverage on average than those with private scandals (50% versus 55%, respectively). Future research should explore how media coverage affects challenger quality and open seats. It is our expectation, given the findings in this chapter, that while the level of media coverage is inconsistent and may only affect the process early on, it also may align more with the public’s interest than previous media coverage research has acknowledged because it may help counteract some of the institutional protections of the electoral cycle that result in the reelection of tarnished members of Congress. Overall, these findings seem to affirm what we have witnessed in several recent cases of scandal: private scandals appear to be careerending, while public scandals often appear to only be reputation-damaging.

Notes   1 Hooper, Molly. 2010. “GOP Leadership Warns Freshmen about the Press and Ethics Traps,” in The Hill, November 23, available at: http://thehill.com/homenews/ house/130461-gop-freshmen-warned-about-press-ethics-traps (accessed October 17, 2011).   2 Hernandez, Raymond. 2011. “Weiner Resigns in Chaotic Final Scene,” in New York Times, June 16, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/nyregion/ anthony-d-weiner-tells-friends-he-will-resign.html (accessed October 17, 2011).   3 Kane, Paul and Ken Pershing. “Democrat Rangel Charged with 13 Ethics Violations 2010,” in Washington Post, July 30, available at: http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/29/AR2010072904083. html?sid=ST2010072904276 (accessed October 17, 2011).

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  4 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/washington/07cnd-ney.html?hp&ex=1155009 600&en=130b7f0d94f6e099&ei=5094&partner=homepage   5 http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/14/ney.investigation/index.html   6 Basinger, Scott (his chapter).   7 Herrick, Rebekah L. 2000. “Who Will Survive? An Exploration of Factors Contributing to the Removal of Unethical House Members,” in American Politics Research, vol. 28, no.1: 96–109; Herrick, Rebekah L. 2003. Fashioning the More Ethical Representative: The Impact of Ethics Reforms in the US House of Representatives. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood/Praeger.; Carson, Jamie. 2005. “Strategy, Selection, and Candidate Competition in US House and Senate Elections,” in Journal of Politics, vol. 67, no. 1 (February, 2005): 1–28; Lazarus, Jeffrey. 2008. “Buying In: Testing the Rational Model of Candidate Entry,” in Journal of Politics, vol. 70, no. 3 (July): 837–850; Cooper, Joseph, and William West. 1981. “Voluntary Retirement, Incumbency, and the Modern House,” in Political Science Quarterly, vol. 96: 279–300.   8 Wolak, Jennifer. 2007. “Strategic Retirements: The Influence of Public Preferences on Voluntary Departures from Congress,” in Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 2: 285–308, 302–303.   9 Brace, Paul. 1985. “A Probabilistic Approach to Retirement from the U.S. Congress,” in Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 10: 107–123; Groseclose, Timothy and Keith Krehbiel. 1994. “Golden Parachutes, Rubber Checks, and Strategic Retirements from the 102nd House,” in American Journal of Political Science, vol. 38, no. 1 (February); Hall, Richard L., and Robert P. Van Houweling. 1995. “Avarice and Ambition in Congress: Representatives’ Decisions to Run or Retire from the U.S. House,” in American Political Science Review, vol. 89: 121–136; Hibbing, John R. 1982. Choosing to Leave: Voluntary Retirement from the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, DC: University Press of America; Kiewiet, D. Roderick, and Langche Zeng. 1993. “An Analysis of Congressional Career Decisions, 1947–1986,” in American Political Science Review, vol. 87: 928–941. 10 Roberds, Stephen D. 2004. “Do Congressional Ethics Committees Matter? U.S. Senate Ethics Cases, 1789–2000,” in Public Integrity, vol. 6, no. 1 (Winter): 25–38. 11 Brown, Lara Michelle. 2001. “The Character of Congress: Scandals in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1966–1996,” doctoral dissertation, UCLA; Brown, Lara M. 2006. “Revisiting the Character of Congress: Scandals in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1966–2002,” in Journal of Political Marketing, vol. 5 ½ (July):149– 172”; McCurley and Mondak, “Inspected by #1184063113”; Peters, John and Susan Welch. 1980. “The Effects of Charges of Corruption on Voting Behavior in Congressional Elections,” in American Political Science Review, vol. 74, no. 3 (September); Roberds, “Sex, Money, and Deceit”; Rundquist, et al., “Corrupt Politicians and Their Electoral Support”; Welch, Susan and John R. Hibbing.

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13

14 15 16

17 18

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1997. “The Effects of Charges of Corruption on Voting Behavior in Congressional Elections, 1982–1990,” in Journal of Politics, vol. 59, no. 1: 226–239. Alford, John, Holly Teeters, Daniel Ward, and Rick Wilson. 1994. “Overdraft: The Political Cost of Malfeasance,” in The Journal of Politics, vol. 56, no. 3 (August); Groseclose, Timothy and Keith Krehbiel. 1994. “Golden Parachutes, Rubber Checks, and Strategic Retirements from the 102nd House,” in American Journal of Political Science, vol. 38, no. 1 (February); Jacobson, Gary and Michael Dimock. 1994. “Checking Out: The Effects of Bank Overdrafts on the 1992 House Elections,” in American Journal of Political Science, vol. 38, no. 3 (August); McCann and Redlawsk 2006. Brown, Lara Michelle. 2001. “The Character of Congress: Scandals in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1966–1996,” doctoral dissertation, UCLA; Brown, Lara M. 2006. “Revisiting the Character of Congress: Scandals in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1966–2002,” in Journal of Political Marketing, vol. 5 ½ (July):149–172; Herrick, Rebekah L. 2000. “Who Will Survive? An Exploration of Factors Contributing to the Removal of Unethical House Members,” in American Politics Research, vol. 28, no.1: 96–109; McCurley, Carl and Jeffrey J. Mondak. 1995. “Inspected by #1184063113: The Influence of Incumbents’ Competence and Integrity in U.S. House Elections,” in American Journal of Political Science, vol. 39, no. 4: 864–885; Peters, John and Susan Welch. 1980. “The Effects of Charges of Corruption on Voting Behavior in Congressional Elections,” in American Political Science Review, vol. 74, no.3 (September); Rundquist, Barry S., Gerald Strom and John Peters. 1977. “Corrupt Politicians and Their Electoral Support: Some Experimental Observations,” in American Political Science Review, vol. 71: 954–963; Welch, Susan and John R. Hibbing. 1997. “The Effects of Charges of Corruption on Voting Behavior in Congressional Elections, 1982–1990,” in Journal of Politics, vol. 59, no.1: 226–239; but see Roberds, Stephen C. 1997. “Sex, Money, and Deceit: Incumbent Scandals in the U.S. House and Senate Elections, 1974–1990,” doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri-St.Louis. Peters and Welch, “The Effects of Charges of Corruption”; Rundquist et al., “Corrupt Politicians and Their Electoral Support,” 954. Basinger, Scott, “The Electoral Effects of Congressional Scandals,” this volume, p. 7 of his chapter. Doherty, David, Connor Dowling, and Michael Miller. 2011. “Are Financial or Moral Scandals Worse? It Depends,” in PS: Political Science & Politics, October: 749–757. Cobb, “Paging Congressional Democrats.” Dollar et al. 2001; Roberts, Robert and Marion Doss, Jr. 1997. From Watergate to Whitewater: The Public Integrity War. Westpot, CT: Praeger Publishing; Sabato, Larry. 1991. Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American

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Politics. New York: The Free Press, Macmillan Publishing; Seib, Philip. 1994. Campaigns and Conscience: The Ethics of Political Journalism, Connecticut: Praeger Series in Political Communication. 19 Garment, Scandal; Lichter, S. R. and D. R. Amundson. 1994. “Less News Is Worse News: Television News Coverage of Congress, 1972–1992,” in Congress, the Press, and Public, ed. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, pp. 131–140; Sabato 2000. 20 Roberds, 2004. “Do Congressional Ethics Committees Matter? U.S. Senate Ethics Cases, 1789–2000”; Herrick, 2000. “Who Will Survive?” 21 Thompson, John B. 2000. Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 22 We do not explicitly address the collective or institutional aspects of some scandals such as Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-FL) inappropriate behavior toward congressional pages affected other Republicans in congressional leadership positions such as Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). 23 Brown 2001. 24 Herrnson 2007; Jacobson 2008; Bauer, Monica, and John R. Hibbing. 1989. “Which Incumbents Lose in House Elections: A Response to Jacobson’s ‘The Marginals Never Vanished,’” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 33: 262–271; Brace, Paul. 1985. “A Probabilistic Approach to Retirement from the U.S. Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 10: 107–123. 25 Ibid. 26 Brown 2001. 27 For further discussion, see Brown 2001.

3

The Electoral Effects of Congressional Scandals Scott Basinger*

Representative government often is described as a principal–agent relationship in which the principal (voters) delegates policy-making power to their agents (elected officials). The troublesome aspect of this relationship is that elected officials possess hidden information about their interests and qualities and can take hidden actions to reward themselves instead of pursuing voters’ interests. “Constituents are asked to accept a lot on faith despite intrinsic reasons for skepticism,” explain Jacobson and Dimock (1994: 603); consequently, elected officials are wise to pursue a strategy of creating trust (see Fenno 1978; Bianco 1994). Involvement in even a minor scandal can feed voters’ suspicions and undermine trust. Since the president is the most recognizable public figure in American politics, allegations of presidential misconduct receive the most attention from the public, the press, scholars, and even congressional committees. In scandals ranging from Watergate and Iran-Contra to the dismissal of U.S. attorneys during the Bush administration and “Operation Fast and Furious” during the Obama administration, executive branch officials were called to testify in acrimonious congressional committee hearings. By the 1990s, members of Congress found themselves confronted by accusations of misconduct. However, in contrast to the typically aggressive stance toward scandals involving the executive branch, the Senate and House have adopted passive stances toward scandals involving members of Congress. Senators and representatives rarely are censured or reprimanded – let alone expelled – for their misdeeds. Rather, the electorate’s response to scandal is the main determinant of senators’ and representatives’ incentives to conduct themselves ethically and/or morally.

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This chapter examines congressional scandals’ electoral consequences. I show that scandals are associated with higher rates of general election defeats, and senators suffer more from scandals than representatives. I trace this differential effect to a combination of factors: senators typically are more likely to face an experienced challenger, and states are typically less favorable to the incumbent than are congressional districts, but it is also the case that scandals have greater impact on senators’ vote shares than on representatives’ vote shares. The analysis concludes with an examination of the relative magnitudes of the direct effects and indirect effects of scandals.

Congressional scandals and political survival In the 1990s and the 2000s, congressional scandals have been a regular and frequent occurrence. Table 3.1 lists the number of members of the two chambers of Congress who were involved in scandals for each election between 1992 and 2010. Overall, there have been 142 scandals involving representatives and 31 scandals involving senators, for 173 scandals in total. Note that in the same period of time, there were 43 scandals involving the president, a senior administration official, or an executive- or judicial-branch nominee (Basinger and Rottinghaus 2013). Between Congress and the White House, there are more than ten national Table 3.1  Number of congressional scandals, by chamber Election year Congress

House scandals

1992

102nd

21

6

1994

103rd

5

7

1996

104th

21

1

1998

105th

8

2

2000

106th

5

0

2002

107th

4

1

2004

108th

9

0

2006

109th

23

3

2008

110th

21

6

2010

111th

Total

Senate scandals

25

5

142

31

The Electoral Effects of Congressional Scandals

69

political scandals per year, on average. Per every two-year election cycle, there are 14.2 scandals involving a representative and 3.1 scandals involving a senator, on average. Bearing in mind that there are 435 representatives and 100 senators, we should not be surprised to observe between four and five times as many scandals in the House as in the Senate. Averages tell an incomplete story, however, for the House and Senate exhibit surprisingly similar patterns of scandal frequency. Both chambers yielded large numbers of scandals in years leading up to the 1992 elections, but then the number of scandals tapered off in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the past few election years, the numbers of scandals surged in both the House and the Senate. These 173 scandals combined represent 3.7% of members of Congress in all elections between 1992 and 2010. Put another way, roughly 1 out of every 27 senators and representatives has been involved in a scandal in each election cycle. This proportion might be so small as to suggest that scandals receive disproportionate media coverage; however, scandals do seem to result in a relatively large number of defeated incumbents. From 1992 to 2010, there were 4,189 representatives and 341 senators who stood for reelection and for whom election data are available. Of the 4,189 representatives, 188 lost the general election; 14 of those losing incumbents had been involved in a scandal, or 1 of every 13 losing incumbent representatives. Of the 341 senators, 33 lost the general election; 6 of those losing Senate incumbents had been involved in a scandal, or 1 of every 5½ incumbent senators. These tabulations suggest that involvement in a scandal reduces the likelihood of surviving a general election contest, and this is especially the case for senators. Scandals’ impact on political survival is magnified if one examines incumbents exiting prior to the general election. The chapter by Brown and Gulati contains an examination of incumbents’ resignations, retirements, and primary losses for the period from 2000 to 2010, using multivariate logistic regression models to examine the causes of “premature departure.” They find that scandals – particularly personal scandals – have a statistically significant effect, increasing the likelihood of a departure, as expected. Allow me to provide some simple tabulations for a longer time period (1992–2010) in which 342 representatives and 77 senators who either retired or lost renomination. Of the 342 representatives who exited before the general election, 30 were involved in a scandal, or 1 in every 11½ exiting representatives. Of the 77 senators who exited before the general election, 12 had been involved in a scandal, or 1 in 6½ exiting senators. These tabulations suggest that involvement in a scandal reduces the

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likelihood of surviving until the general election contest, and this is especially the case for senators. These data can be rearranged to provide a slightly different perspective on incumbents’ survival. Of incumbent representatives who were involved in scandals, 67% won reelection, 22% departed prematurely (i.e., prior to the general election), and 10% lost the general election. This compares unfavorably to incumbent representatives who were not involved in scandals, of whom 88% were reelected, 8% exited prior to the general election, and only 4% lost the general election. Of incumbent senators who were involved in scandals, 42% were reelected, 39% exited prior to the general election, and 19% lost the general election. Again, this compares unfavorably to incumbent senators who were not involved in scandals, of whom 70% were reelected, 21% exited, and 9% lost the general election. Overall, 12% of scandal-free representatives and 30% of scandalfree senators did not “survive” the election cycle, but 33% of scandal-tainted representatives and 58% of scandal-tainted senators did not survive their scandal.

Congressional scandals and the election context The analysis above indicated that scandal-tainted incumbent members of Congress are more likely to exit Congress than scandal-free incumbents, but one can ask how much of the latter effect is due to the choices of the potential candidates for office – both the incumbent representative or senator and the potential challengers for the House or Senate seat – and how much the effect is due to the voters themselves. Separating these two types of effects will require a multivariate analysis, but some insight can be gleaned by examining the election context, i.e., the number and characteristics of the candidates. Let us first examine the questions of whether any challenger contests the election and whether the incumbent contests the election. At one extreme, the simplest way for an incumbent to survive the election cycle is to run unopposed. Out of 4,189 incumbent House members and 341 incumbent senators between 1992 and 2010, 524 incumbent representatives and 9 incumbent senators stood for reelection unopposed. Only 11 of those representatives (or 1 of every 47) and zero of the senators had been involved in a scandal, indicating that scandaltainted members of Congress are far less likely to face no rivals in the general election. At the other extreme, the most obvious way for an incumbent to fail to survive the election cycle is to exit before the general election gets under way. As

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mentioned above, 30 of the 342 incumbent representatives in the data set who exited before the general election were involved in scandals, as were 12 of the 77 incumbent senators who exited before the general election. To summarize, representatives and senators who are involved in scandals are less likely than their untainted counterparts to run in the general election unopposed, and are more likely than their untainted counterparts to exit by retiring, resigning, or losing a primary election. Suppose it is the case that the incumbent wins renomination and faces a challenger from the opposing party. Then, a factor that is widely recognized as affecting the incumbent’s prospects for victory in the general election is the “quality” of the challenger. The conventional approach to measuring challenger quality is to assess whether the challenger has won and held elective office before, under the assumption that a mayor, a state legislator, etc., has accumulated political experience necessary to become a viable candidate and has honed skills like fund-raising and speech making. Narrowing the focus to 3,323 incumbent representatives and 255 incumbent senators who stood for reelection in a contested general election, the data reveal that 19.6% of incumbent representatives (650 of 3,323) and 52.5% of incumbent senators (134 of 255) faced quality challengers. However, the likelihood of facing a quality challenger appears to be less affected by the incumbent’s involvement in a scandal than by the chamber in which the incumbent serves. In contested House elections, 19.5% of scandal-free incumbents faced experienced challengers, compared to 22.3% of scandal-tainted incumbents. In contested Senate elections, 51.3% of scandalfree incumbents faced experienced challengers, compared to 68.4% of scandaltainted incumbents. Although the latter difference in proportions is large in a substantive sense (i.e., 17% higher), the sample size is too small for the difference to attain a conventional level of statistical significance. Figure 3.1 displays the relative frequencies of each of these four situations – incumbent runs unopposed, incumbent faces an amateur challenger, incumbent faces an experienced challenger, or incumbent exits and leaves an open-seat election – for the House and Senate. Figure 3.1 further disaggregates the data according to whether the incumbent was involved in a scandal. Note first where there is little to no difference across columns: the frequencies of facing experienced challengers are nearly equal for scandal-free and scandal-tainted House incumbents, and are nearly equal for scandal-free and scandal-tainted Senate incumbents (although incumbent senators are far more likely to face experienced challengers than incumbent representatives, regardless of scandal).

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70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Unopposed

Amateur challenger House, no scandal Senate, no scandal

Experienced challenger

Open seat

House, scandal Senate, scandal

Figure 3.1  Scandals and election context

The modal outcome for a House incumbent is to face an amateur challenger, and the modal outcome for a Senate incumbent is to face an experienced challenger, but the frequencies of open-seat races – indicating incumbent exit prior to the general election – are far higher when the incumbent was involved in a scandal. In order to facilitate a transition from discussing election contexts to discussing election outcomes, Figure 3.2 provides evidence on how context affects the likelihood of the incumbent’s party holding a seat in the general election. Obviously, the incumbent wins 100% of uncontested elections whether he or she was involved in a scandal or not. The incumbent won over 95% of elections when facing an amateur challenger if the incumbent was scandal-free, but scandaltainted representatives won only 89% of races against amateur challengers, and scandal-tainted senators won only 83% of races against amateur challengers. When facing experienced challengers, scandal-free representatives won 85% of races and scandal-free senators won 83% of races. Experienced challengers were able to exploit incumbents’ scandals, however, so that scandal-tainted representatives won only 71% of these races against experienced challengers, compared to 62% for scandal-tainted senators. Finally, when the incumbent retired, resigned, or lost the primary, the incumbent’s party held roughly 65% of open seats.

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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% Unopposed

Amateur challenger House, no scandal Senate, no scandal

Experienced challenger

Open seat

House, scandal Senate, scandal

Figure 3.2  Scandals and reelection rates

In summary, scandals shape the election context, lowering the rate at which incumbents face an easy path to victory (i.e., uncontested elections and amateur challengers) and raising the rate at which the incumbent or his party faces the need to fight more strenuously to hold a seat.

Statistical analysis of congressional scandals’ effects In order to distinguish the direct and indirect effects of scandals, I turn in this section to three multivariate analyses. First, I examine the effects of scandals, challenger quality, and candidate spending on general election vote shares, controlling for the district’s partisan complexion and national partisan tides. Second, I examine the effects of scandals and challenger quality on candidate spending, with the same controls. Third, I examine the likelihood of victory versus defeat for the incumbent party. Basically I am separating the determinants of election outcomes into two types of factors: exogenous variables that can be treated as predetermined before the campaign and endogenous factors that can be treated as determined during the campaign.

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There are six exogenous variables that are included as control variables in all analyses. The Normal Vote measures the average percent of constituents who support the presidential candidate belonging to the incumbent representative’s or senator’s party. The National Tide measures the change (from two years earlier) in the total vote for all House candidates belonging to the incumbent representative’s or senator’s party in a given election year. Since each House candidate contributes less than three-tenths of a percent of the vote, it is not necessary to modify this variable for the House election analyses. Open Seat is a dummy variable indicating that the incumbent exited prior to the general election. Challenger Quality is a dummy variable indicating that the challenger who is facing an incumbent has experience in elective office. Challenger Quality is always coded equal to zero if the incumbent retired or lost in a contested primary election. Senate is a dummy variable indicating whether the election is for a Senate seat or a House seat. The Senate dummy variable is also used to create three multiplicative interactions: Senate*Challenger Quality, Senate*Open Seat, and Senate*Scandal. (Additional interactions with Normal Vote and National Tide were consistently insignificant, and have been omitted.) Finally, Scandal is a dummy variable indicating both that the incumbent was involved in a scandal and that the incumbent is present in the election. (Attempts to discern whether scandals directly impact the outcomes of open-seat races routinely show that they do not, once scandals’ impacts on incumbent retirement and primary defeats are controlled.) The two candidates’ expenditures are included as independent variables in the election outcome models and are treated as dependent variables in other models. Challenger Spending and Incumbent Spending are measured from the dollars spent by each candidate in a contested election, with four modifications. For all races, I set the minimum expenditure at $5,000, since this is the threshold required for reporting campaign expenditures to the Federal Election Commission. I then divide expenditures by 100,000. For Senate races, I divide the dollars spent (in hundreds of thousands) by the number of congressional districts in the state. Finally, I take the natural logarithm of spending (in hundreds of thousands) per district. This final modification accounts for diminishing returns and greatly improves the fit of the regression models. I utilize two variables to measure general election outcomes. First, Incumbent Vote Percent measures the share of the two-party (i.e., Republicans and Democrats) vote earned by the candidate belonging to the incumbent representative’s or senator’s party in contested elections. Second, Incumbent Victories is a dummy variable indicating that the candidate belonging to the incumbent representative’s

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75

or senator’s party won the election. Table 3.2 shows the descriptive statistics for each of these ten variables. Regarding election outcomes, Table 3.2 indicates that the average vote share earned by the candidate belonging to the incumbent’s party is approximately 64%, and that the incumbent’s party holds the seat in 91% of elections. Table 3.2 also indicates that the average Normal Vote for the incumbent’s party is just shy of 58%, which suggests that on average the congressional candidate belonging to the incumbent’s party earns slightly over 6% of the vote more than they would earn if they performed as well as their party’s average presidential candidate. Incumbent-party candidates also tend to outspend challenger-party candidates; the numbers shown in Table 3.2 show the mean values after the variables have been logarithmically transformed, but before taking the logarithm of expenditures, the amounts were roughly $400,000 per congressional district for challenger-party candidates and roughly $1,000,000 per congressional district for incumbent-party candidates. Regarding some of the proportions, about 20% of congressional elections (House and Senate combined) feature experienced challengers, about 10% are open-seat races, about 8% are Senate races while 92% are House races, and about 4% feature an incumbent who was involved in a scandal. Table 3.2  Summary statistics Mean or proportion

Standard deviation

Minimum Maximum value value

Outcome variables Incumbent Vote Pct. Incumbent Victories

63.93

10.41

22.10

97.08

.910

—

0

1

Open Seat

.105

—

0

1

Challenger Quality

.196

—

0

1

Endogenous Variables

ln (Challenger $ per CD)

–0.10

1.97

–6.48

4.99

ln (Incumbent $ per CD)

2.04

0.76

–3.00

5.30

Normal Vote

57.68

10.96

21.64

96.05

National Tide

–0.53

Exogenous variables 4.25

–9

9

Scandal

.039

—

0

1

Senate

.083

—

0

1

Scandal!

76

Table 3.3 displays the results of two ordinary least-squares regressions in which the vote share received by incumbent’s party’s candidate is the dependent variable. The difference between the columns of Table 3.3 is that the former is a baseline specification and the latter adds the Senate dummy variable and three interaction terms, as well as the two candidate expenditure variables. The baseline model includes just the scandal dummy variable, the Open Seat and Challenger Quality variables, and the Normal Vote and National Tide variables

Table 3.3  Regression analysis of votes Incumbent Vote Pct. Constant

Incumbent Vote Pct.

32.12** (.59)

39.32** (.56)

Normal Vote

0.59** (.01)

0.43** (.01)

National Tide

0.71** (.02)

0.51** (.02)

Quality

–4.21** (.27)

–0.95** (.24)

Open Seat

–9.62** (.34)

–4.51** (.31)

Scandal

–4.58** (.62)

–1.74** (.54)

Senate

–0.51 (.51)

Senate*Quality

–1.43** (.70)

Senate*Open Seat

–2.74** (.82)

Senate*Scandal

–2.88** (1.34)

Natural Log of Incumbent $

0.20 (.12)

Natural Log of Challenger $

–2.43** (.06)

N Adjusted R2 ** denotes p < .05; * denotes p < .10

3,997 0.617

3,997 0.758

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77

to control for district and national partisan conditions. All of these variables have statistically significant effects, so the first column provides evidence that the incumbent party’s candidate is expected to earn a larger share of the vote when district conditions are favorable and when the national tide is favorable; a 1% increase in these variables leads to 0.6% and 0.7% differences in the vote share, respectively. A quality challenger tends to subtract 4.2% from the incumbent’s vote share, and when the incumbent retires, his or her party’s openseat candidate tends to lose 9.6% of the vote, relative to what the incumbent would have earned. Scandals, meanwhile, subtract 4.6% from the incumbent, which is slightly more than the effect of facing an experienced challenger. When the expenditures variables are added in column 2, all of these effects get smaller, providing initial evidence that candidates’ campaign fund-raising and spending responds to many of the same factors that affect the election outcome. This issue will be addressed below, but in the meantime we observe that the election outcome responds significantly to the challenger’s expenditures but not to the incumbent’s expenditures. Three important differences between House and Senate elections appear as well. First, facing an experienced challenger costs an incumbent representative 1% of the two-party vote, but costs an incumbent senator 2½% of the two-party vote, once differences in challenger spending are controlled. Second, an openseat candidate in a House election should earn 4½% less than an incumbent representative, but an open-seat candidate in a Senate election should earn 7¼% less than an incumbent senator. Third and most important for this chapter, a scandal-tainted representative should lose 1¾% of the two-party vote, but a scandal-tainted senator should lose more than 4½% of the vote. Thus, the effects of the incumbent exiting or being involved in a scandal are magnified in Senate races. Table 3.4 displays the results of two ordinary least-squares regressions in which the dependent variables are challenger and incumbent spending. Experienced challengers spend a great deal more than amateur challengers, though incumbent representatives’ spending is slightly higher when facing an experienced challenger and incumbent senators’ spending is not significantly higher. These regressions also reveal that both candidates’ spending is higher in the presence of a scandal, and that challenger spending is twice as responsive to scandals as is incumbent spending. When the results in Tables 3.3 and 3.4 are combined, they reveal that scandals have larger indirect effects than direct effects in House elections. A scandal would cost the incumbent representative

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Scandal!

Table 3.4  Regression analysis of expenditures Challenger $ per CD ln[100k]

Incumbent $ per CD ln[100k]

3.04** (.15)

2.60** (.07)

Normal Vote

–0.06** (.00)

–0.01** (.00)

National Tide

–0.09** (.01)

–0.02** (.00)

Quality

1.27** (.07)

0.33** (.03)

Open Seat

1.83** (.09)

0.09** (.04)

Scandal

0.94** (.17)

0.47** (.08)

Senate

0.60** (.16)

0.08 (.07)

Senate*Quality

–0.71** (.22)

–0.28** (.10)

Senate*Open Seat

–0.31 (.26)

–0.37** (.11)

Senate*Scandal

–0.14 (.42)

–0.27 (.19)

3,984 0.342

3.997 .076

Constant

N Adjusted R2 ** denotes p < .05; * denotes p < .10

1¾% of the vote and would increase challenger spending by nearly 1 unit, which would cost the scandal-tainted incumbent representative another 2½% of the vote, for a 4¼% loss in total. For Senate incumbents, scandals have larger direct effects than indirect effects, although both are substantively impressive. A scandal would cost the incumbent more than 4½% of the vote and would increase challenger spending by .8 units, which would cost the scandal-tainted incumbent senator another 2% of the vote, for a 6½% loss in total.

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79

My attention now turns to scandals’ impact on the probability that the incumbent wins reelection or that the incumbent’s party retains that seat if he exits. Because Incumbent Party Victory is a binary variable, the form of analysis switches from ordinary least-squares regression to probit regression. Table 3.5 displays the result of two probit analyses; column 2 adds four variables to examine whether the House and Senate are as different in terms of victories and defeats

Table 3.5  Probit analyses Incumbent party victory

Incumbent party victory

–1.79** (.32)

–1.82** (.32)

Normal Vote

0.07** (.01)

0.07** (.01)

National Tide

0.14** (.01)

0.14** (.01)

Quality

–0.39** (.10)

–0.34** (.10)

Open Seat

–1.09** (.11)

–1.13** (.12)

Scandal

–0.67** (.19)

–0.71** (.21)

Constant

Senate

0.04 (.26)

Senate*Quality

–0.33 (.30)

Senate*Open Seat

0.13 (.32)

Senate*Scandal

0.26 (.45)

Incumbent $

0.37** (.07)

0.37** (.07)

Challenger $

–0.64** (.05)

–0.63** (.05)

3,984 0.503

3,984 0.504

N Pseudo R2 Rho (Std. Err.) ** denotes p < .05; * denotes p < .10

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Scandal!

as they were in terms of vote shares, but none of these variables were statistically significant. Focusing on column 1 of Table 3.5, I find that a scandal increases the probability that the incumbent will lose, and that the effect is nearly twice as large as that of Challenger Quality. Interestingly, both incumbent spending and challenger spending affect the likelihood of incumbent victory, with challenger spending slightly less than twice as important as incumbent spending. Combining the results from Tables 3.4 and 3.5, recall that a scandal increases challenger spending by 1 unit for an incumbent representative and .8 units for an incumbent senator, and the coefficient for a 1 unit increase of challenger spending is –.64, whereas the coefficient for a scandal is –.67. Therefore, scandals’ direct effects and indirect effects (through challenger spending) on the likelihood of incumbent victory are approximately equal. Scandals also increase the likelihood that the incumbent retires, which increases the likelihood that the incumbent party loses the election, therefore the total indirect effects of scandals exceed the direct effects, which are already quite sizable. To summarize the results, scandals increase the probability of incumbent exit and increase the level of challenger spending, both of which decrease the probability that the incumbent’s party retains its hold on a House or Senate seat. Scandals also reduce the probability that the incumbent wins reelection, and scandals cost incumbent representatives and senators between 4% and 7% of the vote, depending on how one counts direct and indirect effects. To conclude, this chapter demonstrates that scandals are associated with an increased rate of seat turnover in Congress and that scandals have greater effects on Senate elections than House elections. Scandals have become a common element of congressional news, and dozens of scandals involving members of the House and Senate have been uncovered before each of the last three elections. In combination with the chapter by Brown and Gulati, the evidence is clear that scandals are an important component of the electoral calculations by candidates, campaign contributors, and ultimately the voters.

Note   * The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of The Dirksen Congressional Center, which provided funding for this research through a 2012 Congressional Research Award.

Section II

Historical Accounts, Modern Implications

Introduction Mark Sachleben

It is often difficult to predict the effects of political scandals. Although we may recognize certain patterns that befall participants in the short term, or even to expect certain corrective changes to a political system, the impacts of a scandal have long tentacles that stretch through time and space, creating paradoxes and quandaries that are difficult to encapsulate in tidy packages, especially in the midst of intense scrutiny of a scandal. This is why historical accounts and analyses are an important methodology in exploring the long-term effects of political scandals. History gives us the opportunity to consider scandals in context: what are the impacts of previous, seemingly unrelated, scandals? Do the consequences of previous scandals impact the course of current scandals? What policies or modus operandi today are results of a scandal 10, 20, or even 50 years ago? These are questions in which it is particularly helpful to take a historical perspective. As such, the chapters in this section help us understand political scandals in a broader context. My previous analysis about how there are different variables that help predict outcomes of scandals are borne out in the chapters in this section. I argued that in order to understand the effects of a scandal, one must understand, among other things, the context of the political environment in which the offense occurs.1 This political environment is created, in great part, by the accumulation of past experiences that help to shape the attitudes, rules, and laws of that society. Whether an offending politician can politically or legally survive a scandal depends on the severity and nature of the offense and his/her use of resources to navigate difficult times. In a review of a book about the Profumo Affair (1963) in Britain, a sex scandal in which the British minister of war was reportedly having an affair

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with a young woman who was simultaneously sexually involved with a Russian KGB agent, David Runciman notes that the effects of a scandal are multifaceted and often hurt the innocent as much or more than those who are guilty. As a scandal evolves (or devolves as the case may be), participants begin to scramble to save themselves and their interests, disregarding the interests and reputations of others. In the rush to identify the culprits and/or to find cover, politicians often engage in supposition and innuendo that are just as damaging as the actual scandal itself. As the frenzy to assign blame reaches a fevered pitch, media and politicians create even more damage – a sentiment worth remembering as we examine the lasting impacts of scandals. Thus, Runciman argues, “Witch hunts don’t make people behave better; on the whole they make them behave worse.”2 Again, the historical accounts that follow help bear this argument out. In this section, Craig Smith’s examination of Tom Clark, attorney general and Supreme Court justice, provides interesting perspectives on the corrosive effects of political scandals. Although Smith exonerates Clark, the expectation of the public and rival politicians that something must be scandalous (illegal or immoral) highlights how the political system suffers a crisis of confidence under the perception of a scandal. Smith takes a long view of the alleged scandal and illustrates the point that scandals often sweep up the innocent, as well as the guilty. It also suggests a potential strategy: insinuating scandal to diminish the effectiveness of rival politicians. On the other hand, Michael Birkner’s analysis of the controversy surrounding Sherman Adams is an excellent illustration of how a historical analysis can shed light on the depths and complexity of a political scandal. The end game of the Adams saga is far removed from the original scandal and has lasting impacts on politicians and policy makers that most people and scholars do not even realize. The nature of the scandal provides a difficult and devastating fall for the protagonist; however, what stands apart from the public gaze is the impact on American foreign policy. The strength of Birkner’s chapter is that it traces the strands of the scandal through to its end and the impacts several years down the road. George Hale provides a broader view by examining an entire institution and asking why the Pennsylvania State Legislature is more prone to scandal. Hale’s analysis provides evidence that the historical decision-making process and the accumulated culture of the institution provide greater opportunity for such behavior to occur than in other, comparative, institutions. While the focus on

Introduction

85

Pennsylvania might at first seem limiting, the lessons drawn about the structure and culture of the legislature say volumes about the propensity of scandals. The investigation of the Montesi Affair in Italy, by Roy Domenico, provides an excellent analysis of how culture helps to generate a sense of rottenness that permeated a changing culture. By examining a case outside the United States, Domenico helps the reader understand how changing culture norms facilitated the perception of a scandal-prone society as traditional elements met modern behaviors that were increasingly the public’s eye. As the chapter points out, there were few real long-term impacts: there were no arrests, and Christian Democrats remained a dominant political party in Italian politics for decades to come. Yet, the term dolce vita became a symbol of decadence and decline of traditional values. Finally, Neal Allen ties the section together with a thought-provoking coda that examines how scandals, even relatively minor ones, can impact electoral outcomes. By revisiting each of the section’s chapters, Allen demonstrates parallels in the 2012 American election cycle. The end result is a vindication and demonstration of the power of historical analyses.

Notes 1 Mark Sachleben, “A Framework for Understanding: Sex Scandals in Comparison,” in Sex Scandals in American Politics: A multidisciplinary approach to the construction and aftermath of contemporary political sex scandals edited by Alison Dagnes (New York: Continuum, 2011), pages 47–61; specifically 48–49, 54–56. 2 David Runciman, “Take a bullet for the team,” London Review of Books 35 (4): 8–12 (21 February 2013).

4

Tom Clark under Fire: The Consequences of Congressional Investigations of Supreme Court Justices Craig Alan Smith*

Introduction President Harry Truman’s nomination of Attorney General Tom Clark to the U.S. Supreme Court on August 2, 1949, following the unexpected death of Justice Frank Murphy, was regarded as a political appointment, one born of friendship or loyalty rather than ability or stature. Though not a complete surprise – the Attorney General’s office was then regarded as a stepping-stone to the Court – news commentators expected Truman to choose a Catholic to replace the only Catholic justice.1 When the U.S. Senate confirmed Clark’s nomination (73 to 8), Republicans cast all the “nay” votes. Opposition leader Homer Ferguson drew attention to numerous suspect instances while Clark served as attorney general, but the most compelling reason for some senators to vote against Clark was his failure to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Calling the nomination “transparently political,” Ferguson made no effort to hide his displeasure that Clark was not called for questioning, and when the Judiciary Committee approved Clark’s nomination (9 to 2) without inviting Clark to testify, the two “nay” votes principally protested his absence at the hearings. From the floor of the Senate, Robert Taft called Clark’s nomination “outrageous” because the Committee reported it favorably without Clark’s testimony.2 By the time of Clark’s nomination, a nominee’s personal appearance before the Judiciary Committee was not a well-established practice, but neither was it unprecedented. In 1925 Harlan Stone became the first Court nominee to testify, but the next five nominees were not invited. Not long after President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed Court “packing” plan, the Committee heard from

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five successive nominees, including Attorneys General Frank Murphy and Robert Jackson. Clark’s nomination, on the other hand, followed five successive nominees who were not invited, thereby blunting Taft’s charges.3 The first and only nominee (to date) to refuse to testify was Appeals Court judge Sherman Minton, who Truman nominated shortly after Clark following the unexpected death of Justice Wiley Rutledge. As a senator, Minton had defended Roosevelt’s Court “packing” plan, but, as a nominee, Minton refused to testify based upon the separation of powers,4 a view Clark later adopted when Congress sought testimony about his work as attorney general. Whether Clark should testify or whether he could refuse once he was on the Court became increasingly contentious for the next four years. Clark’s absence at his confirmation hearings did not halt further inquiry into his Justice Department service. He was subjected to incessant probing by congressional committees investigating old Justice Department cases. It is doubtful any sitting justice faced such protracted investigations of their off-thebench record until the failed 1968 nomination of Abe Fortas for chief justice and his subsequent resignation eight months later. Tom Clark endured threats of impeachment or requests for his resignation, demands for his testimony, and intense public scrutiny of his conduct as attorney general. This essay examines congressional efforts to compel Clark to testify and whether his refusal based on the separation of powers was convincing. It highlights news coverage of these investigations and compares it to secondary historical scholarship, much of which overlooked Clark’s part in Truman administration scandals or their implications for future congressional inquiries of sitting justices. On several occasions congressional committees considered or expected Clark’s testimony on matters unrelated to his judicial duties, and each time Clark avoided appearing before lawmakers. Historical circumstances made it possible for Clark to maintain the separation of powers, but questions over whether Congress could compel a justice’s testimony or whether a justice could refuse to testify were never fully resolved.

Background: Testifying before Congress Before examining Justice Clark’s refusals to testify, an historical perspective shows his refusals were unprecedented. First, justices regularly appeared before Congress to discuss the Court’s budget or judicial administration, and Clark

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expressed no misgivings over the propriety of requesting Court funding.5 Second, soon after Clark’s appointment several of his Court colleagues testified about subjects other than appropriations.6 Perhaps the most notable off-thebench testimony was given by Justices Felix Frankfurter and Stanley Reed, who appeared as character witnesses at Alger Hiss’ first perjury trial. While not a congressional investigation, the impact of their testimony was significant. Hiss, a former State Department employee, was suspected of spying for the Soviets and accused of lying in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Frankfurter and Reed were subpoenaed to testify, but some news accounts reported their trial appearances were voluntary, leading to congressional proposals prohibiting justices from serving as character witnesses.7 Republican congressmen called the justices’ testimony an “extreme embarrassment” for the Court that “shocked the nation.” Representatives Kenneth Keating (House Judiciary) and Harold Velde (HUAC) proposed legislation prohibiting justices from offering character testimony, and Representative Lawrence Smith called Frankfurter’s and Reed’s performances a “degrading precedent.” Apparently, a justice compelled to testify was less offensive than one who agreed to do so. What was unmistakably clear was that justices were not immune from subpoena, and Congress believed it had the prerogative to direct when and how justices testified.8 In addition to the historical precedent of justices offering testimony, Clark on several occasions appeared before congressional investigators while he served as attorney general. The most remarkable episode involved suspected voter fraud in the 1946 Kansas City Democratic congressional primary. A Senate subcommittee questioned Clark about Justice Department action (or inaction, as was charged) when an obscure candidate, Enos Axtell, defeated incumbent Roger Slaughter and another candidate, Jerome Walsh, in Missouri’s Fifth District. President Truman had lent considerable support to Axtell (who was such a long-shot even Truman could not reliably remember his name), and the then discredited and largely defunct Pendergast political machine insured an Axtell victory. To prove Pendergast involvement in “fixing” the election, the Republican-oriented Kansas City Star launched its own investigation and presented its findings to Attorney General Clark. Relying principally on the Star’s investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to convince federal judges to impanel a grand jury. Clark and his assistant attorney general, Theron Lamar Caudle, were charged with hampering the FBI by ordering a “preliminary” investigation involving Star reporters rather than actual witnesses or suspects. With no federal grand jury,

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Missouri’s Republican senator, James Kem, demanded a Senate investigation into the Justice Department; at the same time, a Jackson County prosecutor, James Kimbrell, used a county grand jury to return indictments against 71 defendants. This created the backdrop of Clark’s Senate testimony, where the question of separation of powers was not an issue.9 To prepare his testimony, Clark worked late into the night at home poring over documents (it was reported he and Lamar Caudle huddled on the floor in blankets when the heat in Clark’s home shut off). After Clark finished his testimony, a telegram arrived from Kansas City reporting the theft of suspicious ballots – the evidence upon which the county grand jury based its indictments – from the vault of the Kansas City Election Commission. Upon hearing the news, Clark was reportedly “completely taken back by the disclosure.” Here was damaging evidence of a possible cover-up, and Clark ordered an immediate, full investigation into the ballot theft and charges of voting fraud.10 The Kansas City ballot theft led to accusations of Clark “whitewashing” the entire affair to divert attention away from Truman’s continued ties to the Pendergast machine. Truman may have “emerged from the Kansas City vote fraud investigation with little political damage,” but Clark grew weary of the volume of congressional attacks on his office. Republican victories in the 1946 midterm elections brought accusations of inadequate Justice Department prosecutions, and Clark reportedly considered a lucrative private sector job offer to ease financial strain on his family.11 Once Clark was elevated to the Supreme Court, suspicion over his handling of Justice Department cases continued. After one Court term Clark faced his first prospect of a congressional hearing seeking Justice Department information. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy had recently accused the State Department of harboring known Communists, telling a Wheeling, West Virginia, audience, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party.” A few months later McCarthy capitalized on the momentum of his Wheeling speech by charging that the five-year-old Amerasia case held the “key to a ‘Red network’ in the State Department.”12 The Amerasia case, so named for a Far East magazine by that title, began in 1945 when an analyst for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) realized that one published article resembled a secret report he prepared on Thailand. The OSS (and later the FBI in its investigation) then used questionable tactics to obtain evidence against the magazine, and not long before Clark became attorney general six persons were arrested for possession of classified government documents. What might have become “the

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first famous spy case associated with the Cold War” received “little more than passing mention,” that was, until a Senate subcommittee asked whether – and for what purpose – former attorney general Clark ordered a delay in the arrests.13 The Senate inquiry, headed by Democrat Millard Tydings, wanted to know, “Who issued a go-slow order to stall off arrests in the Amerasia case – and why?” President Truman had vigorously pushed for arrests and prosecution, but delay occurred nonetheless. A suspected government cover-up focused attention on former Naval aide James Vardaman, former secretary of defense James Forrestal, and former attorney general Tom Clark. Vardaman denied giving the delay order, Forrestal’s death a year earlier from an apparent suicide prevented his testimony (although his diary was locked in a White House safe), and Clark had no recollection of any delay order.14 In a letter to Senator Tydings, Clark explained: With reference to our conversation, the Amerasia case was not handled personally by me, but by the attorneys in the Department of Justice. A few days before it arose I had been nominated as Attorney General and this circumstance, together with my assumption of that office some 30 days later, permitted only slight connection with the matter. I am advised the attorneys who did handle it have testified fully before your committee concerning the handling of the case by the Department of Justice. I regret that I have no independent recollection concerning the events arising at the time of this prosecution, or of any delay thereof that would cast any additional light on the alleged inquiry.15

The Tydings subcommittee concluded that charges of a government cover-up were baseless (Time magazine reported that Amerasia editor Philip Jaffe used the stolen documents without passing them along to Soviet agents), and the matter appeared closed. Historians Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, however, raised questions over Clark’s culpability four decades later in their book on the Amerasia case. According to Klehr and Radosh, several conspiracies occurred, one of which included Clark and notorious Washington deal-maker Tommy Corcoran, who, among others, conspired “to prevent a full public airing of the facts.” In order to quash an indictment against one of the defendants, State Department employee John Service, Corcoran reportedly arranged a “political fix,” whereby Clark’s confirmation as attorney general went unopposed. “It is obvious that Corcoran is making every effort to develop Tom Clark,” stated a confidential FBI memo, “and by inference has taken the credit for having Tom Clark’s nomination approved by the Senate committee.”16 Whether Clark was complicit in a conspiracy to free the Amerasia defendants was never conclusively

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resolved; the case continued to raise suspicion and the possibility Clark would have to face lawmakers.

The investigations: Caudle’s complicity Increased congressional scrutiny of Clark’s Justice Department record began, oddly enough, with an investigation into the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), described as “the most damaging scandal of the Truman years.” According to Andrew Dunar, “By the autumn of 1951 the BIR was an institution rotting from within, with weak leadership in Washington and corruption in collectors’ offices from coast to coast.”17 So widespread was corruption that dozens of employees were fired or forced to resign, and some faced criminal indictments. President Truman had to deal with “the blackest cloud of murk that has risen over Washington in many a year” because “revelations of corruption in his administration [were] piling up.”18 As a result, Congress decided to look for corruption in the Justice Department and its prosecution of tax offenders. “Historians believe that the income tax scandal was one of the worst cover-ups in Washington history,” Mark Grossman wrote, “that Truman administration officials. . . all escaped justice due to political considerations and a cover-up by two attorneys general [Tom Clark and his successor J. Howard McGrath].”19 The BIR and Justice Department investigations culminated in the wellpublicized firing of Assistant Attorney General Theron Lamar Caudle, who became “the man who came to symbolize the tax scandals.”20 Described as a big man with a voice like molasses, Caudle began his Justice Department career as U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, where he reportedly “raised the district’s rating from about the lowest point to the highest in the entire federal court system in five years’ time.”21 When Clark became attorney general, he promoted Caudle to head the Department’s Criminal Division, where Caudle gained a reputation for heroically defending the civil rights of southern blacks.22 One month before his Senate hearing on the Kansas City vote fraud, Clark transferred Caudle to head the Tax Division, where Caudle committed numerous “indiscretions” leading to his dismissal from government service. In testimony before a House subcommittee investigating the BIR scandal, Caudle admitted to his “indiscretions,” which included receiving a commission on the sale of an airplane to people connected to parties under investigation for tax violations, and benefiting from cut-rate deals on extravagant purchases,

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such as a mink coat for his wife. “She loved it and petted it like a first born child,” Caudle reportedly said, “now, the pore thing [sic], she’ll never put it on again.”23 These so-called “indiscretions” were widely reported, and the historical scholarly consensus was that Caudle was more naïve than iniquitous and probably took the fall for others at the Justice Department. On November 17, 1951, in the midst of what one historian called “the nastiest eruption” of scandal, Truman fired Caudle for engaging in “outside activities” inconsistent with his duties as the government’s chief tax fraud prosecutor.24 Caudle appeared before the House subcommittee “hysterical,” one reporter noted, “implicating all his old friends and superiors,” especially Tom Clark, who accompanied Caudle on two “pleasure jaunts” in 1946 to go fishing with Troy Whitehead, a North Carolina businessman under investigation for tax violations. Clark claimed he did not know Whitehead was under investigation, so subcommittee chairman Cecil King invited him to clear his name. King also invited Attorney General McGrath (Caudle had implicated McGrath in approving the commission for the sale of an airplane), and McGrath accepted on the condition that he appear at an open hearing. Clark’s invitation remained voluntary, though, and King criticized subcommittee members who demanded Clark’s testimony. John Byrnes, for example, wanted Clark to explain Caudle’s transfer to the Tax Division, particularly because Caudle had no prior experience with tax law. He never handled a tax case as an attorney and never filled out a tax return for a client, prompting one editorial to quip that Caudle was “an utter ignoramus on the question of taxes.”25 Criticism of Clark’s decision to transfer Caudle to the Tax Division prompted popular radio and television host Tex McCrary to write: Inevitably, you will find yourself either on a witness stand, before a congressional investigation, facing a barrage of flash bulbs, newsreel and television cameras. . .. Your only chance is to tell you story [sic] in a way that will give you at least an even start. . .. Your only chance is to write a letter to me, or to somebody else like me, answering every question before it is asked, and my first question would be: What made you have the confidence in Caudle which you expressed in your public statement on the occasion of his appointment?

In a reply marked “Personal & Confidential,” Clark wrote, “Before receiving your letter I had responded to the few inquiries coming in with a ‘no comment’. That position appeared necessary at the time as well as at the present. I cannot adopt a policy of answering every rumor or accusation that is bandied about.”26 Ignoring the crisis, however, did not make it go away.

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The first call for Clark’s impeachment came in a December 1951 editorial by syndicated columnist Ray Tucker, who thought the House would bring charges against Clark and McGrath for “allegations of tax manipulations, questionable acceptance of favors, [and] condoning subordinate’s unethical actions.”27 Clark saved in scrapbooks dozens of messages calling for his resignation, including one from a Florida resident angry over Caudle’s inexperience in tax law: “If you have any character you will resign.”28 Clark also saved a news clipping of Senator Richard Nixon’s request for President Truman to fire McGrath and to compel Clark to testify. Believing Clark would voluntarily answer Caudle’s allegations, subcommittee chairman King decided against formally inviting Clark to testify. King told newsmen he did not want to “set the precedent of calling a justice of the United States Supreme Court.”29 For the time being, then, Clark was content to remain silent within the Marble Palace, possibly taking solace in the advice of a Justice Department friend, Alexander Campbell, who wrote, Saw a story where Cong. King said you were invited to testify. This is to respectfully suggest that you tell them to go to hell. You know your business a lot better than I do – but all they want is more names to smear and your record is that of the most active and greatest in our history.30

Cleaning up the Justice Department By the end of 1951 the “signs of corruption were spreading so fast that the White House staff had not yet been able to document all of them.”31 Truman was “in the mood to clean house” because he was “angry over being sold down the river by some disloyal employees of the government.” The House subcommittee “excoriated” Caudle for “such gross indiscretion as to constitute a breach of your public trust,” and chairman King made a “dramatic denunciation” of Caudle, saying, “The damage you have done your government will be hard to repair.”32 Truman assigned the potential Justice Department cleanup to Attorney General McGrath, who hired a New York lawyer, Newbold Morris, to do the actual investigation. Morris proved a poor choice, but he took his task more seriously than McGrath intended. McGrath expected Morris to “investigate” for a few months without finding any evidence of corruption. When Morris devised a detailed financial questionnaire for highly paid federal employees, including Cabinet members, McGrath refused to submit to it as an invasion of privacy and ordered his subordinates to refuse as well. Once Truman, having first supported Morris’ independence, agreed that the questionnaires were a mistake, McGrath

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fired Morris. Truman, in turn, holding McGrath responsible for the fiasco, fired McGrath the same day. “What began as high drama,” Bert Cochran observed, “came to a creaking halt as low farce.”33 Truman’s mismanaged effort to root out Justice Department corruption did not prevent the House Judiciary Committee from conducting its own investigation – this one focused on former attorney general Clark. In his testimony before the King subcommittee, McGrath revealed that Clark may have been aware of Caudle’s “irregularities” before promoting him to assistant attorney general. Previous investigations of Caudle as a U.S. attorney indicated he was “indiscreet” (Caudle himself admitted, “somebody kept putting presents in [my] automobile”). When FBI agents informed Clark of Caudle’s “irregularities,” Clark reportedly asked, “Do you think Caudle’s really crooked? Will he embarrass me? Does he know his way around?”34 Satisfied with the agents’ answer, Clark let Caudle’s promotion proceed. Caudle’s weak character led to suspicions about Clark’s character and his fitness to remain on the Court. An editorial found in one of Justice Clark’s scrapbooks declared that the Senate Judiciary Committee later regretted its decision not to call Clark to testify at his confirmation hearings. “All of this might have come out in time to keep Clark off the Supreme Court,” the writer observed, “which, sooner or later, he is likely to disgrace.”35 Even Clark’s nomination for attorney general was called into question. Columnist Drew Pearson related how Truman was too ashamed to confront Clark’s predecessor, Attorney General Francis Biddle, to ask for his resignation, so Truman sent his secretary, Steve Early, to do the dirty work. Offended by this shabby treatment, Biddle went to see Truman personally, and in the course of offering his resignation Biddle asked about his replacement. When Truman told him it would be Tom Clark, Biddle expressed amazement; he had decided to fire Clark as assistant attorney general “because of his easygoing attitude toward criminal prosecution.”36 The cumulative effect of these accusations and innuendos was the creation of a new House subcommittee to investigate the Justice Department’s handling of criminal prosecutions. One potential member, Republican Patrick Hillings, insisted that Clark testify, but he doubted the subcommittee would resort to a subpoena.37 As the subcommittee was forming, Ray Tucker once again suggested that Clark resign or face impeachment, this time because of the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Judith Coplon case, which Tucker mistakenly took as affirmation of the lower court’s ruling. Blaming Clark for contributing “directly to what legal experts call a lamentable miscarriage of justice,” Tucker lambasted the former attorney

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general for permitting the FBI “to engage in lawless methods” in building a case against Coplon, who was a Justice Department analyst suspected of espionage. Both of Coplon’s convictions (one in New York and one in D.C.) were overturned on appeal because the FBI used illegal wiretaps and arrested her without a warrant. “Lawyers and jurists cannot understand,” Tucker lamented, “how Clark could have been so submissive, reckless and so injurious in his swashbuckling enforcement methods.” Impeachment, though, was not likely, Tucker admitted, because “stupidity and ineptitude are not grounds for impeachment.”38

Clark’s own suspicions Before examining the House subcommittee’s investigation of the Justice Department and Clark’s part in handling criminal prosecutions, we should consider one other possibility for these investigations – the one that Justice Clark insisted was the real purpose behind them. At the end of Clark’s third Court term, after the Justice Department underwent an overhaul and James McGranery became the new attorney general, Truman announced he was seizing the nation’s steel mills to avoid a debilitating strike during the war in Korea. Characterized as “one of the boldest, most controversial decisions” of Truman’s presidency, the steel seizure case went before the Supreme Court where Tom Clark had to decide whether to support his friend and former boss or to rule against Truman’s bold action. One of the principal difficulties Justice Clark faced in the steel seizure decision was his prior comment as attorney general on the “exceedingly great inherent powers” of the president to do just what Truman had done. When Congress in February 1949 was considering new labor legislation, Truman defended a proposal that omitted the protection of court injunctions to prevent “national emergency” strikes, effectively repealing the Taft-Hartley law and its “cooling off ” period to settle labor disputes. Attorney General Clark publicly came to Truman’s defense, causing Republican senators to demand that Clark “personally explain his assertion that the President has power to handle a national emergency strike without the Taft-Hartley injunction club.” The Senate Labor Committee, however, overlooking Clark’s testimony two years earlier in the Kansas City vote fraud, decided against calling Clark to testify.39 When the Supreme Court on June 2, 1952, announced its decision against Truman’s “inherent powers” to seize the steel mills, Justice Hugo Black spoke for the majority, and five other justices, including Clark, wrote concurring opinions.

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A majority of five justices believed that Truman’s actions were outside the prescribed constitutional or statutory powers of the president; only with a grant of power from Congress could the president, under certain circumstances, take private property. Clark, on the other hand, concurred in the judgment but not the majority’s rationale as he tried to reconcile his earlier statement in defense of Truman’s “exceedingly great inherent powers.” Believing that the Constitution granted the president “extensive authority in times of grave and imperative national emergency,” Clark argued “such a grant may well be necessary to the very existence of the Constitution itself.” Under the circumstances, Clark concluded, Truman possessed the power to seize the steel mills unless Congress authorized other procedures. Because Truman failed to follow other congressionally authorized procedures, Clark ruled against him.40 Twenty-five years after the steel seizure case, retired justice Clark regarded that decision as the catalyst for congressional investigations of his work as attorney general and suspicions about his handling of Justice Department cases. In a 1976 interview, Clark speculated, After the case came down. . . I knew that they weren’t going to investigate a Justice unless they have some okay. . .. I figured they wouldn’t be there [FBI agents to interview him] unless they had some approval from the White House. . .. But they also gave leaks to people on the committee in the House. Somebody talked them into investigating me. . . Mr. McGranery made two or three statements that led me to believe that he would like to see me off the court.41

Clark’s suspicion of reprisals over the steel seizure decision may have been a bit specious, though, considering the BIR investigation that led to Caudle’s dismissal, Caudle’s and McGrath’s testimony implicating Clark in certain improprieties, and executive and legislative decisions to look more closely at the Justice Department all occurred before the steel seizure case. Clark may have projected suspicion on the steel seizure case because the most damaging congressional reports and demands for his testimony occurred after that decision. The timing of the steel seizure case made Clark’s suspicions propitious, but congressional probes of his work as attorney general were just as likely without it.

The Chelf subcommittee The new House subcommittee investigating Justice Department cases began its first public hearings soon after the steel seizure decision. A few months later its

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preliminary reports seriously damaged Clark’s reputation as attorney general and raised suspicion that he would have to testify before Congress. Initially chaired by Democrat Frank Chelf, the subcommittee called as principal witnesses ousted Justice Department officials Lamar Caudle and Howard McGrath. Their combined testimonies cast them as men unfairly indicted by a powerful Washington “clique” seeking their dismissals. McGrath believed Caudle was “wrongly treated when he was summarily discharged,” and Caudle sought to restore his reputation by claiming President Truman came to regret the decision to fire him (a charge Truman roundly denounced). McGrath even threatened to reveal his own secrets against the administration, a vow Truman dismissed and McGrath never kept. Concerning former attorney general Clark’s handling of cases, Caudle left the impression that Clark hampered or even halted important prosecutions, claiming Clark barred Caudle from testifying in the Kansas City vote fraud case, “though I begged him [to] many times.”42 Considered “one of Washington’s best after-dinner speakers,” Caudle’s congressional appearance was characterized as “florid and theatrical.” He gratefully proclaimed his innocence while pointing an incriminating finger at Tom Clark, even though, as one columnist remarked, “There has been nothing in the plot which would warrant indicting anyone for anything.” The House subcommittee certainly believed “there was skullduggery in the Justice Department while Justice Clark was the attorney general.”43 The subcommittee was especially concerned with a war fraud case against Detroit businessman Norman Miller after his case languished in the Justice Department long enough for the statute of limitations to run out. Clark was implicated in taking a personal interest in Miller’s case and arranging certain meetings with Miller’s attorneys, possibly to forestall prosecution – but for what purpose, the subcommittee wanted to know. Even more suspicious were indications that Clark wanted to keep Miller’s prior robbery conviction confidential. In light of these suspicions, Representative Harold Gross demanded Clark resign from the Court. Gross believed the subcommittee’s hearings “brought out that Clark, as Attorney General, had cooperated in maneuvers that were clearly aimed at hamstringing prosecution of the Detroit war frauds case.”44 The ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Kenneth Keating, proposed that Clark testify to clarify his role in the case. For three weeks the subcommittee considered whether to invite Clark to testify (his role in the Kansas City vote fraud was also questioned), convincing many commentators that he would have to appear. Columnist Ray Tucker, on the other hand, recognized the difficulty of calling

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Clark before Congress: “Clark’s black robes may permit him to shroud many damaging secrets. If it were not for his judicial position, he would be placed on the witness stand immediately.”45 Following Republican victories in November 1952 to regain control of Congress, the House subcommittee was slated to have new leadership, but not before issuing its preliminary report exonerating Lamar Caudle: “We feel that he is an honest man who was indiscreet in his associations and a pliant conformer to the peculiar moral climate of Washington.” The report characterized Caudle as “an honorably motivated” but “weak” official who was “unfairly used as a public sacrifice to divert attention from the shameful weaknesses that were being exposed throughout the Treasury and Justice Departments.” Considered the subcommittee’s “star witness,” Caudle was overjoyed by this redemption, remarking, “If it hadn’t been for the Chelf committee I’d have been another Dreyfus.” Dissenting from the subcommittee’s report, Democrat Byron Rogers publicly proclaimed that Caudle was permitted “to relate every suspicion, rumor and gossip in Washington.” “His testimony did not impress me that much,” Rogers stated, because Caudle “blamed everyone but Caudle.”46 Tom Clark did not fare as well in the Chelf report, which, despite three previous congressional investigations, was supposedly the final judgment in the now five-year-old Kansas City vote fraud case. He was accused of using “extremely poor judgment” when he ordered a “preliminary” investigation, which the subcommittee considered a “serious irregularity.” This assessment was based, in part, on testimony from former attorney general Francis Biddle, who considered a “preliminary” investigation “inappropriate, improper and unheard of.”47 Reactions to the Chelf report were immediate and contentious, blaming Clark for corruption within the Justice Department and expecting him to defend himself or resign from the Court. Ray Tucker led the attack, criticizing Clark’s failure to detect delinquencies in Caudle’s character by denouncing Clark’s character: He neglected his duties wretchedly. Craving headlines, the erstwhile Texas lobbyist used to make several speeches a day. . . It was one of the jokes at the Capital. He was an ubiquitous guest at lunches, receptions and dinners. The easy-going ways and political interests left the department without supervision. The agency was run by men like Caudle. . . Taking their cue from Clark, they did favors and feathered their own nests.48

Editorials held Clark responsible for Justice Department corruption, calling him the “prime force in perverting the Department into a paradise for holders of

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cushy jobs and beneficiaries of lax and even crooked law enforcement.” Lamar Caudle was merely an “accurate reflection of decay within the department” who gave the House subcommittee “a fair look into the innermost anatomy of a sick public agency.”49 When the subcommittee reconvened under Republican leadership, Representative Patrick Hillings requested a “full inquiry” into Clark’s Justice Department leadership, including a summons for Clark to testify. “Many people in Washington,” Hillings declared, “regard Mr. Clark as some type of sacred cow because he is a justice of the Supreme Court. I do not share this opinion. A Supreme Court Justice should not cling to the sanctity of his ivory tower and deprive congressional committees of the opportunity to obtain necessary information.”50 Calling Clark’s handling of the Amerasia and Kansas City vote fraud cases “unjustified and improper” and not “adequately explained” by any Justice Department official, a Pittsburgh editorial demanded Clark become the first witness, and if he did not volunteer then subpoena him. “The fact that the former Attorney General now is a Supreme Court justice,” the editorial stated, “should impose no restraint on the investigation. The fact makes the inquiry all the more urgent.”51 A Connecticut editorial thought Clark was “duty-bound” to clear his name or step down from the bench. “However false the accusations are,” the editorial continued, “however political the Congressional committee’s report may be, Justice Clark has no alternatives other than to refute the accusations or to resign. Nothing less than the reputation of the Supreme Court and of justice in the United States is at stake.”52 If Republicans wanted Clark’s testimony they would have to ask him for it. In January 1953 the new subcommittee chairman, Kenneth Keating, announced his intention to invite Clark to testify on one mail fraud case where Clark took a personal interest and charges were later dropped. Keating’s announcement came despite a report from the House subcommittee investigating the BIR scandal, which found no evidence that Clark “ever intervened in any improper manner in tax fraud cases.” Although Clark was “undoubtedly negligent” for failing to keep a closer eye on Lamar Caudle’s activities, there was no “evidence of any improper activity on Justice Clark’s part in tax cases.”53 In May 1953 the newly constituted Keating subcommittee got underway investigating a mail fraud case against Roy Crummer, a bond dealer who specialized in Florida municipal securities. The subcommittee received the case from outgoing attorney general James McGranerry, who called it “one of the biggest mail fraud cases” in history. The subcommittee wanted to know whether

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and to what extent Tom Clark “was improperly induced” in 1946 to drop charges in the case. During the first week of testimony the recrudescent Lamar Caudle, for the first time, accepted responsibility for recommending dismissal of the charges.54 This apparent turnaround in Caudle’s culpability did not deter the subcommittee, who still wanted Clark’s testimony. This time they sent him an invitation.

Clark under fire – Keating’s invitation The House subcommittee’s invitation to Justice Clark and his subsequent refusal of it were played out amid the backdrop of changing political circumstances. Having won the White House with a campaign focused on “Korea, Communism, and corruption,” Republican congressional majorities sought to discredit the former Truman administration, particularly its laxity in rooting out Communists in government. These historical circumstances made it possible for Clark to deflect the congressional summons while avoiding a subpoena, but questions over Clark’s and Congress’ prerogatives were not conclusively answered. Initially, the five-person subcommittee split on whether to invite Clark to testify, but chairman Keating told reporters he was “fortified” in his view to offer the invitation after testimony in the Crummer mail fraud case.55 Keating’s invitation, sent by messenger, arrived at the Supreme Court on the last day of its term, June 15, 1953. The Court was about to begin its summer recess, and nothing presumably could interfere with Clark’s testimony. “I have no doubt,” Keating said, “[Justice Clark] will welcome the opportunity to appear and will be as anxious to be heard as the committee is to hear him.” News reports at the time overplayed Keating’s invitation, calling it without historical precedent: “Legal experts and historians around the Capitol said they could recall no instance in which a member of the Supreme Court has appeared, or even been invited to appear, as a witness before a congressional committee.”56 This was somewhat hyperbolical, considering justices annually appeared before Congress to discuss appropriations, and historically ten different justices made over 20 appearances (with one exception) to discuss judicial administration.57 Commentators’ incredulity over Keating’s invitation more likely reflected the inquiry’s purpose – Clark was not being asked about the Court’s functioning, the federal judiciary, or his duties as a justice. Instead, Clark’s former position as attorney general was under investigation. As far as Keating was concerned,

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Clark’s Court position made no difference. The more important question was whether, and on what basis, could Clark refuse the invitation? If Clark refused, Keating had authority to request a subpoena, but would he take that extraordinary step? Justices Reed and Frankfurter were both subpoenaed for the Alger Hiss trial, and neither refused. “Legal experts in capitol circles,” one newspaper reported, “knew of nothing in the constitutional theory of separation of government powers that would protect a Supreme Court justice if he should wish to refuse to testify.”58 In his refusal, Clark’s reply to Keating stated, in part, Your invitation involved a principle of great importance: the preservation of the independence of the three branches of the Government. As with the Executive and Legislative branches, our Constitutional system makes the Judiciary completely independent. This complete independence from the Executive and Legislative branches is necessary for the proper Administration of justice. . .. The subcommittee should agree that the courts must be kept free from public controversy. In order to discharge their high trust, judges have scrupulously maintained, as is clearly the duty of the office, a dignified retirement from the strife of public affairs and partisan politics.59

Clark’s rationale for refusing Keating’s invitation focused on judicial independence and the proper administration of justice; laudable points to be sure, but, as Keating told reporters, “The matters upon which the committee desires to interrogate Justice Clark have no relation whatever to his judicial duties.”60 One could argue that the administration of justice was better served by hearing Clark’s testimony. According to columnist Peter Edson, the Justice Department under Clark’s leadership had the “lid of censorship” clamped on so tightly that “the only news that ever came out of the place was what was handed out in press releases. . .. It was in this period when reporters couldn’t find out what was going on inside the department.”61 Clark defended his refusal to testify by reminding reporters how his appointments as assistant attorney general and attorney general were unanimously approved in the Senate. The Senate’s approval, however, did not reflect upon his conduct in those positions, which was the purpose of Keating’s invitation. Clark also argued that previous investigations into particular cases, like the Amerasia spy case, the Kansas City vote fraud case, and the Crummer mail fraud case, were all favorably reported.62 Clark’s defense here stretched the historical record. The Senate’s investigation of the Amerasia case agreed with Clark’s recollection, but two different congressional committees refuted his

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assessment of the Kansas City vote fraud case, where Clark was interrupted at one hearing by news that the ballots used as evidence were stolen, and the Chelf report thought Clark used “extremely poor judgment.” Clark’s appraisal of the Crummer case was the furthest off base; no congressional committee had yet responded one way or another – that case was, in fact, what initiated the present investigation. Shortly after Clark refused to testify, Keating referred the matter to the House Judiciary Committee to determine whether Clark could refuse. “No question of separate powers is involved,” Keating declared, “The power of a duly constituted and duly authorized committee of Congress to call a judicial officer before it to testify regarding facts in his possession seems to me clear. If there is any doubt on that point, it should be cleared up authoritatively now.”63 After a contentious closed session Friday, June 19, the Judiciary Committee postponed making a decision. Three days later Committee Chairman Chauncey Reed announced that after two hours of debate the Committee voted against a House subpoena. In a press statement, Reed emphasized that the Committee rejected any suggestion that Clark had “immunity by reason of being a member of the Court.” Congress had the right to subpoena him, Reed stated, but in this instance the Committee decided against it because of Congress’s pending adjournment. Reed did not want to stir partisan debate with insufficient time to get a contempt citation through the House.64 It appeared, therefore, that timing played to Clark’s advantage, and a showdown with Congress was averted. While the pending congressional adjournment spared Clark the ignominy of a House subpoena, it was not the only circumstance detracting from the standoff. The day after Clark received Keating’s invitation, Justice William Douglas agreed to hear one final appeal for a stay of execution of convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were scheduled to die later that week for betraying America’s atomic secrets to the Soviets. On at least a half a dozen previous occasions the Court rejected hearing the Rosenbergs’ appeals, and Douglas’ decision to grant an indefinite stay on a novel legal question not presented by the Rosenbergs’ lawyers prompted Chief Justice Vinson to call the Court into special session. Public reaction was fierce. Attorney General Herbert Brownell called Douglas’ decision “unprecedented,” and Democrat William Wheeler introduced a House resolution to impeach Douglas.65 Clark undoubtedly benefited from news reports of the Court’s special session, which overshadowed Keating’s invitation. At the time few news stories focused on the convergence of Clark’s refusal to testify and public outcry over Douglas’

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stay order.66 When the Court overturned Douglas’ stay, Friday, June 19, hours before the Rosenbergs were executed, Clark sided with the majority but wrote separately. “Human lives are at stake,” he observed, “we need not turn this decision on fine points of procedure.” Unconvinced that the new legal question had any bearing on the case, Clark was equally unmoved by the haste of decision: “[E]ach of the Justices has given the most painstaking consideration to the case. In fact, all during the past Term of this Court one or another facet of this litigation occupied the attention of the Court. . .. Unlike other litigants they [the Rosenbergs] have had the attention of this Court seven times. . . Though the penalty is great and our responsibility heavy, our duty is clear.” Clark’s attitude toward the Rosenbergs’ convictions and punishment may have been at odds with demonstrations occurring worldwide to spare their lives, but his opinion surely quelled antiCommunist concerns about his handling of the inconclusive Amerasia spy case.67 Ultimately, the House abandoned its efforts to impeach Douglas, based as they were on “undue and unwarranted interference with the proceeding of the Court,”68 but public scrutiny of Clark’s conduct as attorney general did not diminish. Editorials over the Court’s summer recess questioned Clark’s integrity and whether it affected the Court’s reputation. “The justice owes the public some sort of explanation,” one newspaper asserted, “even if it not be given in formal committee testimony.” “As long as he chooses to remain silent, the dignity of his present office is imperiled,” another argued, “He owes it to himself and his country to accept the respectful invitation of a congressional committee to testify in those matters which reflect on his personal integrity and therefore on the Court of which he is now a member.” The issue involved keeping the Court “free of the turmoil of congressional politics” while not allowing Clark to “hide behind his judicial robes” where his continued silence gave “rise to grave doubts.” If the evidence against Clark were strong enough, one writer proposed, “then direct proceeding to remove him ought to be undertaken,” compelling him to testify at last.69 Citizens across the country grew frustrated with Clark’s silence, and his Supreme Court scrapbooks contain dozens of letters and postcards urging him to testify, to resign, or simply calling him a coward.70 Soon after the House Judiciary Committee decided against a subpoena for Clark, the Keating subcommittee expired, but not without a denouement one year later when its final report stirred its own controversy. Calling the report’s release a “sneak play,” Byron Rogers accused Keating of releasing the 135-page report without authorization from the Judiciary Committee. Regardless of the report’s legitimacy, its contents were ambiguously critical without actually

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charging Clark of wrongdoing. Citing Clark’s refusal to testify, the subcommittee detected “a strong inference that he was responsible for some of the conditions the subcommittee has found most worthy of criticism.” As one example, the subcommittee had “not the slightest doubt” about the indictments against Roy Crummer being “improperly dismissed,” which represented “a clear instance of improper action resulting from pressure and favoritism.” This seeming indictment, reported as a severe censure, was based more on Clark’s refusal to testify than on any conclusive evidence uncovered. Convinced there was no threat to the separation of powers, the report continued, “Summoning Justice Clark constituted no encroachment by the legislative arm of the Government upon the judiciary, for it was made clear from the outset that the subcommittee had no interest in anything relating to the acts or activities of Justice Clark in the period following his judicial appointment.”71 The Keating report became the last official word on Clark’s handling of Justice Department cases, but not before another incident captured national headlines and raised the specter of Congress questioning him. In November 1953, Clark had to respond to a new request, this one involving Communist infiltration of government agencies and implications of an administrative cover-up. More significant, though, the House Un-American Activities Committee chose to go further than previous congressional investigations; it chose to subpoena Clark and push the outer limits of the separation of powers.

The House subpoena The final episode of Justice Clark’s contest with Congress over the separation of powers was highly dramatic but short in duration. For two weeks the nation was gripped by astonishment over possible Communist infiltration in sensitive government posts. Accusations and counter-charges were hurled from all directions, with two administrations caught in the fray. Clark’s part in the fracas was overshadowed by press attention on former president Truman, who publicly challenged overt partisan attacks on his administration. Then, almost as quickly as it burst onto the headlines, the controversy ended without resolving the fundamental question – can Congress compel a justice to testify about matters unrelated to their judicial duties? Clark never faced the prospect of a contempt citation, but the lasting significance of this episode was the irreparable breach to his friendship with Harry Truman.

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The crisis began on Friday, November 6, 1953, when Attorney General Herbert Brownell delivered a speech before the Executive Club of Chicago where he accused former president Truman of knowingly promoting a Soviet spy. Brownell charged that in 1946 Truman promoted Harry Dexter White, a Treasury Department official and expert in international finance, to become a U.S. director for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Considered “the most rancorous political brawl of the year,” Brownell’s accusations did not implicate former attorney general Clark but focused instead on Treasury Secretary Fred Vinson, who recommended White despite FBI warnings about White’s Communist connections. “It has all the elements of a mystery,” the New York Times announced, “It involves not one dead man – Mr. White, former assistant secretary of the Treasury – but two. The other is the late Chief Justice of the United States, Fred Vinson, who was Secretary of the Treasury when the FBI made its report on Mr. White’s activities.”72 Clark’s role in the controversy first appeared in a copyrighted interview that Lamar Caudle gave to the Des Moines Register newspaper. Playing his part to dramatic effect, Caudle reportedly “begged and pleaded” Clark to stop White’s promotion after receiving “a sweetheart” of an incriminating FBI report suggesting White was a spy. Caudle passed the report along to Clark, reportedly saying, “‘For God’s sake, Tom, don’t let that appointment go through. It will come out some day and ruin us.’ Tom said he sure would try to stop it, and I am sure that he did try to stop it. I did as much as I could.”73 When questioned by reporters, Clark said he did not remember receiving any reports on White and only remembered that White died recently. Clark’s participation in White’s appointment was confirmed when South Carolina governor and former secretary of state James Byrnes agreed with Brownell’s contention that several administration officials received reports suspicious of White. At a February 6, 1946, meeting, the same day as White’s Senate confirmation, Truman considered options for delaying or preventing White’s appointment.74 Once Byrnes confirmed that he and Clark were at that meeting, HUAC chairman Harold Velde issued subpoenas for Truman, Byrnes, and Clark.75 Public reaction to the subpoenas was overwhelming and largely negative. “In one of the stormiest White House news conferences of recent years,” the New York Times reported, “President [Eisenhower] said he would not personally have subpoenaed Mr. Truman.” Soon afterward the White House issued a statement indicating Eisenhower had not seen nor approved of Brownell’s Chicago speech. House Republican leaders were also wary of subpoenaing a former president

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and Supreme Court justice, subjecting Velde to “intensive pressure” to postpone any appearances and calling the subpoenas “terrible.” The Republican National Committee put the brakes on any further action and called the subpoena against Truman “a political blunder.” One member of the National Committee warned Velde that subpoenaing an ex-president was “bad business.” House Democrats were furious, claiming Velde acted on his own authority without consulting Democratic members of the Committee. Francis Walter accused Velde of violating Committee rules and called Velde’s actions “the most incredible, insulting, un-American thing that I’ve encountered in my twenty-one years in Congress.”76 The only support for HUAC’s summonses came from Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its permanent subcommittee on investigations, who called Truman a “liar” and thought HUAC should compel Truman and Clark to testify. Ex-presidents and Supreme Court justices, McCarthy claimed, were “not privileged.”77 The question of privilege, it seemed, preoccupied reporters as they awaited responses from those subpoenaed. Governor Byrnes refused to leave South Carolina but offered to testify if HUAC submitted questions or came to see him. After initially accepting the subpoena in New York and telling reporters to draw their own conclusions, Truman then rejected the summons, writing to Congressman Velde: If the doctrine of separation of powers and the independence of the presidency is to have any validity at all, it must be equally applicable to a President after his term of office has expired when he is sought to be examined with respect to any acts occurring while he is President. The doctrine would be shattered, and the President. . . would become a mere arm of the legislative branch of the government if he would feel during his term of office that his every act might be subject to official inquiry and possible distortion for political purposes.78

According to Truman, the separation of powers was inviolable and extended beyond his term as president. He could never be compelled to testify about matters that occurred while he was president; however, any incident unrelated to his presidency was different, and he would address those with the Committee. Faced with this qualified refusal, the Republican National Committee pressured House leaders against any move to cite Truman with contempt. Clark was now in a quandary. Byrnes was prepared to testify under certain conditions, and his former position as secretary of state was no more immune from congressional inquiry than Clark’s former position as attorney general. Even Truman when refusing the subpoena indicated that separation of powers

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did not prevent Congress from asking him questions unrelated to his term in office. Clark’s situation was uniquely different; he was a sitting justice, a member of a coordinate branch, being asked about matters unrelated to and preceding his Court appointment. How would he handle a House subpoena, which carried the potential of a contempt citation, when HUAC’s questions related to his role as attorney general and were altogether unrelated to his Court position? Did the separation of powers still protect him? Clark’s letter refusing to testify arrived at the Committee’s hearing a few minutes before Clark himself was scheduled to appear (his Supreme Court secretary delivered it in person). The semi-drama of the letter’s delivery was not mere histrionics. Apparently, Clark had difficulty deciding to refuse the summons and needed time to consider his options. In an interview 20 years afterward, Clark admitted, “Mr. [Dean] Acheson came to see me about it out to our apartment late one evening, and we talked about it some. I told him I hadn’t come to rest on it, but later I decided that I shouldn’t do it.”79 Clark’s daughter, Mimi, recalled him consulting everyone in their family, including her brother, Ramsey, who arrived from Texas to assist with researching Clark’s Justice Department records stored at the Court. Former Justice Department colleagues Peyton Ford and Philip Perlman were also on hand, and Clark’s two law clerks researched the legal ramifications of the subpoena.80 Once he was satisfied with his position, Clark wrote to the Committee: As you know, the independence of the three branches of our government is the cardinal principle on which our constitutional system is founded. This complete independence of the judiciary is necessary to the proper administration of justice. In order to discharge this high trust, judges must be kept free from the strife of public controversy. Since becoming an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court I have scrupulously observed a complete retirement from such matters. For this reason, as much as I wish to cooperate with the legislative branch of the government, I must forego an appearance before the committee. However, as there is a possibility that the welfare of our country might be served if the personal recollection I have of the Harry Dexter White matter be made known, you may rest assured that such written questions as you and your committee may wish to send me will receive my serious consideration subject only to my duties under the constitution.81

Clark appeared to be taking the middle course, refusing to appear in person but permitting written questions nonetheless. HUAC immediately announced

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its intention to accept Clark’s offer for written questions and agreed that no contempt citation would be issued against him. In the meantime, Brownell announced his willingness to testify but chose to accept the Senate Internal Security subcommittee’s invitation rather than go before HUAC, and Truman told reporters he would have more to say about White’s promotion in a nationwide radio and television broadcast. It appeared, then, as though Clark’s participation was placed “in a state of indefinite suspension,” because HUAC wanted to wait for Brownell’s Senate testimony before devising questions for Clark.82 As it turned out, HUAC never submitted questions to Clark; two weeks after Brownell’s explosive charges, Velde admitted the Committee did nothing about drafting questions, although one Senate Republican, Robert Hendrickson, was prepared to send Clark written questions, stating, “If I were attorney general when something happened in my administration that needed cleaning up, I would want to testify as a public service.”83 Congress’ dithering was caused, in part, by the spectacle of Truman publicly sparring with Brownell and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover over the decision to promote White. In his nationwide address, Truman accused Brownell of lying to the public, calling Brownell’s accusations “shameful demagoguery” and “cheap political trickery.” Admitting to receiving an FBI report on White in February 1946, Truman said, “Secretary of the Treasury Vinson consulted with Attorney General Tom Clark and other government officials. When the results of these consultations were reported to me, the conclusion was reached that the appointment should be allowed to take its normal course.” Since White’s position at Treasury was more sensitive than his promotion to IMF, Truman thought White’s promotion allowed the FBI to continue its investigation without alerting White of their suspicions. “The course we took,” Truman said, “protected the public interest and security and, at the same time, permitted the intensive FBI investigation then in progress to go forward.”84 Brownell and Hoover challenged Truman’s account in their Senate testimony and raised questions over Clark’s role in the machinations. Brownell charged Truman with failure to take “minimum precautions” against spies in administrative agencies and accused those around him of “delusion” for allowing it. The more substantial testimony, however, came from Hoover, who described secret meetings between himself, Clark, and Vinson to keep White out of government service. According to Hoover, two weeks after White’s IMF confirmation, he told Clark it would be “unwise” to retain White at the Fund, and Clark indicated “an effort would be made to remove Harry Dexter White.” Clark

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reportedly ordered specially selected people to surround White at the Fund because the Fund’s extra-territorial status frustrated FBI efforts to follow him there. Accusing Truman of hampering rather than helping the FBI investigation, Hoover announced, “At no time was the FBI a party to an agreement to promote Harry Dexter White and at no time did the FBI give its approval to such an agreement.”85 Here was Clark’s second ethical dilemma: Truman claimed Clark complied with White’s promotion to protect national security during an ongoing investigation, but Hoover claimed Clark agreed the promotion imperiled the government’s efforts to track Communist spies. Which side was right, and, more important, would Clark choose sides? Two editorials captured his dilemma: described as “one of the key figures in the Harry Dexter White case whose story is still untold,” Clark sat “at the very heart of the disputed events.” Unless and until Clark told his side of the story, “a shadow will rest on the record,” and the Court itself was placed “under a cloud of embarrassment.” Clark faced an “exceedingly difficult decision” but an uneven choice: “If he should step out and defend Mr. Truman by taking issue with Hoover, it is by no means beyond the range of possibility that a congressional impeachment proceeding against Clark. . . would eventuate. . .. If, on the other hand, Justice Clark says nothing, and even more if he should support the FBI version of the White affair, he could settle back in his plush job, probably with nothing to worry about for the rest of his judicial career.”86 Within weeks of its abrupt appearance as front page news, the White affair, as one shrewd observer noted, “died away to oratorical echoes.”87 Clark’s silence, though, had one lasting consequence: it severely damaged his friendship with Harry Truman. Evidence of a deteriorating relationship surfaced soon after Truman’s televised broadcast explaining his decision to keep Harry Dexter White in government service. Newspapers reported Truman was waiting on Clark to “speak up” and defend the president’s account. When “thunders of silence” greeted the president’s address, the bitterness of those who worked on Truman’s speech “now knows no bounds.” Truman was “disappointed” in Clark’s silence, and some of Truman’s associates were “downright angry.” Hoping Clark would publicly support the administration’s decision, sources close to Truman felt Clark “had let him down badly.”88 A close reading of Truman’s speech suggested he expected his advisors, Clark included, to answer Brownell’s charges. Disgusted by Brownell’s imputation against Fred Vinson’s loyalty, Truman told the nation, “I do not mind too much for myself or for those members of my cabinet who

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are alive, for we are able to defend ourselves. But I deeply resent these cowardly insinuations against one who is dead.”89 The White affair became the second strain on Clark’s friendship with Truman, and it proved the more damaging. The first strain occurred 18 months earlier, while Truman was still in office, when the Court ruled against his seizure of the nation’s steel mills. Clark’s opinion in that case reportedly caused Truman to forsake Clark: Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, once the favorite of President Truman, is favorite no more. A year ago he was invited to sit in the president’s box at the Army Navy game. But not today. . .. Since then [the steel seizure decision] the president has remarked that Clark’s opinion “appealed to Stalin more than it did to me.” “He is the sourest lemon,” says the president, “that Bob Hannegan dropped in my lap.”90

Truman’s disappointment, though, could not have been that intolerable; if Clark had ruled differently Truman still lost (only 3 justices dissented). Years later Clark doubted any hostility over the steel seizure case. “I talked to the President many, many, many times since that time, and once, as I indicated a few minutes ago, not long before his death,” Clark told an interviewer, “At no time did he mention it. Of course, I didn’t mention it, not that it was a sore subject with us at all. . .. He was not going to criticize me for that. He never did, as far as I know. Some of these people seemed to think that he was disturbed about it, but I rather doubt that.”91 Clark may have been too conciliatory; Truman certainly thought the steel seizure decision was wrong. Nearly a decade afterward he wrote to Clark following a luncheon with Court members, “All of you were very kind to me and I was glad to have a chance to discuss various things that had taken place in the past, particularly Justice Black’s comments about my statement on the fact that the decision of the Court in the Steel Case was in line with the Dread Scott Decision [sic]. I still think that was true.”92 Truman’s remarks, however, did not account for statements attributed to him when he called Clark’s Supreme Court appointment his “biggest mistake.” In a 1962 interview with Merle Miller, who thought Truman might choose a foreign policy decision, Truman instead named Tom Clark, “that damn fool from Texas,” his worst regret. “I don’t know what got into me,” Truman reportedly said, “He was no damn good as Attorney General, and on the Supreme Court. . . it doesn’t seem possible, but he’s been even worse. He hasn’t made one right decision that I can think of.” Truman probably had the steel seizure decision in mind, but his enmity toward Clark was more personal:

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“I thought maybe when he got on the Court he’d improve, but of course, that isn’t what’s happened. . .. It isn’t so much that he’s a bad man. It’s just that he’s such a dumb son of a bitch. He’s about the dumbest man I think I’ve ever run across.”93 Before Clark went to the Court, his relationship with Truman was built upon mutual loyalty and affection, as evidenced by this note from Truman explaining why he could not attend a birthday celebration Clark planned for him: I am sure so understanding a friend as you will appreciate the frank spirit in which I am writing this note. Even so, I find it a little difficult to convey my feelings to you. . .. Nor could I write this letter of regret without an assurance of my heartfelt appreciation of our rich friendship, a friendship which I know will endure until one or the other of us can enter into no further human relationship.94

The steel seizure case undoubtedly hurt their friendship, but not as permanently as some have suggested.95 It was not responsible for the depth of Truman’s hostility when he said, “I never will know what got into me when I made that appointment, and I’m as sorry as I can be for doing it.” Truman’s lasting scorn was caused by Clark’s unyielding silence during the White affair. Evidence suggesting the White affair and not the steel seizure decision was the cause of Truman’s enduring animosity was found in two interviews of Truman’s close associates decades after Truman’s spiteful comments to Merle Miller. In one interview with Truman’s longtime friend and legal counselor Rufus Burrus, who doubted the account in Miller’s book, the interviewer remarked how the papers of former solicitor general Philip Perlman showed Truman was “irritated” by Clark’s silence in the White affair.96 In another interview, Truman’s administrative assistant Donald Dawson thought there were “things in the background that may have moved the President” to call Clark’s appointment a mistake. When asked to clarify what prompted Truman’s remark, Dawson demurred, but not without revealing the fallout between Clark and Truman occurred after Truman left office, stating, “I was given an assignment by President Truman which gave me an insight and access to the opinion that I have.”97 Most likely, Dawson was assigned to ask Clark to make a statement in the White affair, but, without House or Senate prodding, Clark remained silent.

Conclusions During his first four years on the Court, Tom Clark endured possibly more congressional inquiries into his pre-Court government service than any other

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justice. To some extent, questions about his handling of the Amerasia case and the promotion of Harry Dexter White made him another victim of McCarthyism, but his Court position shielded him from the limelight of persecution. There was more, though, than the Red-baiting that defined the era from the prosecution of Alger Hiss to the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. There were Truman administration scandals, real or perceived, that inevitably led to the Attorney General’s office. The BIR scandal raised tax prosecution questions and ended the government career of Lamar Caudle, who, in order to clear himself, leveled accusations against Clark. Congress then looked for Justice Department corruption (Howard McGrath having failed at cleaning it up on his own), which dredged up the Kansas City vote fraud and Crummer mail fraud cases. Accused of never fully explaining his handling of those cases, Clark’s refusals to testify perpetuated suspicion. In the larger historical context, Clark’s refusals to testify based on the separation of powers raised significant questions: Was he relying on established precedent, or did he establish a precedent? According to James Thorpe, While no precedent exists for a Court nominee to refuse to honor a summons, the 1951 [sic] refusal of Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark to obey a subpoena to appear before a Congressional committee’s investigation of Harry Dexter White and the refusal of the committee to take action on the rejection probably indicates that Congress would be reluctant to press the issue should it arise.98

Thorpe’s analysis failed to give an adequate answer. First, Sherman Minton was a nominee who refused the Senate Judiciary Committee’s invitation four years before Clark’s refusal in the White affair; so Minton established a precedent for nominees.99 Second, Thorpe overlooked Frankfurter’s and Reed’s subpoenas in the Alger Hiss trial, which were more comparable to Clark’s HUAC subpoena. Their willingness to testify about matters unrelated to their Court work indicated that even justices were not immune from the power of subpoena. Clark ignored that precedent. Finally, Thorpe misconceived Clark’s refusal and HUAC’s reluctance “to press the issue.” Clark qualified his refusal with a willingness to consider written questions, which was a significant qualification for possible testimony without the attendant’s personal appearance. The decision to withhold a contempt citation, therefore, owed more to Clark’s qualification than to Congress’ reluctance “to press the issue.” In addition, the historical context included Keating’s invitation when the House Judiciary Committee decided against subpoenaing Clark. In that instance, the House believed it possessed the power to compel a justice to testify,

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but it chose not to exercise it, leaving open the question whether it could. The historical context also included those times when Congress considered asking for Clark’s testimony but then decided against it, like the King subcommittee’s BIR investigation and the Chelf subcommittee’s Justice Department inquiry. Those groups believed they had the right – even the power – to ask Clark about his work as attorney general despite his Court position. Whether Congress, in fact, possessed such power was never conclusively demonstrated because, as Thorpe postulated, Congress did not “press the issue.”100 The separation of powers posed Clark’s greatest challenge. When he declined Keating’s invitation and refused HUAC’s subpoena, he reminded them of the “complete independence” of the judiciary. As compelling as that idea was – it did keep him from testifying – it was not as intractable as Clark argued. Justice Robert Jackson voluntarily testified about the Katyn Forest Massacre; Clark’s Court colleagues went before Congress to discuss the administration of justice; and Clark himself requested appropriations.101 What Clark objected to more than Congress questioning justices was Congress questioning his performance as attorney general. Congress’ authority to question attorneys general was evident in Clark’s appearance during the Kansas City vote fraud investigation and his successors’ later testimony, and no question of separation of powers was raised. Furthermore, Clark’s erstwhile friend Harry Truman admitted that the separation of powers did not protect ex-presidents from congressional summonses unrelated to their term in office. Both the Judicial and Executive Departments were willing to yield some ground to congressional investigations. Remarkably, though, Justice Clark never testified while he sat on the Supreme Court about his work as attorney general. Clark remained on the Court another 13 years after the Harry Dexter White affair, announcing his retirement in March 1967. His reasons were simple; his son was nominated to be attorney general, and Clark did not want to face a conflict of interest. “I finally decided that I should not let my being here interfere with Ramsey’s future,” Clark wrote to one Court colleague; “There are many judges who have sons and I would not want to be used as an example or excuse for them. Wider implications as the appearance of a father-son relationship in such command positions also leads [sic] to some disturbing conclusions.”102 Clark well understood the “wider implications” of someone in “such a command position” as he withstood four years of near-continuous congressional probing into his decisions as attorney general. Even his Court nomination was suspect because he did not testify at his confirmation hearings. As it turned out, one of

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the Republicans who voted against Clark’s Court appointment, John Williams, later expressed a change of heart. “I am writing this letter as one of the members of the U.S. Senate who in 1949 voted against your confirmation,” Williams admitted, Since that time I have with great interest followed many of your decisions and have been very much impressed with the reasonableness of many of your conclusions. In fact, you have made such an outstanding record as a member of this Court that I am convinced that I made a mistake when I cast the negative vote.103

The clouds of suspicion had finally passed.

Notes   * Associate Professor of History and Political Science at California University of Pennsylvania. The author wishes to acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the Faculty Professional Development Program and the College of Liberal Arts at California University of Pennsylvania. This chapter previously appeared in the Journal of Supreme Court History (Summer 2013).   1 Following Murphy’s death, July 19, 1949, newspapers named Clark among likely nominees, along with former secretary of war Robert Patterson and Catholic Senators Joseph O’Mahoney and J. Howard McGrath. The first half of the twentieth century produced six of the nine attorneys general elevated to the Supreme Court, including Frank Murphy (1940) and Robert Jackson (1941). Clark was the last attorney general elevated to the Supreme Court.   2 The Republicans who voted against Clark were Homer Ferguson and Arthur Vandenberg (Michigan), Forrest Donnell and James Kem (Missouri), Ralph Flanders (Vermont), Robert Taft (Ohio), Arthur Watkins (Utah), and John Williams (Delaware). The Spokesman Review [Spokane, Washington], August 19, 1949, 2; see also Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 13, 1949, 7; and Eugene Register Guard [Oregon], August 16, 1949, 11. Unless otherwise noted, all news stories found on-line at Google News Archive.   3 See James A. Thorpe, “The Appearance of Supreme Court Nominees Before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Journal of Public Law 18 (1969): 371–402.   4 See, for example, U.S. Senate, Art & History, “Supreme Court Nominees Refuse to Testify,” http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Supreme_Court_ Nominees_ Refuse_To_Testify.htm; and U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, History of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/

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about/history/ (accessed May 2012). See also Thorpe, 378–384, who mistakenly claimed Minton replaced Murphy on the Court, when he replaced Rutledge, 380. Minton’s refusal may have had as much to do with serving as a U.S. senator and appellate court judge. Prior to Minton’s nomination, three senators (Hugo Black, James Byrnes, and Harold Burton) and three appellate judges (John Parker, Benjamin Cardozo, and Wiley Rutledge) were not invited to testify. Minton became the first in both instances. Clark, on the other hand, was the first attorney general since Harlan Stone who was nominated for the Court and not asked to testify.   5 According to Harvey Rishikof and Barbara A. Perry, Chief Justice William Howard Taft began budget discussions in 1923, and, after it became routine in 1943, justices like Clark testified frequently. Other than appropriations, justices made over two dozen appearances to discuss judicial administration. “‘Separateness but Interdependence, Autonomy but Reciprocity’: A First Look at Federal Judges’ Appearances Before Legislative Committees,” Federal Judicial Independence Symposium, Mercer Law Review 46 (Winter 1995): 675–676.   6 Rishikof and Perry, 679 (Figure 1), indicated in 1951 Robert Jackson appeared before the Senate Labor and Public Affairs Committee and Harold Burton appeared before the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee; in 1957 and 1958 Felix Frankfurter then Hugo Black appeared before the House Administration Committee. Because of his experience as chief U.S. counsel at the 1946 Nuremberg trials, Jackson volunteered in 1952 to testify before a House select committee investigating the Katyn Forest Massacre, where Soviets were accused of executing Polish military officers and prisoners.   7 Initial press reports that Frankfurter and Reed were not subpoenaed proved in error. Reed’s wife confirmed that he was subpoenaed by defense lawyers, but Frankfurter reportedly “deemed it an unnecessary formality to be formally served with a subpoena,” leaving the impression that he appeared voluntarily. See The Telegraph-Herald [Dubuque, Iowa], July 19, 1949, 6; and Daytona Beach Morning Journal, July 21, 1949, 1. Robert L. Beisner believed that Frankfurter appeared voluntarily and only Reed was subpoenaed, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 293.   8 See The Pittsburgh Press, July 16, 1949, 2; Toledo Blade [Ohio], July 17, 1949, 3; and The News and Courier [Charleston, South Carolina], July 18, 1949, 1. Hiss’ first trial ended in a hung jury, but he was later convicted by a second jury and the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal (Frankfurter, Reed, and Clark taking no part), Hiss v. U.S., 340 U.S. 948 (1951). One year later the Supreme Court upheld Hiss’s disbarment.   9 See Andrew Dunar, The Truman Scandals and the Politics of Morality (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), 34–36; Jules Abels, The Truman Scandals (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1956), 24–29; Robert Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: a Life

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(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 220–221; and Harry Haskell, BossBusters & Sin Hounds: Kansas City and Its Star (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 347–348. For a contemporary, detailed account, see Maurice Milligan, Missouri Waltz: The Inside Story of the Pendergast Machine by the Man Who Smashed It (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 246–272. In the November election Axtell was defeated by Republican challenger Albert Reeves, Jr., whose father was the federal judge responsible for conducting the 1936 Kansas City vote fraud trials that began the decline of Pendergast rule. 10 See The Pittsburgh Press, May 29, 1947, 3; The Southeast Missourian [Cape Girardeau], May 31, 1947, 1 & 4; and The Warsaw Daily Union [Indiana], June 2, 1947, 4. Haskell reported that even the Star newspaper was suspected in the ballot theft as a way of discrediting what was left of the Pendergast machine, 348. Caudle and Clark sitting “on the floor like a couple of blanket Indians” found at The Pittsburgh Press, September 21, 1952, 6. 11 See Drew Pearson, Palm Beach Post, June 12, 1947, 4; and The Milwaukee Sentinel, June 9, 1947, 1. According to Dunar, “[Truman’s] opponents could make only a vague and circumstantial argument for any Truman link to the irregularities. . .. Criticism of Attorney General Clark’s conduct of the investigation drew most of the criticism that otherwise might have found its way into the White House,” 36–37. This was not the first, nor the last, false report of Clark intending to quit government service. In 1945 Clark reportedly intended to leave the Justice Department to practice law in Texas, The Free Lance Star [Fredericksburg, Virginia], February 22, 1945, 8; and in 1949 Clark reportedly submitted his resignation, The Telegraph-Herald [Dubuque, Iowa], April 1, 1949, 1; and Pittsburgh Post Gazette, April 24, 1949, 18. 12 Youngstown Vindicator [Ohio], June 9, 1950, 25. One anonymous member of the investigating subcommittee indicated that consideration of calling Clark for testimony was “never given a moment’s thought.” 13 Michal Belknap, Review of The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism, by Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, H-Law, H-Net Reviews, April 1996, 1. The trials in the Amerasia case never took place due, in part, to concern over illegal break-ins and wiretaps. 14 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 10, 1950, 2; Lewiston Morning Tribune [Idaho], June 10, 1950, 1; and New York Times, June 9, 1950, 3. All references to New York Times found on microfilm. See also, “The Strange Case of Amerasia,” Time, June 12, 1950, 20–22. In closed-door testimony James McInerney, assistant attorney general, indicated that Forrestal communicated the order to Clark through Vardaman. Forrestal reportedly feared friction with the Soviets over Pacific islands seized from Japan during the war and ordered arrests in the case put off until the end of the United Nations founding conference. Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh suspected

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Forrestal ordered the postponement, relying on McInerney’s 1950 testimony, which included a May 29, 1945, note in his own handwriting that read, “Matters may be held up by Navy. Mr. Forrestal called Mr. Clark,” The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 90, note 20. 15 Clark to Tydings, September 17, 1950, Box B119, General Correspondence and Office Files (GC), Tom C. Clark Papers, Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas at Austin (herein cited as Clark Papers). 16 Quoted in Klehr and Radosh, 115. See also Klehr and Radosh, 218. Belknap commended Klehr and Radosh for their depiction of the political fix, “which saved all the Amerasia defendants from significant punishment and ensured that there would never be a trial,” but accused them of being poor legal historians for relying too heavily on the FBI perspective, 2. 17 Dunar, 97 and 104. 18 “From Sunshine into Murk,” Time, December 17, 1951, 17. 19 Mark Grossman, Political Corruption in America: An Encyclopedia of Scandals, Power, and Greed (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2003), 182. 20 Dunar, 104. 21 Charlotte Observer, April 6, 1969, quoted in William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, vol. 2, s.v. Caudle (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 347. 22 Caudle reportedly rode all night to reach the scene of race riots in Columbia, Tennessee, to protect blacks from attack. Drew Pearson, The Free Lance Star [Fredericksburg, Virginia], April 8, 1969, 4. 23 “Investigations: The Mess (continued),” Time, October 6, 1952, 27. Clark’s daughter, Mimi Gronlund, whose perspective was colored by her fondness for Lamar Caudle, ignored the airplane commission, excused the mink coat purchase, and accused newspapers of jumping on the incident, Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark: a Life of Service (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 161. 24 See Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 17, 1951, 1. See also Dunar, 104–107; Abels, 13–14 and 158–170, where Abels presents numerous charges against Caudle; Powell, 347–348; and George Childs Kohn, ed., The New Encyclopedia of American Scandals, s.v. Caudle: fraud within the Justice Department (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001), 73–74. Surprisingly, Bert Cochran gave scant attention to the BIR scandal and failed to name Caudle as the principal culprit in the Justice Department, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1973), 248. 25 The Milwaukee Journal, December 1, 1951, 2; The Star-News [Wilmington, North Carolina], December 2, 1951, 1; Eugene-Register – Guard [Oregon], November 30, 1951, 1; New York Times, December 1, 1951, 1, December 2, 1951, 1, December 4,

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1951, 1; and Ray Tucker, The Free Lance Star [Fredericksburg, Virginia], December 6, 1951, 6. See also Abels, 159–160. Gronlund mischaracterized questions about Caudle’s qualifications, positing they related to his heading the Criminal Division, when, in fact, they arose from his transfer to the Tax Division, 160–161. 26 McCrary to Clark, December 12, 1951, and Clark to McCrary, December 24, 1951, B 79 GC, Clark Papers, emphasis in original. With his wife, model and actress Jinx Falkenburg, John Reagan “Tex” McCrary hosted two radio programs, “Hi Jinx” and “Meet Tex and Jinx,” and two television programs, “At Home” and “The Swift Home Service Club,” where they popularized the talk show format. Major Republican contributors, in 1952 McCrary and Falkenburg sponsored a political rally in New York that reportedly launched the Eisenhower campaign for president. 27 The Free Lance Star [Fredericksburg, Virginia], December 6, 1951, 6. 28 Walter F. Koch to Clark, December 11, 1951, F 16, Scrapbooks, news clippings, and printed materials (SB), Clark Papers. 29 Toledo Blade [Ohio], December 7, 1951, 1; and The News and Courier [Charleston, South Carolina], December 13, 1951, 1. 30 Campbell to Clark, December 3, 1951, B 26 GC, Clark Papers. 31 Robert Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1949–1953 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 372. 32 Ottawa Citizen [Canada], December 10, 1951, 42; New York Times, December 11, 1951, 1; and The Miami Daily News, December 11, 1951, 10. 33 Cochran, 248. See also Dunar, 112–118; Abels, 15–19; Donovan (1982), 378–381; Ferrell, 367–368; Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: a Life of Harry S. Truman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 590–592; and David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 894. Gronlund mistakenly asserted McGrath resigned due to House subcommittee pressure, 162. The House subcommittee investigating the clean-up effort concluded, “The whole episode accomplished exactly nothing. . . [and] was an awkward, bungling attempt. . . [that] failed ingloriously,” New York Times, September 29, 1952, 1 and 19. 34 St. Petersburg Times [Florida], December 13, 1951, 1; and New York Times, December 13, 1951, 41. See also Abels, 161. 35 Chicago Daily Tribune, December 17, 1951, F 16 SB, Clark Papers. 36 Drew Pearson, The Lewiston Daily Sun [Maine], December 17, 1951, 4. 37 See Beaver Valley Times [Beaver, Pennsylvania], February 2, 1952, 1; The Pittsburgh Press, February 3, 1952, 10; and The Tuscaloosa News, February 3, 1952, 12. 38 The Free Lance Star [Fredericksburg, Virginia], February 5, 1952, 6. The Supreme Court denied certiorari in the Coplon case (Clark took no part) on January 28, 1952, in three separate decisions: 342 U.S. 920 and 342 U.S. 926. A comprehensive book on the case concluded from secret Soviet documents that Coplan was guilty of espionage; Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, The Spy Who Seduced America: Lies

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Scandal! and Betrayal in the Heat of the Cold War – the Judith Coplon Story (Montpelier, VT: Invisible Cities Press, 2002). St. Petersburg Times [Florida], February 4, 1949, 1; and Daytona Beach Morning Journal, February 5, 1949, 1. See also McCullough, 896–897. Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952). Clark’s concurrence at 662–663. Jerald Hill and William Stilley, “Oral History Interview with Tom C. Clark,” March 20, 1976, Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, Independence, Missouri (HST), 33–35, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/clarktc1.htm (accessed March 2012). In an earlier interview Clark also mentioned how “[s]ome people tried to visit some reprisals on me [for the Youngstown decision], but they never did come about. . .. the House committee they tried to investigate some of my actions when I was Attorney General. It all came up after I decided that case.” Jerry Hess, “Oral History Interview with Tom C. Clark,” February 8, 1973, (HST), 221–222, http://www. trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/clarktc.htm#note (accessed March 2012). Gronlund used the Hill and Stilley interview to focus on FBI investigations of antitrust cases in the liquor and movie industries, trying to connect these to the House investigations, thereby overlooking Clark’s main assertion of retribution in the steel seizure decision, 163–164. New York Times, September 18, 1952, 1; September 19, 1952, 1; September 24, 1952, 1; September 25, 1952, 1; and September 26, 1952, 1. See also “Investigations: The Mess (continued),” Time, October 6, 1952, 27. Chester Potter, The Pittsburgh Press, September 21, 1952, 6. New York Times, August 31, 1952, 9. See also, Kentucky New Era [Hopkinsville], August 18, 1952, 1; and The Pittsburgh Press, August 24, 1952, 25; and August 29, 1952, 1. The Free Lance Star [Fredericksburg, Virginia], October 1, 1952, 4. Keating’s proposal found at St. Petersburg Times [Florida], September 1, 1952, 1; and Schenectady Gazette [New York], September 2, 1952, 4. Press speculation on Clark’s inevitable testimony found at Lewiston Morning Tribune [Idaho], September 21, 1952, 1; and The Day [New London, Connecticut], September 22, 1952, 1. New York Times, September 25, 1952, 1. See also Miami News, December 26, 1952, 1B; Spokane Daily Chronicle [Washington], December 27, 1952, 2; and St. Petersburg Times [Florida], December 28, 1952, 1. A summary of the Chelf report can be found at Ralph de Toledano, ed., “The Sad Story of Lamar Caudle,” The American Mercury (March 1953): 63–74. In December 1955, Caudle and Truman’s appointment secretary, Matthew Connelly, were indicted for conspiring to defraud the government of income tax by accepting bribes and interceding on behalf of parties charged with tax violations. Caudle was sentenced to two years in prison, but after six months he was paroled. Both Connelly and Caudle received

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presidential pardons, in 1962 and 1965 respectively, but Caudle and his family never recovered. 47 The Miami Daily News, October 11, 1952, 1; and New York Times, October 5, 1952, 1, October 11, 1952, 14. 48 The Free Lance Star [Fredericksburg, VA], October 1, 1952, 4. 49 Youngstown Vindicator [Ohio], December 26, 1952, 12; and New York Times, December 28, 1952, 1. 50 St. Petersburg Times [Florida], December 28, 1952, 1; see also Toledo Blade [Ohio], December 29, 1952, 3. 51 The Pittsburgh Press, December 28, 1952, 18. Clark kept a similar editorial in his Supreme Court scrapbooks from the Richmond Times Dispatch [Virginia], December 30, 1952, F 16 SB, Clark Papers. 52 The Meriden Daily Journal [Connecticut], January 2, 1953, 6. 53 New York Times, January 1, 1953, 40, and January 7, 1953, 3. See also Sarasota Herald Tribune [Florida], January 14, 1953, 1. 54 The Dispatch [Lexington, North Carolina], April 29, 1953, 1; Daytona Beach Morning Journal, May 7, 1953, 14; and New York Times, May 8, 1953, 16. 55 New York Times, June 14, 1953, 39. 56 St. Petersburg Times [Florida], June 16, 1953, 1. 57 Rishikof and Perry, 690 (Figure 1), and supra notes 5 and 6. 58 Toledo Blade [Ohio], June 16, 1953, 2. See also New York Times, June 16, 1953, 14. 59 Quoted in Gronlund, 164–165, note 12, which indicates Washington Evening Star, June 17, 1953, emphasis added. Chief Justice Vinson reportedly had a hand in urging Clark to decline; months afterward Marquis Childs revealed, “Vinson argued that it would be an unfortunate precedent opening the way to call members of the Court whenever a committee was in the mood to make a headline,” The Florence Times [Alabama], November 19, 1953, 4. 60 Sarasota Herald Tribune [Florida], June 18, 1953, 1. 61 The Meriden Daily Journal [Connecticut], September 13, 1952, 6. 62 New York Times, June 18, 1953, 1. 63 New York Times, June 18, 1953, 1. 64 See New York Times, June 19, 1953, 16, June 24, 1953, 19; and Spokane Daily Chronicle [Washington], June 23, 1953, 1. Although Reed declined to reveal how the Committee voted, it was reported as 22 to 5 against the subpoena. The committee was composed of 16 Republicans and 13 Democrats. 65 See New York Times, June 17, 1953, 1, and June 18, 1953, 1. See also Michael Mayer, The Eisenhower Years (Facts on File, 2010), 161, and Bruce Allen Murphy, who points out this was the second of four impeachment threats against Douglas and the first House resolution to that effect, Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas (New York: Random House, 2003), 307–308, 326–327, 400, and 433–435.

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Scandal! Douglas stayed the execution to consider whether the death sentence imposed by a federal judge should have gone before a jury. One editorial, George Sokolsky, The Telegraph-Herald [Dubuque, Iowa], July 1, 1953, 6, mentioned both incidents together. Gronlund made passing reference to the Rosenbergs’ trials and executions without mention of Douglas’ stay order, the Court’s special session, or Clark’s concurring opinion, 125, and offered no context for the timing of the Keating invitation, 165. John Neville offers complete news coverage of the Rosenbergs’ final appeal before the Supreme Court, The Press, the Rosenbergs, and the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 126–131. Rosenberg v. U.S., 346 U.S. 273 (1953); Clark’s concurring opinion at 293–296. See also New York Times, June 20, 1953, 1 and 7. For press coverage of worldwide protests over the Rosenbergs’ execution, see Ottawa Citizen [Canada], June 22, 1953, 11. Quoting Representative Emanuel Celler, The Milwaukee Sentinel, June 18, 1953, 1. The Florence Times [Alabama], July 1, 1953, 4; George Sokolsky, The Times-News [Hendersonville, North Carolina], July 4, 1953, 2; and George Sokolsky, The Tuscaloosa News [Alabama], July 6, 1953, 4. News Clippings, 1949–1953, D 178 SB, Clark Papers. New York Times, July 7, 1954, 1. New York Times, November 8, 1953, 1; and November 9, 1953, 1. Vinson died two months earlier on September 8, 1953. White died on August 16, 1948, three days after testifying before HUAC to clear his name of Communist association. Kohn believed that White’s HUAC testimony led to his death, s.v. House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC): the destruction of Harry Dexter White, 188. Steve Neal posited that Brownell, campaign manager for New York Governor Thomas Dewey, may have been “looking to settle a score with Truman for his [1948] triumph over Dewey,” Harry and Ike: The Partnership that Remade the Postwar World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 292. New York Times, November 8, 1953, 33; see also The Miami Daily News, November 7, 1953, 1. Relying upon the Chelf report, Gronlund mistakenly believed Caudle’s statements were congressional testimony, 165. New York Times, November 10, 1953, 1. See also Robert Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1945–1948 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 174. Donovan (1977), 175, and Hamby, 620, mentioned only Truman’s subpoena. See also Neal, 293. Cochran dealt only with Truman’s presidency and overlooked the White incident, as did Dunar and Abels, which seemed incongruous considering the White affair was one of the most scandalous accusations against the Truman administration. Only Gronlund named Byrnes and Clark receiving subpoenas, 166.

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76 New York Times, November 11, 1953, 1; November 12, 1953, 1; November 17, 1953, 1. See also The Portsmouth Times [Ohio], November 11, 1953, 1; St. Petersburg Times [Florida], November 14, 1953, 1; and Lewiston Morning Tribune [Idaho], November 14, 1953, 1. Donovan (1977), 175, and Neal, 293, claimed Eisenhower had advance knowledge of Brownell’s speech. Walters served as chairman of HUAC from 1955 to his death in 1963. 77 Oxnard Press-Courier [California], November 12, 1953, 15. 78 Quoted in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 13, 1953, 4; see also Neal, 293, who altered “any validity at all” to read “any meaning at all.” Gronlund exaggerated where she claimed Truman and Byrnes immediately refused to appear before HUAC, 166. 79 Hess interview, 222–223. Clark’s recollection was somewhat faulty with details, confusing the House subpoena for a Senate subpoena, and investigation of the Treasury Department for the State Department. Dean Acheson was Truman’s Secretary of State, 1949–1953. 80 Gronlund, 166. Remarking upon Ramsey’s nomination for Attorney General, one of Clark’s clerks, Earnest Rubenstein, wrote, “Since the dark hours of 1953–1954, when Congressman Velde went berserk and Ramsey flew up from Texas to be at your side, Ramsey has been one of my favorite people.” Rubenstein to Clark, March 6, 1967, B 132 GC, Clark Papers. 81 Quoted in Spokane Daily Chronicle [Washington], November 13, 1953, 1, emphasis added. See also Thorpe, 402, note 141, which indicates New York Times, November 14, 1953, 1; and Clark’s letter to Velde, November 13, 1953, B 121 GC, Clark Papers. 82 Lewiston Morning Tribune [Idaho], November 14, 1953, 1; and New York Times, November 14, 1953, 9. 83 The Spokesman Review [Spokane, Washington], November 21, 1953, 2; and Middlesboro Daily News [Kentucky], November 19, 1953, 1. 84 Full text of Truman’s speech found at St. Petersburg Times [Florida], November 17, 1953, 3. Full coverage of Truman’s broadcast found at New York Times, November 17, 1953, 1. See also Neal, 293. 85 St. Petersburg Times [Florida], November 18, 1953, 1; and New York Times, November 18, 1953, 1. According to Neal, decrypted Soviet cables and archives later confirmed White’s engagement in espionage, 294. See also Kohn, s.v. House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC): the destruction of Harry Dexter White, 189. 86 Marquis Childs, The Florence Times [Alabama], November 19, 1953, 4; and Jay Hayden, The Spokesman Review [Spokane, Washington], December 6, 1953, 4. 87 The Spokesman Review [Spokane, Washington], November 21, 1953, 2.

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88 Doris Fleeson, The Spokesman Review [Spokane, Washington], December 2, 1953, 4; and Jay Hayden, The Spokesman Review [Spokane, Washington], December 6, 1953, 4. 89 Quoted in St. Petersburg Times [Florida], November 17, 1953, 3, emphasis added. 90 Drew Pearson, Palm Beach Post, November 28, 1952, 4. 91 Hess, interview, 220–221. 92 Truman to Clark, November 10, 1961, B 118 GC, Clark Papers. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), denied blacks—free or slave—U.S. citizenship. At the time of the luncheon, four justices who participated in the steel seizure decision remained on the Court (Black, Frankfurter, Douglas, and Clark), and all of them ruled against the president. 93 Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1974), 225–226. Published after Truman’s death, Miller’s book caused a sensation by revealing Truman’s ill feelings toward figures like Douglas MacArthur and Richard Nixon. Clark doubted Miller’s account, writing years later, “I place no confidence whatever in Plain Speaking—Purely a gimmick to sell his book,” letter, Robert Fisk to Clark, Clark’s marginal notation, March 4, 1977, C 98, Literary Productions (LP), Clark Papers. 94 Truman to Clark, March 28, 1950, B 118 GC, Clark Papers. 95 Del Dickson, ed., believed Truman “was infuriated by Tom Clark’s ‘betrayal’ and never forgave his old friend” for the steel seizure loss, The Supreme Court in Conference (1940–1985): The Private Discussions Behind Nearly 300 Supreme Court Decisions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 182, note 32. 96 Niel M. Johnson, “Oral History Interview with Rufus B. Burrus,” November 8, 1985, (HST), 194–196, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/burrusr.htm (accessed May 2012). Burrus felt so strongly that Miller’s account was a fabrication that he “prepared some things for a file and wanted Mr. Clark to let me publish them.” Clark talked him out of it, saying, “Well, let’s don’t do that. The more you pick up something that’s got stinking dirty stuff on it, the more stink you get on you.” 97 James R. Fuchs, “Oral History Interview with Donald S. Dawson,” August 8, 1977, (HST), 91–93, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/dawsond.htm (accessed May 2012). 98 Thorpe, 401–402, emphasis added. Thorpe mistakenly used 1951 in his argument but correctly used 1953 in his source citation, note 141, which indicated New York Times, November 14, 1953, at 1, col. 7. 99 After Minton’s refusal, every nominee testified (Earl Warren’s 1953 recess appointment was the exception, but no previous nominee for chief justice was invited). When Abe Fortas was nominated for chief justice, he willingly appeared for more hours of questioning than any previous nominee. Despite a favorable Committee report, a Senate filibuster defeated Fortas’ nomination, in part, because

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of his refusal to return for a second round of hearings. Thorpe, 388–389, 394–395. The Fortas testimony left the impression that even sitting justices were expected to honor congressional summonses. Ironically, the only group to fully absolve Clark of wrongdoing was the King subcommittee that decided to allow him to testify voluntarily. Furthermore, Representatives Keating and Velde, who invited Clark to appear or subpoenaed him, respectively, both objected to Justices Frankfurter’s and Reed’s testimony at the Alger Hiss trial and proposed legislation to stop justices from serving as character witnesses at any trial. See supra note 7. See supra notes 5 and 6. Clark to Potter Stewart, March 30, 1967, B 111 GC, Clark Papers. Williams to Clark, April 14, 1961, B 127 GC, Clark Papers. Of the eight Republicans who voted against Clark’s nomination, Williams was one of the longest serving and the only one in 1961 who remained in the Senate. Arthur Vandenberg and Robert Taft died in office in 1951 and 1953, respectively, and the others finished their terms and were not reelected.

5

Sherman Adams’s Fall, and the Scandal behind the Scandal Michael J. Birkner*

In the months following Dwight Eisenhower’s landslide reelection victory in 1956, the president’s chief assistant in the White House, Sherman Adams, was riding high. Adams had played an important role in the campaign, and, as in 1952, ran a tight ship. He had Ike’s full confidence, and increasingly, his affection. To a public unaware of the president’s engagement in the shaping of administration policy, Adams seemed to be the critical cog in the White House machinery. James Reston of the New York Times, a weathervane of press opinion, wrote that Adams is “without doubt, the most powerful White House advisor since the late Harry Hopkins in the Roosevelt administration.”1 Other columnists went further, calling him the “undisputed team captain” in the Eisenhower administration, “Assistant President,” and “the second most powerful man in Washington.”2 Adams publicly downplayed his important, if circumscribed, role in the White House, but his reminders that Eisenhower was the “best informed man in Washington” and the real captain of the administration’s team were often treated skeptically.3 Because Eisenhower kept the press at a distance, few reporters apprehended his motivations or priorities, much less Ike’s political acumen. Adams, who had a reputation for being curt with reporters, nonetheless made himself available for interviews. Because he was a colorful character and everyone on the White House staff had an Adams story to tell, he was a popular subject. Every personality profile featured two Adams qualities that fit hoary stereotypes about New Englanders: he was frugal, and he was honest. Examples of frugality included Adams affixing three-cent stamps to his personal mail from the White House office, re-using old stationery, and refusing an Air Force offer of

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a plane when he was flying out to Denver and back in 1955 to brief the president during Eisenhower’s recuperation from a heart attack. Adams flew coach. In an interview with Newsweek’s Charles Roberts in 1957, Adams disclosed that until recently he had been wearing a suit made by a Boston tailor in 1918!4 If frugality was in Sherman Adams’s nature, his major virtue was his integrity. He best represented the administration’s intolerance for the kinds of petty scandals that had marred the Truman presidency and contributed to the Republicans’ triumph in the 1952 elections. Profiles of the Assistant to the President invariably emphasized Adams’s probity. They suggested that Adams was Ike’s point man for disciplining those guilty of misfeasance and influence peddling, or even the appearance of wrongdoing. Adams gave, according to more than one account, “unshirted hell” to administration officials engaged in questionable activities.5 These individuals included (among others) Harold E. Talbott, air force secretary, who was found to have referred contracts to a business engineering firm in which he was a partner; Hugh W. Cross, chair of the Interstate Commerce Commission, who Senate investigators concluded had “indiscreet contacts” with two railroad presidents; and Edward F. Mansure, the General Services Administrator who had questionable dealings with a government-owned nickel plant in Cuba.6 Adams had no specific charge as the keeper of morals in the Eisenhower White House, but no one in the administration was more identified with high ethical standards than he was. Consequently, when stories began to break linking Adams himself to improper behavior, there was heightened public interest. Was it conceivable that the Yankee paragon on whom the president so deeply depended had feet of clay? It was true. Sherman Adams’s connection with a shady New England industrialist became the biggest political story of 1958, and  – along with a serious economic recession – a major cause of the Republicans’ dismal showing in the midterm elections. For Adams to find himself at the center of a political storm that severely damaged the administration he had selflessly served for more than five years, several different story lines had to converge; unfortunately for Adams, this is what happened. Much to his own amazement and chagrin, he was forced out of his office after enduring an unrelenting barrage of negative press and jeers from the right wing of his own party. One thread of the Adams scandal related to the culture of muckraking that has, since the first days of the republic, periodically affected national politics. Nationally syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, who had made his spurs

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reporting political misfeasance and malfeasance, was convinced that there was a story in the major national regulatory agencies, whose Republican members he was convinced were pervasively engaged in unethical dealings. In 1955, with the Democrats back in power in the Congress, Pearson suggested to House Speaker Sam Rayburn that this subject would make for a productive congressional investigation. Rayburn demurred, in part (according to Pearson associate Jack Anderson) because his nephew had recently been appointed to the Federal Communications Commission. But by 1957, as Rayburn began contemplating how the Democrats could best ensure their majority in the Congress, the speaker had a change of heart. Rayburn instructed the chair of the House’s Interstate and Foreign Commerce Legislative Oversight Subcommittee, Oren Harris of Arkansas, to investigate the regulatory agencies. Rayburn had no particular line of approach to suggest – he simply wanted Harris to get his people out into the agencies and see what they could dig up.7 One of the accidental but sensational outcomes of this investigation was the revelation that Sherman Adams had injected himself repeatedly into the business of several regulatory agencies. A second thread was the quarrel of two unscrupulous businessmen from Boston, one of whom gave his name to the scandal that absorbed political Washington in 1958. The two men were Bernard Goldfine, a textile mill owner and president of the East Boston Company, a real estate venture, and John Fox, an investor who was briefly the publisher of the tabloid Boston Post. Fox had come to know Goldfine when he was looking for help to pay for his purchase of the Post in 1952. As a wealthy man about Boston, Goldfine was a likely source of cash. Fox eventually persuaded Goldfine to loan him $250,000. For some months the two men were close both socially and in directing the affairs of the East Boston Company, of which Fox was a minority stockholder.8 Eventually, the bottom fell out of Fox’s business enterprises and of his friendship with Bernard Goldfine. Among his troubles were those with the IRS. Whether because he was malicious, paranoid, or both, Fox concluded that his tax troubles were the fault of Goldfine and Goldfine’s friend Sherman Adams. In 1958, first before a federal district judge, and then before a rapt Congressional investigating committee, Fox offered damaging, albeit often inaccurate, testimony about the mendacity of Sherman Adams.9 The third thread of the scandal was the Adams–Goldfine relationship itself – on the face of it, one of the more improbable friendships of the twentieth century. Born in Russia and educated in the school of hard knocks in this country, Bernard Goldfine had become rich in the wool business. He eventually

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purchased textile mills in four New England states. During his salad days in the 1930s and 1940s, Goldfine enjoyed the high life in Boston – a fancy home on Beacon Hill, servants, and plenty of time out on the town. But Bernard Goldfine sought something more. He wanted to be a big shot. He wanted to be seen with people who mattered, and he wanted to be their friend. It was good for his ego and it was good for business.10 For Goldfine, the entree to these relationships was gifts – all kinds of gifts: picking up the check at Boston restaurants and nightspots; boxes of premium chocolates sent to politicians’ homes at Christmas; $50 placed in a coat jacket with a wink and a “buy something for the kids”; tickets to sporting events; free liquor by the case; offers of hotel suites when one was travelling out of town; help in paying hospital bills, or educational expenses, when apprised of a specific need. Perhaps most significant, Goldfine regularly gave money to political campaigns, to Republicans and Democrats alike – most especially to politicians who were in a position to help Bernard Goldfine.11 Goldfine made himself known throughout Massachusetts and much of New England for his generosity to politicians across a wide spectrum of geography and influence. He gave cash gifts to governors of Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, U.S. senators, congressmen, mayors, legislators, judges, and bureaucrats. Goldfine’s gifts even extended to legislative aides and secretaries, sometimes to the puzzlement of the recipients, who could not fathom why a man they hardly knew was giving them money. Goldfine also gave gifts to Sherman Adams. As Adams and his defenders explained matters during the travail of 1958, there was nothing unusual about his coming to know or like Bernard Goldfine. Adams had been introduced to Goldfine during World War II by a rising Lebanon, New Hampshire–based politician named Norris Cotton. Goldfine had recently purchased a mill in Lebanon and promised to expand his business at a time when nobody else was doing so. He was preserving jobs and thereby shoring up a state economy on the brink of decline. Why wouldn’t a government official like Adams want to encourage such civic-minded businessmen? Why wouldn’t such businessmen be interested in helping the politician? That’s the way the world worked.12 The wrinkle in the relationship was the personal friendship that somehow developed between these two men. No one close to Sherman Adams could fully explain why he and Bernard Goldfine became so intimate that Sherman and Rachel Adams and the Goldfines socialized frequently in New Hampshire, New York, and Boston, exchanged expensive gifts, and kept in regular phone contact.13

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In his memoirs, Adams stated that “Goldfine was a man with a lot of good fun in him and we enjoyed his company.”14 Others have pointed out that Adams admired people who “made it” in the world by dint of their talent and moxie. Neither explanation suffices to understand the Adams–Goldfine connection. The most benign interpretation might be that sometimes opposites do attract. A more cynical explanation holds that money and mutual interest were the glue that brought and kept these two very dissimilar men together.15 Although many of the records were mysteriously removed just as investigators got interested in the Adams’s relations with Bernard Goldfine, sources in the New Hampshire state house confirmed in 1958 that Goldfine made substantial contributions to Adams’s 1948 and 1950 gubernatorial campaigns. Subsequently, when Sherman Adams went to Washington, Goldfine made other gifts to his “old friend”: a vicuna coat (or a mislabeled camel’s hair coat, if the late Concord attorney Robert Reno’s testimony is to be credited), liquor, candy, and blankets. Also an expensive Oriental rug, which during the media frenzy of ’58 Adams insisted on calling a “loan”; and the opportunity to stay, on at least 20 occasions, in hotel suites in New York and Boston, signing the tab in Bernard Goldfine’s name. The value of the hotel bills alone exceeded $3000.16 None of this was known during most of Adams’s tenure in the White House, not even by his closest associates. But by June of 1958, everyone would know that Sherman Adams had taken a vicuna coat from a “shady industrialist” named Bernard Goldfine. That knowledge, combined with interventions Adams made on Goldfine’s behalf to two regulatory agencies, destroyed Adams’s ability to function effectively in the White House.17 The sequence of events unfolded in a way that exacerbated the hurt to Sherman Adams and his family, and maximized negative political fallout to the Republican Party. At some point during the winter of 1957–1958 an investigator for the House Committee, Bernard Schwartz, overheard that Adams had intervened with the Federal Trade Commission on behalf of Goldfine by discussing Goldfine’s case with Commission chairman Edward F. Howrey. The case entailed persistent mislabeling of Goldfine woolens – for example, not mentioning nylon content in his “woolens”. At Goldfine’s request, Adams had taken the matter up with the FTC chair, obtained a full report, and then forwarded the document to Goldfine. The case was temporarily closed. When similar charges were made against Goldfine in 1956, Adams arranged for Goldfine to meet with Chairman Howrey. It was at this session, attended by FTC staff members, that Goldfine brazenly asked Howrey’s secretary to “get Sherman Adams on the phone.” In

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everyone’s presence, he practically shouted, “Sherm, I’m over at the Federal Trade commission. I have been well received over here.”18 Harris Committee chief counsel Bernard Schwartz wanted to pursue the Goldfine–Adams–FTC connection, but his bosses on the House Oversight Committee were not particularly eager to follow up. There was, after all, no hard evidence that Adams had actually done anything substantive for Goldfine. When a frustrated Schwartz leaked a memo he had written to the New York Times urging a more aggressive tack in the investigation, he was fired. Facing a subpoena to return documents to the committee that fired him for alleged insubordination, Schwartz gave many of them to Clark Mollenhoff, Washington correspondent of the Des Moines, Iowa, Register, who carried them to Republican senator John J. Williams of Delaware, a well-known corruption fighter in the Senate. Ultimately the papers were transferred to Drew Pearson associate Jack Anderson and directed to Democratic senator Wayne Morse of Oregon.19 Mollenhoff had been pursuing leads that Adams had intervened with the Civil Aeronautics Board on behalf of a western airline that happened to be represented by a prominent GOP political consultant, Murray Chotiner. Chotiner’s explanation of Adams’s intervention in the case was lame. He said that historically the Republican Party championed small business, and that he felt that the “small business” Chotiner represented merited his personal attention. Even lamer was Adams’s later justification that he was only doing for Chotiner what he would have done for strangers. Later it became known that Adams had asked White House Counsel Gerry Morgan to look into a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of Goldfine’s failure to file required financial reports and the possibility that he was looting the treasury of that privately held corporation.20 Adams had crossed an invisible line that he had made clear to his aides should never be crossed. One White House staff member, Bradley Patterson, later recalled that Adams made clear that “you just don’t contact regulatory commissions about their business” – and that if a staff member of his ever did so, he would be “fired immediately.” But Adams had broken his own rule.21 To the chief of staff ’s chagrin, his indiscretion was noticed. Adams was subject to a stinging editorial in the Washington Post on his intercession regarding North American Airlines. Observed the Post, if the details of Adams’s contacts with the CAB were true, and they had not been refuted, then the Assistant to the President had committed “a gross impropriety by intervening with a quasi-judicial agency in an affair that should not have concerned the White House.”22 When the Des

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Moines Register’s Clark Mollenhoff pursued the issue at a White House press conference in April 1958 an obviously irritated President Eisenhower dismissed the question and stalked out.23 Ike would have to respond to what came next. In federal court on April 16, John Fox testified in a suit against Goldfine’s management of the Boston Port Development Corporation (a subsidiary of the East Boston Co.) that Goldfine had confessed to him that he had embezzled some $7 million from the company and that the Securities and Exchange Commission could do nothing about it “as long as he had Sherm Adams in his pocket.”24 Fox’s testimony, which was never corroborated, was the first public mention of any relationship between Goldfine and Adams, but it was far from the last. By a coincidence, House Special Oversight Committee investigators in Boston, pursuing leads about alleged administration influence in awarding a TV channel in the Hub noticed the local news reports of Fox’s testimony. Consequently, they went to see Fox. In a confidential meeting, Fox spelled out his knowledge of Goldfine’s gifts to Sherman Adams and asserted that Goldfine had regularly paid Adams’s hotel bills in Boston, New York, and other places.25 The die was thus cast for a dramatic set of public hearings featuring Goldfine, Fox, and Adams himself. Facing allegations of influence peddling, and perhaps worse, Adams had no choice but to testify. He did so on June 17. It proved to be a decisive day and not to his advantage. In testimony that his colleagues in the White House had helped prepare, Adams was alternately defensive and contrite. In his prepared statement, Adams acknowledged his friendship with Bernard Goldfine, but insisted that there was nothing improper about it. “I never permitted any personal relationship to affect in any way any actions of mine in matters relating to the conduct of my office,” Adams said. Adams also denied that he did anything, or that members of his staff did anything, that resulted in any benefit to Bernard Goldfine “that he could not have received had he gone directly to the agency involved and he and I had been complete strangers.” Adams flatly denied he had asked FTC chair Howrey for any favors; “the only thing I ever asked Mr. Howrey for was information.”26 In the course of his testimony, Adams conceded he had received gifts from Bernard Goldfine, but insisted that these were based on friendship, not expectation that he would do anything for Goldfine. Adams denied he had ever received any furniture from Goldfine (as alleged in court by Fox) or that he had access to Goldfine’s credit cards. But he conceded that he had received a vicuna coat, which became the symbol of the scandal and, without question, the most

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memorable and damaging thing to emerge from the hearings and subsequent investigations. More significantly, Adams was pressed by Democratic congressman John Moss to admit that a phone call from him to a federal agency was not the same thing as a phone call from a private citizen or from a low-level executive staffer. Chairman Harris got to the nub of the matter by asking Adams whether he had ever personally fired a member of a regulatory agency. After a pregnant pause, Adams replied in the affirmative. Insisting that he was not peddling influence or doing anything untoward, Adams conceded “mistakes of judgment and not of intent” – a point that President Eisenhower would emphasize soon thereafter in a futile effort to quell the controversy. In a formal statement issued following Adams’s testimony, Ike conceded that his right-hand man had lacked “careful prudence” in “this incident” but added that Adams was “an invaluable public servant doing a difficult job efficiently, honestly, and tirelessly.” Ike concluded with the pungent but perhaps inaptly worded plea, “I need him.”27 “For critics of the staff system and for those who liked to picture the president as a boob being led by the rock from the Granite State,” historian Herbert Parmet has written, “Eisenhower’s three sincere words became the ultimate confirmation of their suspicions.”28 Neither Adams’s appearance before the Harris Committee nor Eisenhower’s statement of support quelled the growing furor over what became known as the “Goldfine Scandal.” Having endured Republican attacks on the “mess in Washington” during the Truman era and most especially during Eisenhower’s presidential campaign in 1952, Democratic political leaders could now condemn the Eisenhower administration for “its sanctimonious preachments and its corruption,” as party chairman Paul M. Butler put it. One Democratic senator, Ralph Yarborough of Texas, suggested Sherman Adams had come to Washington not on “the good ship Mayflower,” but “the gravy train.”29 Meanwhile, Drew Pearson, having access to former Harris Committee Counsel Bernard Schwartz’s files, began publishing a series of columns enumerating gifts Goldfine had given to Adams and other Republican political figures, including the thousands of dollars in gifts that President Eisenhower had accepted for the reconstruction and furnishing of his Gettysburg farm. These articles, and others that massaged the same information Pearson had dredged, damaged the administration and sapped Republicans’ morale.30 Alarmed by the spreading political fire, GOP-elected officials, among them Vice President Richard M. Nixon, began hinting that Adams would be wise to

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resign for the good of the party. In their view, Adams’s troubles could only be a drag on Republican chances in the Fall 1958 elections.31 Several Congressmen in the eastern establishment wing of the party defended the doughty New Englander, saying that nothing had been proved against Adams and that it was unfair to let a lynch mob destroy the career of a selfless public servant.32 This was also Eisenhower’s take on the situation, and Adams’s main sustenance during a difficult summer. But the political climate was not encouraging. Few Republican office holders rallied round. Not a single Republican senator up for reelection in 1958, regardless of ideological pedigree, spoke publicly urging Adams to stay on the job.33 In late June one of Eisenhower’s closest friends, William Robinson of the Coca Cola Corporation, consulted privately with a key White House aide, Howard Pyle, to gauge what the staff ’s position on Adams was. He was told that there was “100% loyal support for Adams in the White House staff.” White House staffers respected their boss’s “unselfish dedication” to Eisenhower – but also worried that his ability to do his job well was becoming “seriously impaired.”34 Another White House insider, Cabinet Secretary Robert K. Gray, noted that over the Summer of ’58 Adams was increasingly left out of the loop in decision making in the White House, as presidential assistants “came to decisions without him and engaged in the plays for power which the superiority of Adams’s position had quelled while he reigned.” The standby refrain, “Check it with Sherm,” was less and less heard in the White House, even among Adams’s most loyal supporters.35 Administration figures noticed that what the chief of staff began was beginning to show the effects of the strain he was under. On June 18, Under Secretary of State Christian A. Herter, in the White House on business, put his arm on Adams’s shoulder before their formal conversation commenced and observed, “I sympathize with what you have had to go through these last few days.” Looking daggers at Herter, Adams replied, “Is this the subject you came here to discuss?” “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” said the embarrassed Herter. “I don’t want to seem mean or disagreeable,” said Adams. “But when I want you to discuss my personal affairs with me, I’ll let you know.”36 That day never came. In retrospect it may be that the only person Adams ever talked candidly with about his troubles was his old New Hampshire friend, Richard Cooper, a Rochester attorney who had served as state GOP chairman during Adams’s years as governor.37 Refusing to discuss his situation, even with his wife Rachel, exacerbated Adams’s pain and clouded his judgment.

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Over the course of the summer, Cabinet Secretary Robert K. Gray recalled, Adams “seemed to age a quarter of a century. . . . The old bark and bite were gone. The demanding commander issued few orders and those pathetically petty.”38 In this reading, Eisenhower’s top assistant even lost his capacity or his will to issue succinct instructions about a meeting or an action he wanted to take place. In short, Sherman Adams was losing his grip. In his own mind, Adams found it difficult to grasp, much less accept, what was happening to him. He never felt he had done anything unethical, and while he acknowledged that he had given ammunition to the administration’s political foes, he did not want to resign and did not believe he should have to. Ike, he was convinced, needed him, and had no obvious replacement for him. He simply must keep a stiff upper lip and hang on.39 Even as he endured the expected hits from Democrats, the more hurtful criticisms of fellow Republicans, and calls for his resignation from such surprising quarters as Republican-leaning Life magazine, Adams took solace in the encouragement of New Hampshire friends and Dartmouth College alumni, many of whom wrote offering support and urging him to stay on the job.40 One of these communications was special to Adams, because it came from the pen of the nation’s most celebrated poet, Robert Frost, with whom Adams had a long and friendly association. Writing from his farm in Ripton, Vermont, on June 28, 1958, Frost told Adams that “the only thing I blame you for is ambition to lead the life of a political hero.” “I know you won’t be stampeded by the blatherskites,” Frost said. You are safe in the confidence of the president. . . . Meanwhile, I shall be swearing under my breath at what has happened to you. I might swear aloud if I knew you well enough to be sure you didn’t disapprove of swearing. I know you pretty well at that, don’t I.41

To this kind note Adams replied, “if some good swearing would offset rough going I might be willing, between friends. Beyond that, faith and fortitude are well-known assets. Perhaps if you write a poem entitled, ‘Peace,’ it will help while the tempest quiets down.”42 Adams’s wishes were not granted; the tempest never ceased. Though often inaccurate in particulars, Drew Pearson’s reporting left in readers’ nostrils the strong odor of misfeasance in the White House. With the national economic recession still bottoming out, and Adams on the front pages of newspapers, prospects darkened for the GOP, and campaign fund-raising was stymied.43 As

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the summer wore on, and Adams drew “farther into his shell,” according to one source, Republican party regulars grew increasingly uneasy and demoralized. Polls were awful. More Republican office holders began calling for Adams’s resignation, and sentiments of members of the Republican National Committee increasingly reflected the view that Adams did indeed have to go.44 Still Ike refused to ask Adams to leave his post and Adams refused to offer his resignation without being asked directly by the president to do so. It was a situation that annoyed not only the likes of Vice President Nixon and Party Chairman Meade Alcorn, but President Eisenhower’s personal secretary Ann Whitman, who had long had a friendly relationship with Adams. On September 1, Mrs. Whitman wrote in her diary that the president had reluctantly come to the conclusion that Adams should resign. Ike had delegated Nixon to tell Adams that. When the two men met in late August, the vice president tried his best to frame the matter in terms of Adams’s duty to the administration, but Adams did not take the bait. Nixon reported to Whitman that Adams said he “just did not know who the President could get to replace him.” “This,” said Mrs. Whitman, “is the most alarming part of the whole business to me. It reflects Governor Adams’s apparent belief that he is indispensable,” and contributes to Adams’s actions that have persuaded the press that Adams was “running the government.” “It simply is not true, but I am convinced that governor Adams, not intentionally and probably not consciously, is contributing immeasurably to that legend.”45 In the end, the president’s hand (and concomitantly, Adams’s) was forced by the deteriorating political situation. RNC chair Alcorn witnessed a near revolt against Adams at the committee’s late August conclave in Chicago. In the wake of the disastrous Republican showing in the midterm elections in Maine two weeks later – the GOP lost the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat, and two Congressmen in a normally Republican state – there was no choice but for Adams to depart. Still Eisenhower found it impossible directly to ask for Adams’s resignation. After closeting repeatedly with Nixon and Alcorn, Alcorn was given the assignment – the “dirtiest job” he could give him, Ike told the party chairman.46 Alcorn had Adams’s secretary Mary Burns call her boss back from a salmon-fishing vacation in New Brunswick, Canada, to face the music. On September  15, sitting in Adams’s office in the White House, Alcorn made it clear that the president’s right-hand man had no choice but to resign. Alcorn offered Adams any help he needed in preparing a statement. When Adams, in a last desperate effort to keep his job, suggested that Ike would not approve his departure, Alcorn said that Adams was mistaken. Ike wanted and expected him to go. Adams then

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meekly capitulated, probably two months or more later than he should have.47 On September 22, Adams made a nationally televised speech announcing his resignation. In that address he admitted to no wrongdoing, but it did not matter: Adams’s public career was over, his name forever destined to be linked to that of Bernard Goldfine and that infamous vicuna coat. Why had Sherman Adams risked so much on behalf of a man who, investigations and trials proved, was fundamentally a crook? This is not a subject Sherman Adams ever shed light on – not in his memoirs, not in subsequent writings, not in the scores of conversations with reporters and scholars in the twenty-eight years remaining to him. In the absence of self-reflection, perhaps the best explanation of Adams’s fall was offered by veteran New York Times columnist Arthur Krock. In his memoirs, Krock suggested that Adams’s troubles were based on an understandable but “excessive egotism.” Adams knew he was an honest man, knew that he was utterly devoted to the president, and in his selfconfidence about his own motives, he “drifted into . . .the unforgivable political sin of assuming that both qualities foreclosed any question from any act of his.”48 For Sherman Adams, who clearly “drifted into” his relationship with Bernard Goldfine, and to gift taking of another kind that would also come back to haunt him, five years of dedicated service would be overshadowed forever by the scandal that drove him from office. Without question, the bantam cock who had helped run the White House from 1953 to 1958 performed an enormous service to his president and his country. But like other proud and powerful Washington figures, Adams was susceptible to the sin of hubris, in the fashion well described by Arthur Krock. He paid dearly for that sin. The irony of the so-called Goldfine scandal that drove Adams from the right hand of power in Washington is twofold: first, the specifics of the gift giving from a morally compromised industrialist to the president’s chief of staff were so mundane. It was not so much what was given as who was given it that mattered, and that the receiver of the gifts was indiscreet enough to involve himself even indirectly on Goldfine’s behalf. But the more interesting irony is that the Washington press corps missed the larger scandal in the Adams case. Only later, long after a Kennedy administration Justice Department investigation commenced, did it become public knowledge that Eisenhower’s chief of staff regularly received cash from various people throughout his years in the White House, some of this money delivered directly to him at his desk in an office adjacent to the president’s. This story partially broke into public consciousness early in the presidency of John F. Kennedy, when Kennedy’s brother Robert, as

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attorney general, sought to prosecute Adams for tax evasion. This was the story underneath the Goldfine scandal. It briefly reached the public prints in 1961 and 1962 during the period that the government was making a case against the New England industrialist Bernard Goldfine on charges of massive tax avoidance.49 It resurfaced in 1973, when Jack Anderson wrote about it in his syndicated column, and again in 1986, when Sherman Adams died. But the scandal beneath the Vicuna Coat scandal has never previously been documented, and only in passing connected to a remarkable pact between two presidents that affected the national security interests of the United States. By one of the stranger twists of history, Adams’s indictment for failing to pay income taxes on cash gifts received between 1951 and 1958 was forestalled only through the direct intervention of his former boss, Dwight D. Eisenhower, with President John F. Kennedy. The Adams case ultimately affected the passage of Kennedy’s Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Russians. The hardball politics behind that connection is one of the oddest, but not least important, ways in which Sherman Adams impacted twentieth-century history. The “real” Adams scandal was first put into the public square in 1973 when, in a nationally syndicated column, Jack Anderson called attention to Adams’s alleged receipt of more than $350,000 in cash from Bernard Goldfine.50 Adams never responded to the article and no other news outlet picked up on it. Fourteen years later, less than a week after Adams died, age 87, in autumn 1986, the issue of cash gifts to Adams resurfaced in the New York Times. Columnist William Safire announced that he was “at last ready to write about the Great Three-President Cover Up.” In a piece titled “Abominable No-Man,” Safire lobbed a bombshell in the direction of those who believe that Dwight Eisenhower’s hard driving chief of staff was unfairly driven from his job in 1958. “Sherman,” Safire pronounced, “was more venal than we suspected.”51 Safire asserted that aside from those notorious material gifts from Bernard Goldfine, the vicuna coat and the Oriental rug, Adams had also been taking money – some $300,000 – during his years in the White House. Safire further claimed that Adams had failed to report that money on his income taxes and that he had been saved from going to jail only by the intervention of his former boss, Dwight Eisenhower, with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. It was an astounding new twist in the Sherman Adams story. The most astounding thing about it was that it was, in key respects, true. How it came about is an old story about need, greed, and individuals’ capacity for self-delusion. Public officials tend to accept (and sometimes to solicit) money

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“gifts” for one of two reasons: they need the funds to pay for campaigns or daily bills associated with their government service; or they want to maintain or enhance a style of life. Both reasons are pertinent to the case of Sherman Adams. Adams worked hard throughout his years in private and public life. He had given the Parker-Young Company extraordinarily effective service over two decades in what was a taxing and sometimes hazardous job in the New Hampshire woods. He had been a crackerjack legislator in Concord and a diligent congressman. He ran three times for governor of New Hampshire. As governor, he shook up a stagnant system, modernized it, and made it more efficient. He did all of this not with charisma or by relying on smooth-talking operatives, but rather by dint of his own vision, exertion, and political acumen.52 As chief of staff in the Eisenhower White House beginning in January 1953, Adams was famous for his stamina and his quick mind, as well as his distinctive persona. He gave his country all he had to give during his years in Washington. By any fair accounting, he served it well. Doing so cost Sherman Adams a great deal. It wasn’t just that Adams could have made more money in the private sector than in public service; that is a given. It was that in choosing service, Adams compromised with, then simply ignored, a fundamental ethical tenet: if you choose public service, it is important not only to be honest, but to be perceived as honest, and thereby not to give in to the manifold temptations available in a system that has always been lubricated by money. If doing the wrong thing is the second worst thing a person can do, being caught, as newspaper columnist and author Jim Bishop once observed, is the first.53 Adams did wrong by taking money from people he knew well, people he barely knew, and people he did not know at all. And then he was caught, though not until he had returned to private life and was presumably free at last of the scrutiny accorded primarily to power brokers and celebrities. The fact that what he did was commonplace at the time does not get him off the ethical hook, though it does make his actions easier to understand. The gift taking began even before Adams took the oath of office as New Hampshire governor. It was small change at first, nothing one would even think twice about. During the gubernatorial campaign of 1948, for example, admirers sent him food items, nylon stockings for his wife, flowers, shoes – a variety of material things. In an era before campaign funding was subject to state and federal rules and regulations, Adams also accepted cash gifts from people who wanted him to be governor. Some of this money was used for personal expenses on the campaign trail. Such was common practice in that era, at all levels of government.54

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As governor from 1949 to 1952, Adams found himself financially on the edge. He had never had so much as $5,000 in the bank and he had relatively few investments. This at the same time that he was putting children through expensive prep schools and colleges, maintaining two homes, and taking regular vacations to pleasant resorts. The Adamses did not live ostentatiously, and their children were brought up to believe that frugality was an important virtue. Adams brought his own lunch to work in the State House. He wore clothes until, his son Sam recalls, they were “practically threadbare.” Rachel Adams, for her part, was renowned for her ingenuity in recycling clothes, linens, and draperies. The Adamses were neither high livers nor big spenders. But they did not live like monks, either, and the family budget did not readily balance, not on a governor’s salary of $10,000 per year.55 It was during the governor years that Adams began accepting gifts from Bernard Goldfine, the industrialist whose sleazy business practices would become nationally notorious beginning in 1958. Also during these years, Adams exploited the governor’s “contingency fund” for his personal use. Traditionally, this fund was used by governors to meet “unforeseen emergencies,” according to one account, such as buying flowers for deceased citizens, out of pocket meal expenses when travelling, and supplies or other unreimbursed material needs. At some point – it is not clear that it began with Sherman Adams – the New Hampshire governor began treating the contingency fund as a personal fund – a fact which was never advertised to the people of New Hampshire, lest they might object to it. In his first term as governor, Adams asked the legislature to increase the fund from $5,000 to $7,500; this was done. In Adams’s second term it rose to $10,000. And he spent every dime of it.56 Adams’s use of the governor’s contingency fund for personal expenses was essential if he were to stay out of debt during his years in Concord. But it also put him in a parlous position financially, when he took a leave of absence from the governorship in 1952 in order to campaign full time for Eisenhower for president. In the latter months of 1952, Sherman Adams’s expenses remained substantial, but he no longer had either his salary or that expense account to help pay his bills. His solution to the money problem was to accept cash gifts – many cash gifts, mostly from people he did not know or barely knew – all along the presidential campaign trail.57 Just as Jack Anderson, William Safire, and later Joseph Alsop (in his memoirs) alleged, Adams continued taking cash gifts throughout his years in the White House. He had paid his rent on his beautiful home in Rock Creek Park with

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cashier’s checks. He had been turned in by his landlady. And it was a fact that he had been pursued – his friends, including Dwight Eisenhower, thought he had been hounded – by the IRS during John F. Kennedy’s presidency and on into Lyndon Johnson’s. Adams was saved from indictment by an oral agreement cut between Eisenhower and two subsequent presidents.58 Close examination of pertinent documents, however, shows the Adams case entailed much less money than Anderson, Safire, or Alsop claimed – and that it also included a sensational twist that Safire did not report. According to testimony that Bernard Goldfine gave to the IRS in 1961 as he sought a reduced sentence for tax evasion, he had given Adams cash gifts totaling $150,000 or more during the period 1951–1958. Like much of Goldfine’s testimony before congressional hearings and in court, the assertion was fantastical. Though it is possible that Goldfine occasionally gave Adams cash for personal use, there is no convincing evidence suggesting that this money was substantial, much less anywhere near $150,000. In testimony to the FBI and later, the IRS, where it would have been perilous for him to lie, Adams admitted taking cash “gifts” but insisted that none of the money had come from Goldfine.59 Indeed, once the IRS sorted out the facts as best it could determine them, using a “net worth accounting” system, it concluded that Adams had failed to pay roughly $28,000 in taxes on income from 1951 to 1958. In terms of the tax rates then operative, Adams was being charged with having taken roughly $70,000 in cash. With interest on the $28,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties added, the IRS concluded that Sherman Adams owed the federal treasury approximately $62,000.60 If it did not come from Bernard Goldfine, who gave the money to Sherman Adams? It came from many sources, none of whom Adams would ever name. Indeed, in a remarkably brazen apologia written for the IRS, Adams claimed that he did not know most of the people who gave him money during the 1952 campaign, and that he could no longer remember the names of those he had known. Adams eventually conceded that four individuals had each given him $1000 or more in 1956 to help him with expenses, one of whom handed him an envelope filled with bills at his desk in the White House. But Adams refused to name any of his benefactors.61 One of the benefactors was almost surely Louis Marx, the New York toy magnate. Corroboration of the Marx relationship with Adams is difficult. Marx is dead. Adams is dead. No one saw money change hands. But legendary New York public relations man and occasional Adams advisor John Regan

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(Tex) McCrary was certain that Louis Marx gave Adams many monetary gifts. He did so, McCrary asserted, not for personal benefit – Marx was a multimillionaire – but because Marx “idolized Dwight D. Eisenhower. And he appreciated what Sherman Adams was doing to take the load off Eisenhower’s back in Washington.”62 Adams’s children, who accept the fact that their father took cash gifts during his White House years, know nothing of Louis Marx as a benefactor in this way. They note that Marx gave the family a pinball machine sometime during the 1950s. The Marx connection, while unproven, is a logical one.63 Who else gave Adams money is not now known. The gifts were handed to Adams, sometimes through intermediaries, by people who liked what Adams was doing in the Eisenhower campaign and in the White House, and who wanted to help him stay there. How did Sherman Adams justify what he was doing? For Adams, there was nothing wrong with what he had done, because he accepted the gifts without strings attached. As he put it in an undated narrative, prepared in connection with his tax fraud case, “occasionally I received contributions from those who stated that in their view I was doing a service which they appreciated and wished to help me to meet the heavy personal expense to which I was put” when serving in state government. “There was never any conditions [sic] attached to these, no favors asked or received. They were outright gifts.”64 In 1952, the need was larger, and so were the gifts. “I received several fairly large contributions from friends outside of New England who had reasons of their own for not wishing to be identified. Often I did not know the origin of the funds.” In 1952, Adams got so much cash from so many sources that he accelerated a program, begun as governor, of buying stocks and government securities, in order to build a nest egg for a rainy day beyond his years of public service. Much of the money he kept temporarily in safety deposit boxes, because, as he later told the IRS, he did not want to raise eyebrows by coming to Washington in 1953 with a large bank account. Consequently, during the White House years, Sherman Adams was doing the public business, but also maintaining a very private enterprise, probably unknown even to his wife, Rachel, wherein he tapped his security box at the Riggs Bank across from the White House to meet regular household and other expenses – including, no doubt, money for vacations, golf greens fees, new clothes, and a new car in 1957. Why had Adams drawn cashiers’ checks on so many different banks during the Washington years, in order to pay his rent?

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Because, he said, he used “the most convenient banking institution wherever I was at that particular time.” The objective was to avoid building a large account in any one bank. Adams’s dealings with the IRS were harrowing, and deeply embittered him toward that agency. The IRS essentially turned his life inside and out, examining every reported source of revenue, every investment, every expense, in order to configure Adams’s net worth and the dimensions of his failure to report income. Exacerbating the agony for Adams were leaks to Washington reporters like Jack Anderson and Drew Pearson, who wrote a series of articles in 1961 hinting that Adams was about to be indicted for tax fraud. These articles unnerved Adams’s editors at Harper and Row, which planned to publish his memoir Firsthand Report. They so worried the highest authorities at Time-Life, which had paid Adams handsomely for serial rights to the book, that one former White House staffer and current Time-Life official, C.D. Jackson, was deputed secretly to tape a phone conversation with Adams about the prospects and implications of an indictment. In the transcript of that conversation made by a Time-Life staff member, a clearly shaken Adams assures Jackson that he never took money from Bernard Goldfine and that he has been wracking his brain trying to remember what he might have forgotten to tell the Justice Department, which was then investigating him. “I can see, CD, if you really wanted to put together an ugly set of circumstances with respect to anybody who ever held high political office, you could, and I don’t think there are many exceptions,” Adams told his former associate in the White House. “This business of political indictment is an old past-time among parties. . . .” Adams denied helping Goldfine during his years as assistant to the president, recalling only one case beyond those in the public domain where he had intervened. This entailed a Defense Department contract that Goldfine had for woolens, in which Goldfine was losing money and wanted out. It added up, in Adams’s view, to very little. “If there is anything else of any material nature of information that I asked for [on behalf of Goldfine], I don’t know what it was.” He added, “I can say with my right hand in the air that there was nobody, nobody, that sought to obtain favors for [Goldfine]. Maybe your friend R[obert] K[ennedy] can make something of this. If they can, we will have to face it, won’t we. . . .”65 In the course of the conversation, Adams raised the issue of payment of his royalty from Time-Life should he die before all of the checks due him were received. “Would you take it out on Rachel?” he asked. The implication, combined with a Justice Department official’s suggestion that Adams looked like

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he was “ready to jump out the window” when he came in for his Washington interview, provides at least the hint that Adams might have committed suicide if indicted. He had a gun in his house, and as his children recall it, Rachel was deeply disconcerted about Adams’s mental condition at the time.66 We will never know what Adams would have done if indicted, because the indictment never came down. Part of the reason was that the Kennedy Justice Department did not want to bring a case against Adams that was not airtight. Neither Bernard Goldfine nor his secretary, Mildred Paperman, had much credibility.67 Second, Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened in the case in a way that proved helpful both to Adams and to President Kennedy. As the story was originally told by former Washington insider Bobby Baker, Adams’s plight came to Eisenhower’s attention as his case was being reviewed by the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Ike had heard that Adams might commit suicide if indicted. Troubled by this possibility, he asked Republican senator Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois to intervene with President Kennedy to learn whether JFK would offer mercy to Adams, with the prospect of having the former president beholden to him. As Dirksen told the story to Baker, Eisenhower told the Illinois senator, “You have the authority to advise [JFK] that he’ll have a blank check in my bank if he will grant me this favor.”68 Dirksen consequently called Kennedy, arranged a private meeting with the president, and laid out the scenario for him. Intrigued, Kennedy asked Bobby what was going on, and then ordered his brother to put the indictment (which Bobby suggested was probable) “into a deep freeze.” According to Baker, retelling Dirksen’s story, Bobby briefly but passionately rebutted his brother, who told him, “I’m president. If you can’t comply with my request then your resignation will be accepted.”69 Subsequently, when Kennedy’s Test Ban Treaty faced doubtful ratification prospects, the president contacted Dirksen, who was publicly undecided about the merits of the case, but who had broadly hinted he would vote against it. According to Baker, whose account is backed up by cryptic letters exchanged between Ike and Dirksen, and the judgment of presidential historian Michael Beschloss, Kennedy told Dirksen, “Ike said I had coin in his bank and you say I have coin in yours. . . . I want you to come out for the treaty. I also want Ike’s public endorsement of the treaty before the Senate votes. We’ll call it square on that other matter.” To which Dirksen replied, “Mr. President, you’re a hell of a horse trader. But I’ll honor my commitment, and I’m sure that General Eisenhower will.”70

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Still Adams was not secure, either financially or from possible prosecution. After Kennedy’s death, IRS officials cited Adams’s failure to acknowledge wrongdoing and called for his prosecution. Again, Eisenhower intervened, this time with President Lyndon B. Johnson – again offering a Democratic president a “chit” for future use if Adams would be spared further public humiliation. At one point Johnson called in IRS commissioner Sheldon Cohen, who told Johnson that the best thing would be for the case to take its natural course. LBJ, Cohen has said, agreed to follow this advice.71 The “natural course” that the Adams case took proved painful for the New Englander. True, he was spared the worst – an indictment. But in the course of the Justice Department and IRS investigations, Adams had seen his life turned upside down and found himself the subject of the kind of scrutiny that no man or woman would ever want to experience. After challenging, unsuccessfully, the IRS contention that he was deeply in arrears on his taxes for unreported income (Adams had claimed the gifts were for “expenses,” hence not taxable), Adams’s attorneys, former New Hampshire Republican state chairman Richard Cooper and former White House Counsel Gerry Morgan, worked out an arrangement whereby Adams would pay approximately $62,000 in back taxes, interest, and penalties over a period of roughly five years.72 Some of this money was raised by taking out a loan from a local bank, with Adams’s home, life insurance, and other assets as collateral. Some was paid by liquidating a portion of Adams’s investments. Some was raised, at Dwight Eisenhower’s instigation, by two New York business leaders, General Lucius Clay and Barry Leithead.73 Finally in 1971 Adams satisfied the IRS claims and was able to resume with less worry a remarkably busy, remarkably productive life, virtually to his death in 1986. In his twilight years, Adams gave many interviews to journalists and scholars, making clear that certain themes – his relationships with his father, with Richard Nixon, William Loeb, and Bernard Goldfine in particular – were not to be part of the conversation.74 He never discussed his tax ordeal with his children, and never seems to have tried to sort out why his service to his country had ended so abruptly and over such a tawdry episode as the gift of a vicuna coat from the likes of Bernard Goldfine. Nor did he ever reflect on how he had come to trip over an invisible line that separates the righteous from the venal. The Adams case has long been fascinating, but its lessons remain uncomfortably ambiguous. Was Adams’s prime sin accepting gifts, or the bad luck of being caught at

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it? How do we avoid presentism in judging Adams’s behavior? How should Adams’s indiscretions be weighed against the palpable corruption of other powerful figures in 1950s Washington? How pure must a man, or woman, be to gain history’s favor? And to what extent was a largely passive press culpable, when it came to the issue of pervasive conflicts of interest in Washington, as well as the bribing of public officials? Some issues do not fairly lend themselves to snap judgments or armchair moralizing. Sherman Adams’s White House tragedy is one of them.

Notes   * The author is grateful to the Faculty Development Fund of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg College’s Eisenhower Institute, and the Foundation of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library for supporting the research on which this article is based. He also thanks Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers co-editor Daun Van Ee for his helpful critique of the final draft.   1 James Reston, “The Adams Onslaught,” New York Times, January 22, 1958.   2 For the “undisputed team captain” tag, see Bob Considine, in an undated column in the Adams Scrapbooks, in Papers of Sherman Adams, Box 40, Dartmouth College. Among many references to Adams as “Assistant President,” Bem Price Associated Press article, “Assistant to President Hates to Waste Time,” in Papers of Sherman Adams, Box 27. For the “second most powerful man in Washington” motif, among many attributions, see Charles Roberts, “The Second Most Powerful Man in Washington,” Newsweek [sidebar to cover story on Adams], June 3, 1957, quote on p. 37 and Fletcher Knebel, “Must There Always Be a Mess in Washington?” Look September 2, 1958, draft copy accessed in Richard Wilson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, Box 72.   3 Adams quoted in New York Times, November 19, 1957. Columnist Thomas L. Stokes, writing in the Washington Evening Star, November 29, 1957, retorted that it was Adams who was best informed, not the president. I accessed both articles in Adams Scrapbooks, Sherman Adams Papers, Box 44, Dartmouth College Special Collections.   4 Richard Wilson notes on Adams, in Wilson Papers, Hoover Presidential Library, Box 72; Charles Roberts, “The Second Most Powerful Man in Washington,” Newsweek, June 3, 1957, p. 37.   5 The person being hammered was former U.S. senator Harry Cain, then a member of the Eisenhower Administration. The context in this instance was Adams’s anger at Cain for publicly criticizing the administration’s internal security policies. Quoted in Roberts, “The Second Most Powerful Man.”   6 For details on these cases, see David A. Frier, Conflict of Interest in the Eisenhower Administration (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1969), pp. 78–88, pp. 103–114,

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pp. 118–126. See also article drafts in Charles W. Roberts Papers, Box 9, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.   7 For the background to the Harris probe, see Jack Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker: The Inside Story of Life in Washington During the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Years (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 278–285. In his mordant memoir about his brief tenure as chief investigator for the Harris Committee on Legislative Oversight, Bernard Schwartz says he is not certain what Rayburn’s motives were in instigating the investigations, but he is sure that Rayburn did not advocate the kind of serious investigation that Schwartz intended to pursue. The Professor and the Commissions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), pp. 3–8.   8 “Up From South Boston: The Rise and Fall of John Fox,” Time, July 7, 1958.   9 William M. Blair, “Goldfine Boasted of Aid by Adams,” New York Times, June 27, 1958, pp. 1, 11. Fox’s testimony was excerpted in the same issue, and Fox was profiled under the heading, “Adams’ Accuser.” See also Frier, Conflict of Interest, pp. 193–194. Adams’s refutation of Fox’s claims, which included the assertion that Goldfine had paid for Adams’s children’s private education and helped pay for his home, can be found in a one page White House press release, June 26, 1958, copy in Charles Roberts Papers, Box 1, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. 10 Bill Davidson, “Bernard Goldfine: A Story of Money, Influence and Arrogance,” Look, January 20, 1959; idem., “The Further Adventures of Mr. Goldfine,” Look, February 3, 1959, pp. 47–65. Goldfine, according to Drew Pearson, “collected important persons the same way some people collect stamps.” Quoted in Pearson’s widely syndicated “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column, Washington Post, March 31, 1961. 11 On Goldfine’s gifts to Congressional and White House staffers, see wire copy, July 3, 1958 in Charles Roberts Papers, Box 1, Hoover Presidential Library. Goldfine took tax deductions on these gifts as a business expense. The Harris Committee concluded that most of these gifts were in the range of $25 to $100. Information from Roberts Papers, Box 1. 12 On Adams and Goldfine see “Man in the Storm,” Time cover story on Adams, June 30, 1958, pp. 9–13. The account in Walter Goodman, All Honorable Men (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963), pp. 194–213, rings true. 13 In an interview with Sherman Adams’s four children on July 13, 1997, I posed the question what Adams would have had in common with Goldfine that would have sparked and cemented a friendship. There was no good answer. 14 Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), p. 40. 15 A Time magazine writer offered the novel suggestion that Adams’s “bedrock New England heart was moved by the warmth and yearnings of an ‘immigrant’ who wanted friendship.” 16 Frier, Conflict of Interest, pp. 11, 15, 16, 17, 20, 23, 24. Author interview with Robert Reno, July 10, 1994.

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17 Among many sources, see Herbert S. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972), pp. 518–521 and Jim Newton, Eisenhower: The White House Years (New York: Doubleday), pp. 281–286. 18 Quoted in Frier, Conflict of Interest, p. 21 For Bernard Schwartz’s account see The Professor and the Commissions, esp. pp. 218–233. 19 Mollenhoff had been pursuing the case of administration interference at the CAB and was competing with Jack Anderson for this story. As Anderson tells it, in this instance he outmaneuvered Mollenhoff to get the Schwartz documents into the hands of Drew Pearson and politicians like Morse who had no brief for Sherman Adams or Dwight Eisenhower. On this, see Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker, pp. 285–305 and Schwartz, Professor and the Commissions, pp. 104–106. Mollenhoff ’s papers at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library unfortunately do not include materials pre 1960. 20 Frier, Conflict of Interest, pp. 12–13; Schwartz, Professor and the Commissions, pp. 223–225. 21 Author interview with Bradley Patterson February 5, 1997. According to former White House Associate Counsel Roemer McPhee, what Adams said was that “any calls to regulatory agencies should be made by the Counsel’s office,” meaning by Gerald Morgan or McPhee. “Nothing about being fired was ever said in all the times I heard SA state his admonition. That we were surprised in view of these admonitions is accurate.” McPhee email to author, October 21, 2008. 22 February 20, 1958. 23 Frier, Conflict of Interest, p. 14. 24 “Man in the Storm,” Time, June 30, 1958. In his memoir, Firsthand Report, Adams never mentioned Fox. 25 Frier, Conflict of Interest, pp. 193–194. A one-page White House press release dated June 26, 1958, doubtless shaped in part by Press Secretary James Hagerty with input from Adams, assailed Fox’s “malicious accusations” against the Chief of Staff. It quoted Adams “categorically” denying that he ever told Goldfine he would take care of his affairs with any federal agency. He also denied he had received financial assistance from Goldfine or invested jointly with Goldfine in any property or other enterprise. I accessed this release in the papers of Newsweek’s White House correspondent Charles Roberts, Box 1, Hoover Presidential Library. A rough draft of this statement can be found in the James Hagerty Papers, Box 5, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. Hagerty’s difficulties answering press queries about Adams and Goldfine – practically the only topic of conversation in his daily briefings n June 1958 – are evident in transcripts in the Hagerty Papers, Box 51, DDEL. 26 A mimeo of Adams’s June 17 statement before the subcommittee on Legislative Oversight is in the Ann Whitman Diary Series, Box 10, Eisenhower Library. See also New York Times daily coverage beginning June 17.

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27 Eisenhower’s words and his perspective on the case are in his memoir, Waging Peace (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.), pp. 314–315. Despite the political damage Adams caused the administration Eisenhower consistently defended his close associate’s integrity. For Adams’s clipped account of the episode, see Firsthand Report, pp. 440–442. 28 Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades, p. 522. 29 Philip Benjamin, “Adams Gifts Set Cliché Pot Aboil,” New York Times, June 19, 1958. See also Frier, Conflict of Interest, p. 197. 30 I accessed most of these articles – there are more than 20 of them – from the files of the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Herald, commencing in May 1958 and running through the summer. For Hagerty’s rebuttal of specific allegations in Pearson’s June 17 syndicated column, see transcript of his press briefing for White House reporters that day in Hagerty Papers, Box 51, DDEL. 31 The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (London: Arrow Books, 1978), pp. 193–199. For a balanced and nuanced account of the Adams crisis, through Nixon’s eyes, see Nixon’s oral history interview with his aide Frank Gannon, February 15, 1976; transcription in author’s possession through the courtesy of Nixon biographer Irwin Gellman. 32 Numbered among the few outspoken Republican Congressional supporters of Adams in the summer of 1958 were Perkins Bass of New Hampshire, John Heselton of Massachusetts, and Peter Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. 33 Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades, p. 521. For more on the frustration and anger expressed by Republican officeholders at this time, see Drew Pearson’s “Personal From Pearson” newsletter to paying subscribers, June 28, 1958, copy accessed in Pearson Papers, Box G165 B (2 of 3), Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Austin Texas. 34 Pyle to Robinson, n.d., Robinson Papers, Box 5, DDEL. 35 See Gray, Eighteen Acres Under Glass (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1962), pp. 15–17; memo from Charles Roberts to National Desk [of Newsweek], July 12, 1958, Roberts Papers, Hoover Library, Box 1; and author interview with former Eisenhower Associate Counsel H. Roemer McPhee. Observed historian William Manchester of the situation in the White House during Adams’s travail, staffers “moved on tiptoe and spoke in whispers, as though someone in the First Family was gravely ill.” The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972 (Boston: Little Brown, 1974), p. 836. For a less colorful but more realistic view of the mood in the White House, see William Robinson to Robert Woodruff, June 15, 1958, Robinson Papers, Box 5, DDEL. 36 For an account of this incident, see New York Times political columnist Arthur Krock’s memo dated June 20, 1958 in Krock Papers, Black Book Appendix Box 2, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University.

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37 Charles Brereton tape-recorded interview with Richard Cooper, July 1978, in author’s possession courtesy of Mr. Brereton. 38 Gray, Eighteen Acres Under Glass, p. 97. 39 Oddly enough, given their cool relationship, perhaps the most sensitive account of Adams’s thinking that I have seen is the Nixon oral history with Frank Gannon, February 5, 1976, transcript in author’s possession. Nixon fully grasps why Adams did not want to leave his position, why he felt unfairly maligned, and also why he was deluded about his indispensability. For a similar insight on the “indispensability” issue, see Ann Whitman’s reflections in a diary entry, September 1, 1958, Whitman Diary Series, Box 10, DDEL. 40 For Life’s call for Adams’s resignation, see “Adams and the Level of Principle,” June 23, 1958, p. 35. Incoming correspondence focused on the Goldfine affair, most but not all of it friendly to Adams, in 1958 can be found in Records of Sherman Adams, Boxes 31–35, DDEL. 41 Robert Frost to Sherman Adams, June 28, 1958, photocopy in author’s possession, courtesy of Adams’s children. Frost’s letter is a holograph. 42 Adams to Frost, July 3, 1958, Sherman Adams Papers, Box 32, DDEL. 43 On GOP fund-raising problems in summer 1958, see report of the RNC Finance Committee, August 26–27, in Meade Alcorn Papers, Box 3, Dartmouth College Special Collections. 44 On Republican officeholders’ expressions of disapproval for Adams or calls for his immediate resignation, see Alcorn Papers, Box 3, and the compendium of opinion that appears in the Democratic Fact Sheet, June 23, 1958, in Charles Roberts Papers, Box 1, Hoover Library. That same day Eisenhower wrote a letter to Paul Hoffman, observing about the Adams case that “nothing that has occurred has had a more depressive effect on my normal buoyancy and optimism than the virulent, sustained, demagogic attacks made upon him.” Ann Whitman Files, Administration Series, Box 19, DDEL. 45 Whitman Diary entry, September 1, 1958, in Whitman Diary Series, Box 10; Nixon Memo, July 15, 1958, in Whitman Diary Series, Box 10; Nixon oral history with Frank Gannon, transcript in author’s possession. For Adams’s rather disingenuous account of his thinking at this time, see draft of Firsthand Report in Papers of Sherman Adams, Box 15, Dartmouth College Special Collections. 46 Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades, pp. 522–523; Alcorn Oral History, conducted June 25, 1987, Columbia University Oral History Project, pp. 56–58; Nixon oral history in author’s possession. 47 See, on this, Alcorn’s oral history and an article by Time-Life Washington Bureau correspondent John L. Steele, “How the Pros Shot Sherman Adams Down,” Life, September 29, 1958. Like Adams a Dartmouth man, Steele used this connection to gain an exclusive, a point he made in several interviews and exchanges of

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correspondence with the author. Confirmation of Steele’s scoop is in Charles Roberts to Newsweek Washington editor Harold Lavine, September 27, 1958, in Box 1 of the Roberts Papers in the Hoover Library. Roberts told Lavine that his 1957 profile of Adams for Newsweek had nettled the president’s assistant and he was not surprised that for all his “hard work” on the story he would be scooped by Steele for Time-Life. An account of Adams’s final days in office similar to Steele’s can be found in a transcript of a “Today Show” discussion, September 23, 1958, copy in William Robinson Papers, Box 5, DDEL. Eisenhower’s determination that Adams should resign was accompanied by both personal regret and honest distress. Ike met with White House Counsel Gerald Morgan on the afternoon of September 16 and told Morgan, according to Ann Whitman’s account, that he believed it “dreadful” that “cheap politicians could so pillory an honorable man.” Whitman Diary Series, Box 10, DDEL. 48 Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), p. 307. Relevant here is a comment made by Alex Gibney, producer of a documentary film about the fall of New York Governor Elliot Spitzer as a consequence of a sex scandal: “When you believe you are a force for good, that what you are doing is important it’s as if you can’t do anything bad. And once that happens, it’s the first step to a double life.” Gibney quoted in David Carr, “Client #9 and Other Interested Parties,” New York Times, October 22, 2010. For a thoughtful meditation on Adams’s troubles and the issue of “gift receiving” among public officials, see George Reedy memorandum, July 18, 1958, in “Pre-Presidential Memo File,” Box 6, LBJ Library. Reedy intimated that the Eisenhower administration’s declining political fortunes were more the cause than the result of Adams’s troubles. 49 Probably the most exhaustive coverage of the Goldfine case in the courts and its implications for Adams’s tax case can be found in a series of Drew Pearson syndicated columns in 1961, many of which I accessed through the New Hampshire newspaper, The Portsmouth Herald. 50 See Jack Anderson syndicated column, “Landlady Turned Adams in But White House Protected Him,” Boston Sunday Globe, May 20, 1973. Some observers have suggested that Adams’s decision not to sue Anderson for libel in view of Anderson’s charge that Adams had accepted $350,000 in cash from Bernard Goldfine was prima facie evidence that Anderson’s charge was accurate. However, it is also possible (and I believe likely) that the information was grossly exaggerated but Adams saw no advantage to calling attention to his Goldfine connection. 51 “Abominable No-Man,” New York Times, November 3, 1986. 52 For a synthesis of Adams’s career, see the author’s entry on Adams for John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), I: 128–129. ANB is also available online.

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53 Bishop, “Moral for Politicos: Don’t Get Caught,” syndicated column, n.d. but ca. 1961 in Adams Papers, Dartmouth College, Box 4. Bishop made the comment as part of a reflection on Adams’s recently published White House memoir Firsthand Report. 54 Adams’s gifts were documented in a series of 1950 articles in the Democrat-leaning Claremont Eagle, copies in Adams Scrapbooks, Box 29, Dartmouth College. See also Charles Hansley to Adams, October 8, 1948, in Adams Papers, Box 2, Dartmouth College. 55 Author interview with Samuel Adams, Sherman Adams’s son, July 25, 1997. 56 On the contingency fund, state archivist Frank Mevers to Michael Birkner, February 25, 1999, copy in author’s possession. When New Hampshire Sunday News reporter Frank O’Neill sought in 1958 to examine the documents about Adams’s use of the governor’s contingency fund, he was told by the Secretary of State that the records had been thrown away to save space. O’Neill article, June 15, 1958. 57 This circumstance is detailed in Adams’s statement to the IRS, undated but almost certainly 1961, copy provided to author by Adams’s son Samuel Adams. 58 Eisenhower was kept in the loop by Adams’s attorneys and other intermediaries during his entire long negotiation with the IRS that resulted in his paying back taxes, penalties, and interest through the year 1971. For details, see correspondence and memos between Fred Scribner and Robert Anderson in Anderson Papers, Boxes 154, 312, DDEL. 59 Jack Anderson’s $350,000 number (in his 1973 syndicated column on Adams) and Alsop’s $400,000 (stated in his memoirs) were derived by multiplying the $15,000 in cash per month that Goldfine’s secretary Mildred Paperman claimed Adams was receiving. The two men simply came to different sums. Joseph W. Alsop, ‘I’ve Seen the Best of It’: Memoirs (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992), pp. 450–452. Based on Adams’s financial standing in the early 1960s, as determined by the FBI and IRS, there seems no way he could have been taking the kind of cash from Goldfine that the various parties alleged. Government investigators themselves came to that conclusion. 60 Adams’s tax records, in author’s possession, through Samuel Adams. See also correspondence and memos in the Robert Anderson Papers, Boxes 154, 312, DDEL. 61 Adams’s personal statement to IRS investigators, ca. 1961, in author’s possession. 62 Author interviews with John “Tex” McCrary, March 27, 1995, July 17, 1995, April 26, 1996, October 11, 1996, April 17, 1998. Quote is from July 17, 1995 interview. 63 Author interview with Adams children, July 13, 1997. 64 Adams’s statement to IRS, ca. 1961, in author’s possession.

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65 A transcription of this intense conversation, made by a Life magazine secretary, is in the C.D. Jackson Papers, Eisenhower Library, Box 28. Subsequent quotes from the conversation are from this source. 66 Author interview with Adams’s children, July 13, 1997. 67 On the doubtful prospects of winning a tax case against Adams, and the potential fallout for the Kennedy administration if the case failed, see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), p. 385 and Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963 (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 634. 68 Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978), 96–98, quote p. 97. 69 Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator, 96–98, quote p. 97. 70 On the nuclear test ban treaty link, see Beschloss, The Crisis Years, pp. 634–636. I checked Eisenhower’s correspondence with Everett Dirksen in 1962 in the Eisenhower Library. The cryptic exchanges between the two men support Bobby Baker’s account, on which Beschloss also drew. See Everett Dirksen to Eisenhower, January 10, February 16, 1962 and Eisenhower to Dirksen, January 16, February 21, 1962 in 1962–63 Signature File, Box 32, DDEL. 71 Author interviews with Sheldon Cohen, November 19, 1994, May 8, 1996, June 25, 2001, November 19, 2006, and December 5, 2006. In my second interview Cohen exclaimed, “Adams was a crook!” He added, “We were not going to put Adams in jail but were going to get every dime he owed the government.” In my final interview with Cohen he said that Adams, in his view needed to be – and was – treated “no worse, no better, than the rest of them.” In other words, no favoritism and no political vendetta. Memos in the Robert Anderson Papers, Boxes 154 and 312, which document the government’s refusal to accept any of the compromise payment plans pressed by Adams’s attorneys, would seem to back Cohen’s statements. 72 See documents in Anderson Papers, Boxes 154, 312, DDEL. In author’s interview with Cohen on May 8, 1996, Cohen asserted that the most he was willing to concede in the Adams case was to “give a reasonable amount of time to collect the money” that Adams owed the government. 73 On the bank negotiations, see Anderson Papers, Boxes 154, 312, DDEL. For reference to the fund-raising on Adams’s behalf, Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay: An American Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990), p. 685. 74 That included the interview I conducted with him at his Loon Mountain office in Lincoln, March 13, 1985, a little more than eighteen months before Adams’s death.

6

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Explaining the Persistence of Scandal in the Pennsylvania General Assembly George E. Hale

Introduction Political scandals resonate throughout Pennsylvania’s political history. “The political putrefaction of Pennsylvania is greater than I had any idea of,” wrote Alexander Hamilton in 1794.1 Years ago Professor William Russ recounted Pennsylvania’s relatively modest contribution to American history: One second-rate President, one Vice President who is not even mentioned in the history books, two or three well-known Congressmen, not one Chief Justice, a fair showing in several cabinet positions and a good record in one or two others, a string of political bosses whose only reputation comes from machine politics and corruption and . . .imperviousness to reform.2

In the 1970s one veteran national reporter, Neal Peirce, who covered state politics, listed Pennsylvania among the most corrupt states.3 Recently a study of federal convictions of corrupt public officials placed Pennsylvania fifth on the list with 1,576 convictions from 1976 to 2010.4 A 2003 survey of political reporters rated Pennsylvania as the 13th most corrupt state.5 Moreover, the Center for Public Integrity in 2012 gave Pennsylvania only a C- for efforts to limit corruption, and ranked Pennsylvania as 10th worst for the gap between anti-corruption laws and practice.6 The study of corruption in Pennsylvania serves as a case study that illustrates how a culture of corruption resists reform and how corruption can evolve from an individual undertaking into a widespread enterprise. At the same time, the study also illustrates a growing gap between new legal standards and long-held views of the acceptable norms of politics as usual.

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Political corruption has been commonplace for almost 200 years. In the 1840s professional lobbyists dominated the legislative process by promoting private legislation at a time when corruption was largely an individual matter. By 1872 things were so corrupt, reformers created a new constitution that doubled the General Assembly’s size to make it harder to bribe. During the Gilded Age, corruption flourished under a strong Republican Party machine and evolved from an individual undertaking into an organized enterprise. The growth of cities, the rise of the spoils system, the increasing scale of government, and the dominance of powerful corporations provided fertile soil for large-scale corruption. In the 1950s, Pennsylvania started to change by becoming a competitive twoparty state. Progressive governors reduced the ranks of patronage jobs. Legislative modernization began. Nonetheless, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. In the late twentieth century scandal again took on new forms – “no show” jobs, funneling state grants to favored nonprofits, using state employees and resources and computers for campaigning – that took their place alongside old-fashioned bribes and kickbacks. In 2012 two former speakers of the House of Representatives, one from each party, started prison terms for using state funds and employees for political campaigns, and a common theme among those interrogated by the investigating Grand Jury was, “everybody does it.” This chapter asks why scandal is so persistent in the Pennsylvania General Assembly. After examining the literature to identify the factors commonly associated with legislative corruption, it looks at the historic patterns of corruption and scandal. Finally, it explores potential explanations for the persistence of scandals, including the combination of the state’s political culture and practices so firmly established during the Gilded Age, and the insulation of the General Assembly and latent functions of scandal that help preserve the status quo.

Perspectives on the causes of political corruption In his classic on political scandals, Thompson defines scandal as involving five elements.7 First, it involves the violation of specific “values, norms or moral codes.” Second, scandal contains an element of secrecy. Additionally, scandal results in the disapproval of nonparticipants. Fourth, there is public denouncement of the actions involved. Finally, there is damage to the reputations of those responsible for the events. Thompson also identifies three types of political

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scandal. There are sexual scandals involving the private life of public officials that may or may not involve violations of the law. Second, financial scandals “involve an infringement of rules governing the acquisition and allocation of economic resources.” Third, there are power scandals based “on disclosure of activities which infringe the rules governing the acquisition of power as such.”8 These last two types of scandals are likely to involve the breaking of laws. In the Pennsylvania legislature financial and power scandals are recurring problems. Thompson maintains that scandal is “more prevalent today.” He finds some explanatory power in the idea that “behavior that would have been condoned in the past is more likely to be censored today.”9 Thompson maintains the increased visibility of political leaders, changing techniques of communication and surveillance, and the rise of investigative journalism are more important factors. Moreover, the decline of mass political parties and the rise of independent voters have prompted the parties to use scandal as a weapon to differentiate one party from another. Finally, Thompson sees a link to the “growing legalization of political life” with its emphasis on special prosecutors, investigating committees, financial disclosures, and tightened rules on conflict of interest.10 In an effort to explain state corruption, Wilson identified three theories of scandal that also suggest the prevalence of scandal is growing. First, some regions feature “a particular political ethos or style which attaches a relatively low value to probity and impersonal efficiency and relatively high value to favors, personal loyalty and private gain.”11 This resembles the “individualistic” political culture, where, writes Elazar, “[t]he political culture of the middle states reflected this distinctive emphasis on private pursuits from the first.”12 High level of corruption might be expected in individualistic states such as Pennsylvania. Elazar remarks, “Politics is just another means by which individuals may improve themselves socially and economically.” Politics is a business, and it can be a dirty business. “Since a fair amount of corruption is expected in the normal course of things,” writes Elazar, “there is relatively little popular excitement when any is found, unless it is of an extraordinary character.”13 Second, Wilson suggests, “corruption is the result of ordinary men facing extraordinary temptations.”14 Politicians are corrupt because businesses bribe them, and Wilson writes, “The stakes are enormous.”15 Today states spend billions of dollars. They build roads, bridges, schools, and prisons. They regulate businesses. They license various professions and occupations, protect the environment, and levy a wide range of individual and business taxes. The stakes and temptations are greater than ever.

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Third, Wilson presents a more explicitly political theory of the corruption. Because of separation of powers where the various branches of government can easily stalemate the others, corruption serves as a vehicle for getting things accomplished through the exchange of favors. Wilson quotes Henry Ford Jones that American government “is so constituted that is cannot be carried on without corruption.”16 In this view corruption is the “grease” for the gears of government. Finally, Wilson suggested that the isolation of many state capitals might contribute to corruption of legislators. “Big cities have big newspapers, big civic associations, and big-blocs of newspaper reading, civic-minded voters,” writes Wilson: “State capitals, by contrast, are usually located outside the major metropolitan centers of the state with small city newspapers, few (and weak) civic associations, and relatively few attentive citizens.”17 Wilson’s argument suggests individualist states are more likely to be corrupt than other states and that factors such as the scale of state government, the fragmentation of political power, and the isolation of state capitals may promote growing levels of corruption. In recent years numerous studies have explored variations in corruption among the states. Johnston found that larger states and those with moralistic political cultures have higher levels of political convictions.18 Uslaner found that reciprocal trust and similar social values decrease political corruption. Alt and Lassen and Meier and Holbrook find that divided government, higher levels of education, a moralistic political culture, and less urbanism are also associated with lower levels of corruption.19 More recently, Campante and Do (2012) conclude that the isolation of some state capitals from population centers is positively related to political corruption.20 While this literature is extensive, it is less than satisfying. First, the database on federal prosecutions covers only the years since 1976. Second, it reports data on both state and local officials and may be skewed by the enormous variations in the number of local governmental units in each state. Third, the data do not include state-level prosecutions. Most importantly, this literature often conflates corruption and convictions. One exception is Johnston, who noted that less corrupt states may actually have higher levels of convictions: “It is in a moralistic political culture in which citizens impose high standards on their public servants and in which allegations of wrongdoing are apt to produce widespread concern.”21 Nonetheless, this literature may be useful as we survey the development of political corruption in Pennsylvania.

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What is the matter with Pennsylvania? The Antebellum period Corruption predates political machines in Pennsylvania. Lobbying and bribery became commonplace before the Civil War. Professional lobbyists emerged in Harrisburg by the 1830s to influence “a legislature that was inexperienced, poorly prepared to deal with the growing volume of laws, and preoccupied with local and private acts.”22 Legislation authorizing and financing canals or issuing corporate charters created opportunities for lobbyists. Corruption developed as an individual or small group enterprise where one or two lawmakers or a lobbyist and a lawmaker accepted or solicited bribes. Once railroads linked Harrisburg to Philadelphia in the 1840s, visitors to the capital and requests for legislation increased. Legislative turnover was high because local party conventions began limiting legislative service to two terms. This consistently gave lobbyists opportunities to influence novice lawmakers. Bowers concludes that the increasing volume of private legislation made corruption “a serious problem for the first time.”23 With five hundred or so bills annually, the confusion allowed opportunists to steer controversial bills into law without public notice. In 1846 the first public case of bribery produced the conviction of a lobbyist when the lawmaker revealed the offer. By the 1850s, writes Bowers, “The idea had taken hold that money could be made on almost any bill that would financially benefit its backers.” Legislators and lobbyists “went after all kinds of corporations – banks, railroads, iron foundries, manufacturing companies, and two which became the rage: insurance companies and city passenger railroads.”24 The price of support might vary from hundreds or thousands of dollars for a “monied corporation” to only a few dollars for bills without substantial backing. One or two lawmakers might block a local bill in their county delegation or keep it bottled-up in committee. Having a private calendar for special legislation one day a week gave individual lawmakers great influence since one objection removed a measure from the agenda and sent it through the normal legislative process, making it vulnerable to parliamentary delays. Bowers writes, “This opened the door to legislative extortion – one member working with a lobbyist could threaten to hold up a bill unless both were paid off.”25 This common practice attracted criticism in the press as “the most infamous system of black mail that has ever disgraced a seat of government.” Lawmakers also might threaten to introduce a “chaser bill” to “threaten corporations in the hope of eliciting a bribe for defeating the

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offending legislation.” One legislator complained about “a gang of roosters that held the balance of power” by voting against any bill they believed “had money in it unless they were paid off.”26 Not all corruption involved direct monetary bribes. In 1826 lawmakers defeated a proposed rule preventing members from voting on bills in which they had a personal stake. Members also could be given an interest in a bill by an offer of stock or a lawyer-legislator might receive a retainer. Positions on corporate boards also served as inducements to support private bills. Bowers writes, “Through corruption, as well as legal methods, special interests like corporations were able to obtain favorable legislation despite widespread hostility to private laws.”27 Unsuccessful efforts to restrain corruption for many years focused on reducing private or special legislation: 8,700 of 9,300 acts passed between 1866 and 1873 were local or special acts. Without a general incorporation law, Hoogenboom writes, “Legislators sold their votes to grant corporations privileges and then blackmailed these corporations by threatening to pass strike bills that would rescind the privileges.”28 Bowing to public pressure, in 1871 the General Assembly authorized a referendum on holding a constitutional convention. Voters approved the measure by 322,119 to 69,738. A convention finished its work in December 1873 and the following year voters approved the Constitution of 1874. The new constitution introduced numerous reforms in an effort to curb the abuses of private legislation. It required that the title of bills clearly state the subject and deal with a single subject. All bills had to be printed and reported out of a committee before enactment. Bills had to be read in each chamber on three separate days. Special legislation was forbidden on 28 different subjects. Thirty days’ notice was required for local legislation. The constitution gave the governor the line item veto and increased the requirement for a veto override to a two-thirds vote. Moreover, as Klein and Hoogenboom note, “Reasoning (with dubious validity) that is more difficult to bribe a larger group, it virtually doubled both the House and the Senate, to 200 and 50 members, respectively.”29 At this time the General Assembly took other steps to combat corruption by passing an incorporation law for the iron and steel industry and a general act of incorporation.

The era of the Republican machine Despite the reforms, corruption exploded during the Gilded Age. Large corporations – railroads, oil, coal, and steel – held sway over the part-time,

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poorly paid legislature. A Republican political machine dominated the state and its great cities – Pittsburgh, starting in the 1860s, and Philadelphia, where a political monopoly governed from the 1890s until 1950.30 Three skilled political bosses, elected by the legislature to the U.S. Senate, controlled the Republican apparatus until 1921: Simon Cameron, Matthew Quay, and Boies Penrose. While Civil War allegiances were important in keeping Pennsylvania a Republican state, Klein and Hoogenboom conclude, “The machine helped make and keep Pennsylvania decisively Republican.”31 A Democrat served as governor only once between the Civil War and 1935. In the late 1800s the potential for corruption increased dramatically. Before the Civil War, corruption was opportunistic with individual lawmakers or a small group accepting or extorting bribes. In the Gilded Age corruption became a large-scale systematic enterprise. In the late nineteenth century corruption resulted from the growth of cities, the rise of political machines and the spoils system, and the new vast scale of industry. Thompson writes, “The emergence of large and powerful corporations created new opportunities for the intermingling of economic and political power.”32 Henry Demarest Lloyd claimed that John D.  Rockefeller’s Standard Oil “did everything to the Pennsylvania legislature except refine it,. . . (and) lawmakers by the score came to expect cash and whiskey.”33 As political boss and master of the legislature, and as state treasurer and U.S. senator, Matthew Quay’s career illustrates corruption on a grand scale. His political machine collected assessments from state employees and speculated with state funds. Beers writes that “Quay wallowed in spoils” and “probably never stopped stealing.”34 He collected $100,000 as secretary of the commonwealth and $40,000 as Philadelphia recorder. Reportedly, in his 21 months as state treasurer $210,000 went missing. Quay also masterminded the 1890 riot bill to appropriate $4 million to indemnify the Pennsylvania Railroad for its losses during a strike. Quay’s agents offered bribes of $1,000 for state legislators to support the bill. Only half of the money was to go to the company; the balance was earmarked for the lobby supporting the measure and Quay was the primary beneficiary.35 For many years state treasurers, including Quay, engaged in unsavory practices “depositing state funds in friendly banks, of sometimes using that money for private speculation, and of accepting political contributions of 2 to 3 percent from those favored banks.”36 After Quay’s death, U.S. senator Boies Penrose directed state affairs from 1897 to 1921. Not interested in plunder like Quay, Penrose is credited with

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perfecting the use of “squeeze bills.” Prior to elections his loyalists in the General Assembly introduced bills aimed at big businesses such as railroads, banks, and utilities. “Then for a large campaign contribution, Penrose would insure the bills never became law.”37 At this time corruption also infiltrated the awarding of governmental contracts. The most notable case involved the construction of a new Capitol after an 1896 fire. The opulent Capitol cost $13 million or more than three times the original price tag. Graft and kickbacks accompanied each contract and four officials were convicted in the scheme.

Pennsylvania in the middle of the twentieth century After Penrose’s death no single boss dominated statewide Republican Party politics. During this era the infrastructure of corruption was firmly established. In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century Pennsylvania stood as an economic powerhouse. Carnegie dominated steel. The Pennsylvania Railroad was the world’s largest corporation. Political machines controlled Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and many suburbs until midcentury.38 It took 50 years after passage of the Pendleton Act for Pennsylvania to authorize a civil service system in 1937, but as late as the 1960s the state employed an army of patronage workers. Economic interest groups like the Pennsylvania Railroad and Sun Oil dominated state politics. Former governor William Scranton observed, “the Republican Party was owned and operated by business, especially big business  – the railroads, steel, and the like. The Democratic Party was owned by the AFL-CIO. And that there was little in between.”39 In the middle third of the century, power devolved to a confederation of county Republican bosses. The bosses of the strongest Republican counties including Senator John McClure in Delaware County and Senator Harvey Taylor in Dauphin County controlled the allocation of state and local patronage jobs. Formally the governor controlled over 50,000 patronage jobs. However, county chairmen selected the candidates for state posts. “Until 1970 governors were limited to one four-year term and the real patronage power went to those ‘bosses’ who dispensed state patronage in their own counties and met periodically to select republican nominees for governor and other state offices,” writes former senator Franklin Kury.40 Kury notes, “There was no taint of illegality or immorality attached to the patronage system. Both parties and the public at large generally accepted it as the way politics works.”

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When corruption erupted, lawmakers were reluctant to confront it, as the case of Senator John J. McClure illustrates. Chairman of the Senate finance committee, and Republican boss of Delaware County’s machine, the “War Board,” McClure, along with 69 associates, was convicted for directing an illegal rum running operation on the east coast during prohibition. The operation included a brewery and Sun Oil tankers that imported liquor through the wharfs in Chester under the supervision of police, railroad detectives, and Sun Oil employees on the machine’s payroll. McClure also ran a protection racket: “Every sort of vice operation – moonshining, bootlegging speakeasies, gambling houses, and disorderly houses – had to ‘pay tribute’ to the organization or run the risk of being raided by police on the organization on payroll.”41 He received an 18-month sentence and a $10,000 fine. While his appeal was pending, ratification of the 21st Amendment ended prohibition. On March 26, 1934, the Circuit Court of Appeals declared McClure’s conviction to be null and void. When the Senate returned in 1935, one Republican introduced a resolution calling upon McClure to resign. Republicans bottled up the measure in the committee. Efforts to expel him failed when 24 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted 26 to 21 against extracting the resolution from committee. The next year voters dumped McClure. Despite losing his seat in 1936 by 16,000 votes, McClure remained leader of the “War Board” and a force in state politics until his death in 1965.42 Conflict-of-interest standards as we know them did not exist. For example, Harvey Taylor served as Senate president, Republican state party chairman, and boss of Dauphin County. Senator Kury noted, “Nothing moved in the Senate without Taylor’s approval; he ran the calendar and committees. Governors needed to clear with Taylor their proposed appointments and legislative agendas.” As the “broker of record” on state insurance contracts he received a commission on every contract. Governor George Leader estimated that Taylor collected a 35% commission on 1,600 individual state automobile policies amounting to $450,000 annually. Taylor distributed this money among Republican senators, house leaders, and other favored party candidates.43 Lobbyists also played major roles in the legislative process. Pennsylvania Railroad and Sun Oil Company lobbyists, the “51st” and “52nd” senators, sat in reserved seats on the Senate floor, behind the rail, close to the majority leader’s desk. Only when Democrats won control of the Senate in 1970 were the seats removed. Lobbyists freely roamed the Senate floor and lawmakers lacked the

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most basic resources. “The Senators themselves (except for floor leaders) had no offices, no telephones, no secretaries,” recalls Kury.44 Lobbyists not only wrote many bills, many employed lawmakers as well. One lawmaker recalled joining the General Assembly in 1954: “Most of the republican members were on the payroll of different lobbyists. They had to be because they were paid only $1,500 a year. Most of the fellows (Democrats) from Pittsburgh and Allegheny County were on the Westinghouse payroll or worked for county government.”45

The era of legislative modernization By the 1960s Pennsylvania was becoming one of the nation’s most competitive two-party states. In the 1950s voters elected two democrats as governor. In the 1960s Republican domination of the General Assembly ended. Pennsylvania experienced divided government for 23 years from 1980 to 2010. Under leadership from Herbert Fineman, speaker of the House of Representatives, the General Assembly also improved its lawmaking capacity. Today Pennsylvania features a “professional legislature” with a salary of over $82,000 plus benefits that ranks fourth among the 50 states. The General Assembly’s staff is the largest in the nation.46 Additionally, the General Assembly meets throughout the year for a total of 120 to 150 legislative days. With these changes came new temptations. In the 1970s legislative staffing began growing rapidly just as executive branch patronage withered. When governors formally controlled thousands of patronage jobs, Wise writes that “legislative leaders of the Governor’s party were beneficiaries of the system in that their access to the pool of jobs increased their ability to bargain with recalcitrant members.”47 By 1971 governors trimmed patronage rolls to about 4,000 positions. At the same time the General Assembly began building their staff from 400 in 1967 to over 1400 in 1979.48 The vast majority of the staff worked directly for one of the party caucuses and soon “no-show” jobs became an issue. Several scandals among the Senate Democrats leaders created headlines in the 1970s. Senator Buddy Cianfrani pleaded no contest to charges of mail fraud for padding his legislative payroll with party workers. A ward leader in Philadelphia, and finance committee chairman, his indictment contained 110 counts of racketeering, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and income tax evasion. He pleaded no contest and served a five-year sentence. He also made no apologies: “Down here we all deal in favors” and “I’m going to steal every vote I can. I’m going to buy every vote I can. That’s the

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kind of guy I am.”49 Additionally, Majority Leader Tom Nolan and Senator-elect Vince Fumo, patronage coordinator for Philadelphia democrats and Cianfrani’s successor, were also found guilty. The presiding federal judge later set aside these last two convictions. Corruption of the era also involved kickbacks on contracts and leases. Senator Frank Mazzei, slated to become majority leader, was indicted in 1974 for violating the Hobbs Anti-Racketeering Act by accepting a $20,000 kickback in connection with a state lease. He claimed, “it was a practice on all state leases that 10 percent of the gross be used for the Senate Campaign Committee.”50 Following a guilty verdict, the federal judge sentenced Mazzei to a five-year term, a $20,000 fine, and ordered him expelled from the Senate. Republicans demanded his immediate removal. Democrats initially refused by arguing that he had not yet exhausted his appeals. When public pressure mounted, the Senate expelled a member for the first time. A major scandal also ended the career of Speaker of the House of Representatives, Herbert Fineman, and a respected leader in a national movement to modernize state legislatures.51 However, behind his lawmaking was a web of business relationships linked to his public life. In 1969 Fineman introduced legislation to benefit Subaru while he was a stockholder. He also served as counsel for the Fraternal Order of Police and represented them before the General Assembly. The state also invested $47 million in retirement funds in his mortgage company.52 In January 1977 the U.S. attorney indicted Fineman charging bribery, blackmail, mail fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice for selling his influence to secure admissions to medical and veterinary schools. The jury did not believe the chief witness, a convicted perjurer, and acquitted Fineman on all charges except obstruction of justice charge for asking college officials to destroy letters of recommendations. He resigned on May 21, 1977, and reported to federal prison in July 1978. Additionally, the 1970s saw numerous indictments and convictions of executive branch officials during Governor Shapp’s tenure. In addition to seven lawmakers convicted from 1971 to 1979, 11 other high-ranking officials were convicted including three cabinet members, the Pennsylvania Turnpike chairman, and a former state party treasurer. Even the state police commissioner pled guilty to giving false testimony to a grand jury.53 Against the background of these cases, the General Assembly took several steps to deal with ethics and corruption. In 1977 lawmakers passed a

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constitutional amendment, later approved by the voters, to make the attorney general an independently elected prosecutor. After a series of newspaper articles exposing no-show jobs, the House appointed a special commission to review its operations and look into accusations regarding no-show jobs. Professor Sidney Wise noted, “The charge was that many employees of the Chief Clerk’s office had not been seen on the job for years and indeed were being paid for political work in their home districts.”54 Lawmakers created a bipartisan commission to improve oversight of the House payroll and accounts. In 1981 the Senate adopted a similar reform. In 1978 the General Assembly also created an Ethics Commission to adopt ethics standards for legislators and for all state and local employees. The measure required public officials and candidates to file financial disclosure forms and to refrain from taking actions that would benefit themselves or their families.55 For a time major political scandals shifted to other branches of government. A former lawmaker, Auditor General Al Benedict participated in a job-selling enterprise and approved contracts in return for kickbacks. In 1988 he received a six-year sentence. Budd Dwyer, the elected state treasurer and former senator, was convicted for agreeing to accept a $300,000 kickback on a multi-million accounting contract. On January 22, 1987, one day before sentencing, Dwyer committed suicide by shooting himself during a televised press conference. In 1994 the Senate removed Rolf Larsen, chief justice of the Supreme Court, for providing improper treatment to friends and campaign contributors. In 1995 Attorney General Edward Preate was sentenced to 14 months in jail for mail fraud charges involving campaign contributions.

The current era While in the 1980s and 1990s no major scandal rocked the General Assembly, in 2005 a new controversy set off a chain reaction that uncovered new scandals. In July 2005 lawmakers passed a bill that linked elected officials’ salaries to a percentage of the salary of their federal counterparts. This would raise lawmakers’ salaries by 16% immediately and make future increases automatic. The bill passed late at night at the end of the legislative session without public notice. The public soon erupted over the “pay grab.” By November lawmakers repealed the measure. However, the 2006 elections saw the defeat of many incumbents and leaders, including the president pro tem and majority leader in the Senate. During the 2006 election other leaders who had engineered the

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“pay grab” scrambled to remain in power. The election of 2006 soon became the subject of a major state investigation. In the meantime other scandals broke. In 2007 a major financial scandal centered on Senator Vince Fumo, who had an earlier conviction set aside in 1978. Fumo represented Philadelphia for 30 years after replacing Cianfrani in 1978. He served for many years as chairman or ranking member of the Senate appropriations committee. He was indicted on 137 federal corruption charges, which centered on a charity, the Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, created by Fumo and operated by a former staff member. Prosecutors alleged that the energy company PECO contributed $17 million to the group in return for Fumo’s support for utility deregulation and that some of the funds personally benefitted him. The indictment also cited pressure on Verizon to funnel legal work to a Fumo ally and the use of state workers to renovate his home and to work on his farm. Two aides were indicted for destroying e-mails at his direction. Fumo resigned his committee post and he did not seek reelection in 2008. In 2009 a jury found him guilty on 137 counts and an aide guilty on 45 counts. Fumo received a 55-month sentence to federal prison, which was later increased by six months. Three other recent cases involve state senators. Robert Mellow, a 40-year lawmaker and Senate Democratic leader, pleaded guilty in May 2012 for misuse of his staff for political fund-raising. Mellow’s legal problems also included filling a false 2008 tax return and using state funds to lease his district office from an entity where he held a financial interest. Mellow paid a $21,000 fine to resolve an ethics complaint involving the office and paid $32,000 fine on the tax charge. In another matter, Senator Ralph Musto was indicted in 2010 for honest services fraud, corrupt receipt of reward for official action, and making false statements in connection with accepting money and gifts from a local businessman in return for assistance on various projects. In March 2012 a jury convicted Republican State Senator Jane Orie of 14 counts of theft of services, conflict of interest, and forgery for using state-funded staff for her campaign and her sister’s successful election to the state’s Supreme Court.

“Bonusgate” and “Computergate” In 2007 prosecutors began looking at the long-standing practice of using legislative staff for campaign work while on state time. When Attorney General Tom Corbett started investigating $3.8 million in bonuses paid to legislative staff, “Bonusgate” and “Computergate” were born. In 2007 democratic leaders

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awarded $1.9 million in bonuses to staff members. Majority Leader Bill DeWeese asked recipients to keep quiet about the extra pay. On February 2007 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that 80 workers with the largest bonuses of between $5,700 and $28,000 either donated funds to and/or worked on campaigns for DeWeese and Mike Veon, the Democratic whip. In August 2007 the attorney general’s staff seized 20 boxes of records from the Democratic Office of Legislative Research after being tipped off that the records were to be destroyed. By September a Grand Jury began taking testimony from several Democratic lawmakers. In one instance a legislative staffer spent nine months in 2006 doing campaign work while in a taxpayer-funded post and received a bonus of $9,365. Another spent 11 consecutive weeks campaigning in Veon’s district while on the state payroll and he received a large bonus. E-mails showed that staffers were ranked as “rock stars,” “good,” or “ok” on spreadsheets recording the campaign hours worked. The size of the payments related directly to the rankings on the spreadsheets. In July 2008 prosecutors charged 12 individuals including Veon and a highranking House aide, Michael Manzo, who campaigned on state time and placed his mistress in a “no-show” job. Manzo later testified that DeWeese knew of the scheme. In December 2009 the state charged DeWeese and two others, including Revenue Secretary Stetler, a former legislative leader, with misdirecting state resources, staff, and salaries to campaign work. A jury convicted Veon and two aides in 2010 on counts involving conflict of interest, theft by deception, theft of services, and conspiracy. Veon received a 6- to 14-year sentence, was slapped with a $37,000 fine, and was ordered to pay $100,000 restitution. By 2009 the investigation turned to House Republican use of state computer systems for campaign related activities in what became known as “Computergate.” In November 2009 former House Speaker John Perzel, Republican campaign chairman Brett Feese, and eight others were indicted. They were charged with diverting $10 million in state funds to campaign activities by using state IT workers to develop computer software and campaign databases to target messages to select groups of voters, by using district office workers for campaign research, and by funding “robo-calls.” Defeated for reelection, Perzel pled guilty to 8 of 82 charges in September 2011. In March 2012 he was sentenced to 2 ½ to 5 years in state prison, fined $30,000, and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution. In November 2011 a jury found Representative Feese guilty. He was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison, fined $25,000, and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution. Five years after the

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bonus payments in February 2012 a jury found DeWeese guilty of five felonies. He later was sentenced to 2½ to 5 years in prison.

The Grand Jury report In addition to convictions resulting from its work, the Grand Jury issued a report describing the Pennsylvania General Assembly as bloated with partisan staffing and being “utterly incapable of reform.” The Grand Jurors were reportedly “mad as hell” to repeatedly hear that “no one’s guilty because everybody does it.” The Grand Jury found widespread problems that permeated the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and that the practice of campaigning on state time was common even though it had been outlawed for 40 years. They also cited testimony from Alan Rosenthal of Rutgers University, a national expert on state legislatures: “Pennsylvania, the Legislature, exists in a time warp. Whereas in the other 49 states, time seems to have changed and things have changed. Pennsylvania is still living back then. It’s still doing what all the states did in the 1950s and 1960s.”56 The Grand Jury cited testimony that claimed the size of the staff could be reduced by from one-third or more without impacting the responsibilities of the legislature. The Grand Jury found “that the vast overstaffing problem is linked to the patronage system within the Legislature, which in turn is a symptom of the ‘time-warp’ in which the Pennsylvania General Assembly operates.”57 The result is that many legislative employees perform campaign work not legislative work. They also questioned if General Assembly is truly a full-time body noting an average of only 135 legislative days annually from 2006 to 2009, which leaves lots of time for campaign work. The Grand Jury concluded “it is beyond dispute that many legislative employees have for years spent an enormous amount of time working on political campaigns when they were supposed to be performing their legislative duties.”58 The Grand Jury also questioned the almost total power of caucus leaders to allocate resources: “the current system creates excessive power and influence in leaders over the rank and file members, which skews the entire process of representative democracy.”59 For example, funding for district offices varied from as few as one to as many as four offices depending on the lawmakers’ seniority or leadership post. Professor Rosenthal concluded, “Members ought to be entitled, by virtue of being elected Legislators, to certain resources. All resources should not be distributed by the caucuses and by party leaders in the caucuses.”60

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In the wake of the “pay grab,” Bonusgate, and Computergate, there have been modest reforms. The General Assembly repealed the 2005 pay raise. Both chambers adopted rules to limit late-night sessions and to tighten up on restrictions to prohibiting lawmakers and staff from campaigning on state time. The Senate adopted a rule to prohibit senators from affiliating with nonprofit organizations that are heavily dependent on state funding. On more fundamental issues, the outlook is not so promising. A 2007 Commission on Legislative Reform considered but did not endorse fundamental reforms like reducing the size of the legislature, reforming campaign finance laws, and imposing term limits.61 Legislation to create a Public Integrity Commission with investigative powers faces an uncertain future.

Explaining the persistence of scandal The history of the Pennsylvania General Assembly finds both financial and power scandals common in the 150 years since the Civil War. Initially financial scandals involved lawmakers acting as individual entrepreneurs. During the Gilded Age the expanded scope of government and the rise of big industry saw corruption and scandal evolve into organized activities for financial gain and for maintaining political power. New techniques of corruption evolved over time from bribes, “squeeze bills,” assessments of patronage employees, kickbacks on contracts, unlimited campaign contributions, to “no-, show” jobs, using legislative staff and computers for campaign work, and funneling state funds to favored or captive nonprofits. Even when efforts to combat corruption work, they often have unintended consequences. For example, as executive branch patronage declined, the General Assembly’s partisan staff increased. As party leaders paid more attention to no-show jobs, many on the payroll still did campaign work on state time. Additionally, many reforms like creating an ethics office, requiring lobbyists to register and campaign finance disclosures can be viewed as symbolic. While legal standards may change, the underlying attitudes and behavior still reflect a “time warp.” There are several potential explanations for the persistence of scandal. One is the individualistic nature of Pennsylvania’s political culture combined with the practices which carried forward from the Gilded Age to the mid-twentieth century. Some argue the individualistic political

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culture is alive and well in Pennsylvania, where, Crotty writes, “Politics is a for-profit enterprise.”62 On the other hand, there are problems with using political culture to explain corruption, namely, corruption seems to be part of the definition of the individualistic political culture. As an alternative explanation, it may simply be that the corruption of the Gilded Age influenced governmental practices for a century. When Pennsylvania was a powerhouse among the states as the second largest in terms of population and the center of heavy industry, the patterns of machine politics, patronage, party caucuses, and lobbyist domination of the political process became part of the fabric of government. One irony of reform is that while legislative pay, resources, facilities, and staffing increased, reform still reflected “Pennsylvania’s insistence on adapting reform recommendations to Pennsylvania’s well-established traditions of partisanship and regional accommodation.”63 This is because behind closed doors party caucuses largely control the legislative process. Sidney Wise (1984, 30) noted, “the party caucuses in the General Assembly have been described as critical to the functioning of the legislative process – more so than in virtually any state of the country.”64 By 2005, 82% of legislative staff members were partisan staff working for the four caucuses; a percentage was second only to New York. When staffing increased, it followed the partisan model. “Questions of whether to adopt a partisan staff support structure or add nonpartisan staff services were resolved in favor of partisan staff,” writes Cassidy.65 Second, Alan Rosenthal suggests a “time warp” – Pennsylvania’s General Assembly functions as if it were operating in the 1950s or 1960s. Several factors explain this resistance to change. As legislative salaries and benefits increased, lawmaking became for many a not just a full-time job but a career. Additionally, redistricting is controlled by legislative leaders and has increased the number of “safe” legislative seats. Less than 60% of state legislative races from 1996 to 2010 were contested by the two parties, and in less than 20% of the races did the losing party receive 40% of the vote or more.66 Many senior lawmakers are insulated from competition. Insulation from public opinion shows up in other ways. For example, a recent study by Lax and Phillips provides evidence of the General Assembly’s insulation from public opinion. Looking at 39 issues, they found a match between public opinion and public policy only one-third of the time in Pennsylvania. The state was tied for last place on this measure. Pennsylvania was the only state at the bottom of the rankings with a professional legislature.67

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The General Assembly’s insulation from public opinion and pressures for change may also result from constitutional provisions. For example, the Constitution does not provide for the initiative or for legislative term limits. Moreover, only the legislature can initiate a constitutional amendment or call a constitutional convention. Greenawalt and Madonna conclude, “Movements to allow citizens initiative, referendum, and recall as well as term limitations that would reduce the power of incumbents have not been given serious consideration by the General Assembly.”68 A third explanation for the prevalence of scandals is that they can be functional. In Social Theory and Social Structure Robert Merton distinguishes between the manifest and latent functions of social systems. Manifest functions are consequences that contribute to the adaptation of a system that are intended and recognized. Latent functions are “those that are neither intended nor recognized” but “functional for a designated system.”69 For instance, Merton discusses how political machines provide benefits “that were at the time not adequately fulfilled by other existing patterns and structures” such as humanizing the manner of assistance to individuals or providing alternative channels of social mobility.70 Political scandals may also perform latent functions. Thompson suggests a “functionalist theory of scandal” – “Scandals are rituals of collective absolution: moments when a society confronts the shortcomings and transgressions of its members and by working through the sometimes painful process of disclosure and denunciation and retribution usually reinforces the norms, conventions and institutions which constitute the social order.”71 For instance, scandal can provide an orderly mechanism for leadership succession and turnover. Because power is concentrated in such a few hands, scandal facilitates leadership change by removing discredited leaders without the need for a power struggle. For example, Bonusgate and Computergate purged the General Assembly of the remaining, tainted leaders who engineered the “pay grab” of 2005. Scandal also acts as a safety valve releasing pressures for institutional reform. Whenever convictions, resignation, or defeat punishes the offender, it reduces the pressure for serious institutional reform. Pennsylvania lawmakers rarely investigate or sanction; that is left to others. When rules are broken, the rules may be tightened, but they are not self-enforcing. Scandal is a matter left for prosecutors, juries, judges, and voters to contend with by sending the offenders home or to prison. This allows the General Assembly to take a few symbolic actions before returning to business as usual.

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Scandal may also be functional by lowering public expectations about public officials. The impact of scandal on citizen participation may vary depending on the political culture within which it takes place. In a highly partisan and individualistic political culture like Pennsylvania’s, scandal is an unremarkable feature of the political landscape. Republicans prosecute Democrats and Democrats indict Republicans, or so it seems. While investigating corruption in a moralistic state may produce citizen involvement, Johnston writes, “In an individualistic area, the same activity  may be perceived as a smokescreen for more partisan purposes: citizens may simply conclude that corruption is a permanent part of the political marketplace.” Thus scandal reinforces the view that everything is done for partisan purposes.72

Conclusion Corruption is a recurring dynamic in Pennsylvania politics. By the 1840s corruption became commonplace and soon the Constitution of 1874 addressed the corrupting influence of private legislation. Nonetheless, episodes of corruption continued. Over the next 140 years Pennsylvania evolved from a one-party state to a highly competitive two-party state and a part-time legislature gave way to a professional legislature. Some of the explanations for political corruption like the degree of party competition, educational levels, or compensation levels for lawmakers seem to lack explanatory power. While these variables change, scandal remains a constant. The persistence of scandal suggests the interactive effects of several factors. Individually these forces may not completely explain a climate of political scandal. For example, despite operating in individualistic political culture, no governor since 1978 has been tainted by scandal. In combination, however, the three factors combine to create a lawmaking process largely impervious to reform. First, the individualistic political culture reinforces past practices that build resistance to change. Second, the General Assembly exists in a “time warp” where maintaining political power trumps other concerns. Finally, political scandals may serve latent functions that allow the General Assembly to continue in an unreformed fashion. These powerful forces make it unlikely that the General Assembly will break the vicious cycle of corruption and scandal without great outside pressure.

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Notes   1 Paul Beers, Pennsylvania Politics: Today and Yesterday (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980), 26.   2 William A. Russ, Jr., “What Is The Matter with Pennsylvania?” Pennsylvania History 2 (1935), 35.   3 George C. S. Benson, Political Corruption in America (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1978), 122.   4 Dick Simpson, James Nowlan, Thomas J. Gradel, Melissa Mouristen Zmuda, David Sterrett, and Douglas Cantor, Chicago and Illinois, Leading the Pack in Corruption (Chicago; University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Illinois Institute for Governmental and Public Affairs, 2012).   5 Richard T. Boylan and Cheryl X. Long, “Measuring Public Corruption in the American States: A Survey of State House Reporters,” State Politics and Policy Quarterly 4 (2003).   6 Richard A. Stafford, Joseph P. McLaughlin, Jr., Michelle J. Atherton, Megan Mullin, and Nathan Schrader, A Discussion of Topics Related to the Continuing Evolution of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Temple Papers on the Pennsylvania General Assembly (Philadelphia: Institute of Public Affairs, Temple University, 2012), 65.   7 John B. Thompson, Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 13–14.   8 Thompson, 120–122.   9 Thompson, 107. 10 Thompson, 113. 11 James Q. Wilson, “Corruption: The Shame of the States,” in The Public Interest 4 (1966): 30. 12 Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966), 101. 13 Daniel J. Elazar, The American Mosaic: The Impact of Space, Time and Culture on American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 230–231. 14 Wilson, 30. 15 Wilson, 33. 16 Wilson, 31. 17 Wilson, 33. 18 Michael Johnston, “Corruption and Political Culture in America: An Empirical Perspective,” Publius 13(1983). 19 Eric M. Uslaner, “The Civil State: Trust, Polarization, and the Quality of State Government,” in Public Opinion in State Politics, ed. Jeffrey Cohen (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006). James E. Alt and David D. Lassen, “Political and Judicial Checks on Corruption,” Economics and Politics 20 (2008): 33–61. Kenneth

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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

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J. Meier and Thomas M. Holbrook, “I Seen My Opportunities and I Took ‘Em:’ Political Corruption in the American States,” Journal of Politics 54 (1992): 135–155. Filipe R. Campante and Quoch-Anh Do, Isolated Capital Cities: Accountability and Corruption Evidence from the States (Cambridge: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012). Johnston, 30. Douglas E. Bowers, “From Logrolling to Corruption: The Development of Lobbying in Pennsylvania: 1815–1861,” Journal of the Early Republic 3 (1983), 443. Bowers, 459. Bowers, 461. Bowers, 462. Bowers, 463. Bowers, 474. Ari Hoogenboom, “Did Gilded Age Scandals Bring Reform?,” in Before Watergate: Problems of Corruption in American Society, ed. Abraham S. Eisenstadt, Ari Hoogenboom and Hans L. Trefousse (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn College Press, 1978), 128. Phillip S. Klein and Ari Hoogenboom, A History of Pennsylvania (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973), 319. Jessica Trounstine, Political Monopolies in America Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008, 243); and Peter McCaffery, When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia: The Emergence of the Republican Machine 1867–1933 (University Park, RA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). Klein and Hoogenboom, 323. Thompson, 177. Robert H. Weibe, The Search for Order: 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 28. Beers, 42. James A. Kehl, Boss Rule in the Gilded Age: Matt Quay of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981), 141 and Samuel Orth, The Boss and the Machine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919). Klein and Hoogenboom, 379. Beers, 53. John Morrison McLarnon III, Ruling Suburbia: John J. McClure and the Republican Machine of Delaware County (Newark, De: University of Delaware Press, 2003). Neal R. Peirce and Michael Barone, The Mid-Atlantic States of America: People, Politics and Power in Five Mid-Atlantic States (New York: W, W, Norton, 1977), 117. Franklin L. Kury, Clean Politics, Clean Streams: A Legislative Autobiography and Reflections (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2011), 16. McLarnon, 116.

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McLarnon, 122. Kury, xvii. Kury, xvii. Michael Cassidy, “Partisanship as an Ally of Reform: Hebert Fineman’s Legacy of Legislative Modernization in Pennsylvania,” (M.A Thesis, The Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, 2005), 11. 46 Keith E. Hamm and Gary F. Moncrief, “Legislative Politics in the States,” in Politics in the American States, ed. Virginia Gray, Russell L. Hanson and Thad Kousser (Washington: Sage CQ Press, 2013), 164. 47 Sidney Wise, The Legislative Process in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1984), 35. 48 Cassidy, 34. 49 Beers, 422. 50 Dick Thornburgh, Where the Evidence Leads (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 54. 51 Cassidy. 52 Beers, 420. 53 Beers, 403. 54 Wise, 17. 55 Joseph P. McLaughlin, The Pennsylvania General Assembly Before and After the 1968 Legislative Modernization Commission, Temple Papers on the Pennsylvania General Assembly (Philadelphia: The Institute of Public Affairs, Temple University), 36–37. 56 28th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, Grand Jury Report No. 1 (Harrisburg: May 24, 2010), 2. 57 Grand Jury, 9. 58 Grand Jury, 19. 59 Grand Jury, 21. 60 Grand Jury, 24. 61 McLaughlin, 41. 62 Patricia McGee Crotty, “Pennsylvania: Individualism Writ Large,” in Interest Group Politics in the Northeastern States, ed. Ronald J. Hrebenar and Clive S. Thomas (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 279. 63 Cassidy, 3. 64 Wise, 30. 65 Cassidy, 41, 33. 66 Hamm and Moncrief, 174. 67 Jeffrey R. Lax and Justin H. Phillips, “The Democratic Deficit in State Policymaking,” American Journal of Political Science 56 (2012):148–166. 68 Charles E. Greenawalt, II and G. Terry Madonna, “The Pennsylvania General Assembly – The House of Ill Repute Revisited,” in Reform of State Legislatures and

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the Changing Character of Representation, ed. Eugene W, Hickok, Jr. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), 100. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1957), 51. Merton, 72 Thompson, 235. Johnston, 39.

7

Sex, Scandal, and Catholic Politics during Italy’s Dolce Vita Roy Domenico

On April 11, 1953, Italian police identified the corpse of Wilma Montesi, a young middle-class Roman, who had apparently drowned at a beach near the Eternal City. The body, furthermore, washed up very close to Capocotta, an estate that had belonged to the papal Borghese family until the Italian Royal House, the Savoia, confiscated it during Italian unification in the nineteenth century. After World War II the newly established Republic took the property from the deposed monarchy and kept it as an exclusive hunting lodge that soon gained the reputation as a place where the well born and powerful frolicked in drug-fueled orgies and bacchanalia. The tragic victim of this hedonistic horror, most concluded, was Wilma Montesi. But was she murdered and, if yes, who did it?1 The Montesi scandal persisted in the newspapers and the courts for about four years – until 1957 – as Italy’s most celebrated scandal of the decade, a battle in the culture wars between two visions of postwar Italy, traditionalist and Catholic on one side and modern, Lay, and Marxist on the other. The mass circulation magazine Oggi called it the most colossal comic book novel that has ever been written . . . A simple tale (that) has turned the whole country upside down . . . giving rise to a massive wave of morbid curiosity and giving the Communists a pretext to accuse the Government, the Christian Democrats, the Vatican, the whole ruling class and the whole bourgeoisie.2

The scandal certainly seemed directed at the ruling Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana, or DC), a Catholic centrist party that leaned to the left

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economically and to the right on cultural and social issues. The party could usually, but not always, count on the support of Italy’s formal Catholic society that began with the Church, its diocesan network and parishes, and extended to the gigantic umbrella organization of the lay faithful, the three-million-member Catholic Action. The DC enjoyed spectacular success and would hold unbroken power in Italy for over 40 years, from the 1940s until the 1990s, battling the Communists, Socialists, and various smaller parties such as the Liberals, Republicans, or Neo-Fascists, which collectively comprised the so-called “Lay” part of Italy’s political spectrum. The Montesi affair hit the DC during a period of transformation from the waning years and death of its first leader, the postwar statesman Alcide De Gasperi, and the rise of a “second generation” that was first piloted by Amintore Fanfani. As party chief from 1954, Fanfani joined figures, generally from the left wing, who advocated more of an energetic Christian identity for the party, a vision that called for a reinforcement and greater DC and Catholic penetration into the life of the nation.3 Their actions complemented the goals of the enormous Catholic Action organization under Luigi Gedda and those of Pope Pius XII at the Holy See in the promotion of a Christian morality and comportment. The first result was the creation of a modest and rather highbrow DC office of “Cultural Activity.” Its directives, however, illustrate that it limited its aim to Italy’s artistic and literary elite rather than to mass culture. The death of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and an electoral setback in 1953, however, combined to push the DC to give its cultural policies a more intense focus and a broader reach. The demands of an anxious Fanfani for a “deeper and vaster penetration” into Italian society received the final imprimatur when De Gasperi, near death, endorsed it at the 1954 Naples party congress. In August 1955 these calls resulted in the creation of the DC office of “Popular Activity” (attività popolare), which promoted “a greater base for the formation of a democratic and Christian state.” The office also spawned other endeavors such as a sports agency established in 1956, Teleclubs (1957), and Telescuole (1958). Elsewhere the party took active roles in such fields as media censorship and the promotion of a “healthy” Christian tourism. More culturally active than the Christian Democrats were the Church and Catholic Action, two entities that had been in business much longer than the DC. While the DC formed as a party only with Fascism’s final crises during World War II, Catholic Action had roots in the nineteenth century and had operated, with some restrictions, under Mussolini’s regime. Its cultural offices,

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moreover, worked hand in hand with ecclesiastical authorities. The Catholic Film Center (CCC), for instance, was organized in 1939 with clerical liaisons. After World War II, the CCC formed part of a phalanx of Catholic organizations that assumed duties in the creation of a renewed Catholic Italy. Kindred agencies, mostly connected to Catholic Action, included the Catholic Youth Tourist office (C.T.G.); the National Anti-Blasphemy Crusade, the Family Front (Fronte della famiglia); the National Association of Large Families; the “Great Return” (Grande ritorno) movement of Father Riccardo Lombardi, the “Radio Priest”; another society dedicated to keep the Sabbath holy; and the “Base Missionaria” movement, launched in 1952 “to put all of (Catholic Action’s) forces at the service of the Church for the reconquest of those who have strayed from the faith, from the Christian life.” Moreover, this network worked hand in hand with the Christian Democracy, whose parliamentary delegation had almost entirely been members of Catholic Action. At the vanguard of these activities, in that it was the most political and probably the most committed to a reorganization of the entire culture, was Catholic Action’s “Morality Secretariat” (Segretariato moralità). Formed in 1937, by the end of World War II this bureau was headed by an inspired and tireless Piedmontese lawyer, Gino Gavuzzo. On paper, its influence was limited mainly to filing complaints with the police on issues of public decency, and to participate on government censorship boards. Its de facto power, however, rested on a very close relationship between Gavuzzo and key elements in the Christian Democratic government, particularly the Viminale Palace, home of the interior ministry and the police. Missives at the Catholic Action archives illustrate the willingness of Minister Mario Scelba to aid the vigilant Gavuzzo through buon costume (good behavior) police squads including a notorious one in Turin that famously waged a campaign against public kissing. The authority to enforce buon costume often stemmed from old Fascist laws still on the books.4 The Church, Catholic Action, and the DC, therefore, were tied to morality in a very special way, where other political forces were not; and they promoted public decency on the beaches and at other vacation spots, on film and in the arts, and devoted themselves to maintain the sanctity of marriage. Catholics thus could say that transgression offended not only them, but God. In what distinguished them from Italy’s lay and Marxist camps, Italian Catholics claimed happily and with a clear conscience that the Lord endorsed their cause. Anxious to fortify the soul of the nation, Catholics struggled to locate and confront immorality. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the government typically

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linked transgressions to opposition parties. The most famous example of this concerned the “Pioneers.” The Communist Party in Emilia established the “Pioneers Association of Italy” (Associazione pionieri d’Italia or API) in 1949 for boys and girls from the ages of seven to fourteen. Distinct from the Communist Youth Front (FGCI), the API focused on sports and recreation and, according to its director, Carlo Pagliarini, aimed to “tear thousands of boys and girls from the ideological and organizational influence of the clergy and the A.C. (Catholic Action).”5 In his study of Communist morality, Sandro Bellassai wrote that, for the overwhelming majority of the clergy and Catholic activists, “the simple existence” of such a group “was seen as scandalous . . . a satanic growth to be immediately destroyed.” The API, indeed, provided Catholics with plenty of scandal such as one, in 1950, when it participated in a Communist youth festival at Piacenza where during “four days of fun” a phony “Marriage and Divorce Office” united couples in wedlock. The Catholic Action organ Il Quotidiano did not find this funny and grieved over the “disgraceful” festival that proved Marxist determination toward the “spiritual ruin of children.”6 Catholic reaction was swift, emboldened no doubt by a papal encyclical, Summi maeroris, of July 10, 1950. Directed primarily against the Soviet Bloc, its message could easily be applied to Italian Communists on at least one point. “Through errors, calumnies and every kind of indecency,” wrote the Pontiff, “(Communists) draw the people, especially the tender youth, away from integrity of morals, from virtue and innocence, to the allure of vice and corruption.”7 Other clerics echoed the pontiff. Milan’s Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster denounced Communist “schools of corruption where children are systematically initiated into vice”; and Monsignor Giovanni Urbani, the Church’s liaison to Catholic Action, called for “the moral defense of children, besieged with a vile contempt never dared before, toward innocence, especially from the associations of the A.P.I.” Two weeks after Summi maeroris, on July 28, a Holy Office Monitum extended the excommunication of Communists to the API and the families that belonged to it. The government followed with its own measures. After the DC deputy from Verona, Fiorenzo Cimenti, made a spirited denunciation of the organization on the floor of Parliament in October, the government shut 27 of the left-wing youth camps. Seven more closed in 1952. Shortly thereafter, the prefect of Siena confiscated another Pioneer site and proposed to transfer the children to a nearby Catholic camp. In 1952, furthermore, the DC government edged out the left by contracting with the extensive Vatican agency the Pontificia opera di assistenza

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(POA) to administer for five years property confiscated after World War II from the former Fascist youth organization the Gioventù italiana del littorio.8 The case against the API took a scandalous turn during the Pozzonovo affair, which illustrated Catholic suspicions of Communist perversion. In the small agricultural community of Pozzonovo, a nun grew suspicious after hearing some shocking language that came from the mouths of the little sons and daughters of certain Communist families. This led to charges of corruption against six Communists who worked at a local “Pioneer” day camp and on October 29, 1954, proceedings began in nearby Padua. On the following January 28, however, the Tribunal absolved the six, a decision confirmed by a Venice court the following November. Responding to statements from the Communist Concetto Marchesi, an “expert in morality and sexual prudence,” that the trial reflected an age-old religious obsession with sex, the Vatican paper L’Osservatore Romano could only hope that the Padua decision not “provide anybody the right to dishonor religious morals.”9 Within weeks, in February 1955, the Paduan DC launched a campaign to buy the camp. A first installment of 15,000 lire was raised by party members who, noted the DC organ Il Popolo, humbly stood in line behind a woman, clearly of modest means, who had donated 500 lire.10 Pozzonovo illustrates one Catholic morality battle among many during the 1950s and 1960s, battles waged against political enemies while more intangible challenges came from Italy’s shifting society and culture. The nation experienced some of the world’s highest economic growth rates during the era, while hundreds of thousands of peasants streamed every year into rapidly expanding industrial cities. The working classes would not enjoy the material benefits of this transformation until the late 1960s and 1970s. Instead, the big winners in the 1950s and early 1960s came from the higher white-collar reaches, the managers and their bosses. Theirs was a new middle class culture marked by vacations, labor-saving appliances, scooters and automobiles, and the latest fashions. The scandal that surrounded Wilma Montesi’s death cast an unflattering light on this novel and very un-Catholic image, the dawning “dolce vita” – the likes of which the modern nation had never experienced – a narcissistic world of paparazzi and of movie stars who, shielded by sun glasses, frolicked out in the open on Rome’s Via Vento, in nightclubs or hidden in secluded villas. “Behind the façade of the capital of Christendom,” wrote one author, the Montesi Affair “unveiled an abyss of luxury and decadence.” Rome became a “city of perdition (under) Ministers who declared themselves observant Catholics.”11 In his history of the affair, Stephen Gundle placed it in the context of a rapidly modernizing Italy and called

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it “a Roman story that offered a grand narrative of a city that was struggling to find a new sense of itself.” However, he continued, “There can scarcely have been a political party in the world less likely to generate a sex scandal than the ruling Christian Democrats.” The DC’s “elderly leaders,” he wrote, “were upright men who were early to bed and early to rise. They were colorless, cautious individuals who were deeply religious and personally austere. Typically, they attended mass every day.”12 As might be expected, in an Italy that had become a battleground for personal morality, a sex scandal hit moralists with a special sting. It came on April 9, 1953, when Wilma Montesi, an attractive 21-year-old with theatrical aspirations, left her family’s Roman apartment and never returned. Two days later a teenage construction worker discovered her corpse on the beach at Tor Vajanica (or Torvaianica), between the Roman port of Ostia and Anzio, a mostly offbeat coastal stretch then and known to some as a smugglers’ haven. The police quickly concluded that she had slipped into the surf and drowned, an explanation resolutely supported by Montesi’s family, who claimed that she died accidentally at the Ostia beach where she went to bathe her feet, using the salt water as a cure for skin irritation caused by new shoes. Weakened by menstrual blood loss, however, she fainted in the surf and the waves carried her body ten miles south to the beach at Tor Vajanica. An autopsy performed on April 14 confirmed that Montesi had drowned but, although it discredited almost every other aspect of the family’s theory, the footbath story would persist throughout the four-year scandal. Indeed, Rome’s police commissioner Saverio Polito accepted it as did the Church, which, satisfied that her death had been accidental and not suicidal, accorded Wilma Montesi a Christian funeral on April 16. She had been engaged to a policeman and was buried in her wedding dress.13 After the discovery of Montesi’s body and through the summer of 1953 the Lay and Marxist press began to question the police’s hasty explanation that she had simply fallen into the sea. More and more, the media repudiated this theory and insinuated that something more was at work, that Montesi’s death might be linked to the notorious Capocotta lodge and certain bigwigs who frequented it. Doubts persisted and on May 4 two newspaper articles added fuel to the growing scandal. First, the prestigious Corriere della sera suggested that there was more to the story than met the eye and then Roma, a Neapolitan monarchist journal owned by the shipping magnate Achille Lauro, went further and asked, “Why are the Police Silent over Wilma Montesi’s Death?” It implicated commissioner Polito in a cover-up by linking the death to “the son of a notable political

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personality.” Three weeks later, the Communist review Vie Nuove identified that young man as Piero Piccioni. The following October, 24-year-old editor Silvano Muto and his racy Attualità, a review identified politically with the far right, published “The Truth on the Death of Wilma Montesi” and shoved the scandal to a new level.14 Muto made the case that she had not slipped into the surf while washing her feet but rather that she had overdosed during an orgy, advancing an interpretation dark enough to trigger government retaliation. He confirmed the role of Piero Piccioni, a jazz musician, the nephew of the editor of Il Popolo, Leone Piccioni, and the son of the respected DC leader, Attilio Piccioni. De Gasperi’s foreign minister, former secretary of the party, and old friend of the interior minister (and therefore chief policeman of the Republic) Mario Scelba, the elder Piccioni immediately pressured Muto for a retraction. For his part, Polito tried to extinguish the fires, denouncing the articles, for instance, on May 5 and in an August interview where he argued that the footbath theory still held for nine reasons, one of which recognized that Piccioni had been away and not in Rome at the time of Montesi’s disappearance. Polito’s denials and evasions had the opposite effect of directing light on the state and the scrutiny of what one historian identified as “the sanctuary of Catholic . . . power, the Scelbian altar of the political police.”15 The mushrooming caso Montesi fed the entire press spectrum, from the accusations and delicious gossip of the cronache nere scandal sheets to the retaliations and moral outrage in the Osservatore Romano.16 Italy’s print media played the central role in keeping the scandal alive before the public. It was, moreover, a media radically different from that of a few years before in that the collapse of the Fascist regime had initiated an explosion of tabloids, a new type of review that reveled in crime stories and celebrated celebrities; but, distinct from the satirical reviews and fan magazines that existed before the war, the new tabloids delved into places where celebrities should not have been. The influence of U.S. popular culture was very strong at that point and can be seen in that most of Italy’s big glossy newsmagazines established at the end of the war, Oggi (1945), Epoca (1950), and L’Europeo (1945), mirrored the American Life and Look with their movie star–studded covers and plenty of gossip from Hollywood or from Rome, the new “Hollywood on the Tiber.” At a more “low brow” level dwelled the cronache nere, many of which were modeled on the American Confidential and promised more titillating and vulgar stories. They identified with Italy’s Lay culture, whether right or left, and Montesi became their bread and butter.17

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Catholics, however, also occupied a central place in Italian publishing. Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family), for example, was arguably the nation’s largest-circulation review. Yet Catholic printers rejected the new cronaca nera style of journalism out of an inherent prejudice against publishing what it considered to be smut. The dolce vita world of paparazzi, cheesecake, and scandal, the stuff of the cronache nere, was utterly foreign to them and their reserve may have placed them at a disadvantage. The less said about Montesi the better; and Catholic writers, particularly those of the purely Church-based press, dismissed the flurry of comments and prurient articles as the debris of Marxists and scandalmongers.18 Most, practically all of its articles on the Montesi affair were either direct answers to Lay and Marxist accusations or simple reporting on the trials or police reports – leaving Catholics wide open to the type of attacks and juicy revelations that are the stuff of tabloids. The more political organs of the Catholic press, those journals connected to the DC and Catholic Action, emphasized more vociferously and energetically what they considered the unfairness of the Left and Neo-Fascist press. The party’s Il Popolo, for instance, charged that the opposition, the “enemies of democracy,” had launched a campaign of “falsehoods,” “smokescreens,” and “poisonous insinuations” to pursue their “underhanded agenda.”19 The Catholic Iniziativa lamented the new press’ degradation of the moral conscience of its readership, particularly those in difficult circumstances who could not afford the higher prices of the quality press. Bologna’s Avvenire d’Italia won Iniziativa’s praise by refusing to publish news of suicides and as little of the cronaca nera as possible. The Osservatore Romano went a step further and criticized those photographers who transgressed private lives. “A real manhunt has been launched,” it stated, “among journalists and photographers” to print the latest information about politicians, scientists, sports heroes, and movie stars, especially when the story included “some tartness, some glimpse of breast.”20 Calls from the faithful for more censorship, furthermore, resounded throughout the period. The chief Catholic liaison to the print media, Raimondo Manzini, had already been at work on a censorship proposal with some DC colleagues in parliament.21 At the national Press Congress of 1954 in Palermo, the Montesi affair overlapped with another notorious murder story (the “Egidi” case) to prompt a unanimous resolution for tighter control of the cronaca nera press, condemning its “facile and morbid curiosity” with “disgusting” and “scandalous” exposés. The Osservatore Romano applauded the measure and claimed that it “echoed” Manzini’s work, which had aimed at a more sober press all along.22 Government regulations, however,

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were never able to effectively contain this new brand of tabloid. Starting with Muto’s Attualità, these weeklies had entered into a golden age where the genre’s circulation increased from 3 million in 1946 to 20 million in 1955. The non-Catholic political press, the Communist Unità and Socialist Avanti! as well as the Lay papers and reviews, which would not normally be compared to the tabloids, nevertheless, saw some value in using the scandal against the DC and, it has been noted, also began to display more cheesecake on their pages after they discovered how such methods increased the circulation of other journals. They would have a field day with Montesi stories which, according to Avanti!, smeared “the most select rank of feudal and papal nobility.”23 The editor of the pro-Communist and proudly anti-clerical Paese sera was seen shouting down the office corridors that he wanted a Montesi story on page one every day for as long as it lasted. “If (the Communist leader) Palmiro Togliatti . . . had written the scenario,” reported the New York Times, “he could not have done it half so well.” Togliatti, in fact, could not resist comparing the Montesi scandal with the end of the Fascist regime, implying that now the DC’s “clerical regime” neared its end.24 Although he signed a retraction for the record, the state placed Silvano Muto on trial based on an old Fascist law regarding “the diffusion of false news and partisan actions to disturb the public order.” The proceedings began on January 28, 1954, and added to the stream of Montesi information – lurid details about a particularly murky corner of Roman High Society that Wilma had transgressed before her death. More and more, public attention turned toward two habitués of that world, Piero Piccioni and Ugo Montagna, a slippery Sicilian marquis who secured a government position as caretaker of Capocotta and who had turned it into a locus of late-night parties and drug-fueled orgies. The press frequently contrasted the two. Montagna had built a career on knowing people and using them, a talent that began under the Fascists when he was particularly close to the family of the Duce’s mistress, Claretta Petacci. He had used those connections during the waning days of Fascism by securing the prison release of Tommaso Pavone, who became the national chief of police. Montagna was gregarious, dapper, sporty, and more than a bit shady. Although he was the fiancé of the famous actress Alida Valli, Piccioni was a quiet introvert; one observer wrote that he looked more like a victim than a predator. He was a jazz pianist who had lived for a time in New York and performed with Charlie Parker, and now occupied himself writing film scores. If those who pushed the scandal wanted to implicate the Christian Democracy, however, Piero Piccioni was a weak pick. He was DC by blood more than conviction and his milieu was closer to the

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dolce vita than it was to the altar. Nor was Montagna particularly devout; but he reinforced the Catholic connection through his ties to other highly placed figures. Antonello Galeazzi Lisi, a member of the lodge and the Pope’s doctor, frequently visited Capocotta; Montagna had also hosted a banquet for Catholic Action’s Gedda, who, in gratitude, presented him with a crucifix; and he had shared a photo with his fellow Sicilian Mario Scelba at the wedding of Alfonso Spataro, the son of De Gasperi’s minister of the post. The Muto trial also created new celebrities in two young women, Adriana Bisaccia and Anna Maria Moneta Caglio. Bisaccia was his first informant. From Avellino, she went to Rome in search of glamor although she came across to the public as “neurotic” and perhaps somewhat unbalanced. She would claim that Piero Piccioni had forced her into three abortions and that the prominent DC figure and Rome’s future mayor Umberto Tupini had beaten her up. Bisaccia’s quirky manner prompted grave doubts; and the press soon portrayed her as something of a tragic figure; her star faded almost before it appeared. On the other hand, Muto’s chief source was Anna Maria Moneta Caglio, the photogenic “Black Swan” who had been engaged to Montagna but now feared that he had tried to murder her. Caglio was tailor-made for a glossy exposé: born to a comfortable Milanese family with close ties to the DC, she appeared the much cooler and more sophisticated of the informants. She came to Rome for a movie career propelled by letters of introduction to DC leaders Giulio Andreotti and to Spataro, who brought her together with Montagna.25 A developing sexual relationship opened doors to the sleazy goings-on at Capocotta. The affair soured and darkened and Caglio sought advice from clergy, starting with her confessor in Milan. Then she went to the vice provincial of the Roman Jesuits, Alessandro Dall’Olio, and Father Virginio Rotondi of the Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica, both of whom took the information to Fanfani and Andreotti. She also implicated the police, claiming that Montagna had “fixed” the case through Tommaso Pavone, the national police chief, Polito’s superior, and who was indebted to the Sicilian because of his help during the war. Fanfani, who had already acquired a keen interest in the affair, urged Caglio to tell all to the Carabinieri, Italy’s “other,” paramilitary, police that served somewhat ambiguously, or uneasily, alongside the regular force, the Public Security (Pubblica sicurezza).26 On February 10, 1954, during the Caglio testimony, and settling a period of political flux launched by De Gasperi’s resignation, Scelba became prime minister, changing the tenor of the scandal and the opposition guns opened up on the government in earnest. One of his first acts, on February 11, was to accept

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Tommaso Pavone’s resignation. As interior minister two years before, Scelba had hired Pavone to head the police. The new prime minister, however, became aware of an unearthed photo that captured Pavone’s arrival in Rome accompanied by a smiling Ugo Montagna. The police chief had to go. But Scelba, too, was an ideal target, one who had earned the wrath of the Left during his interior years, from 1947 until 1953, as a tough, bull-headed, law-and-order police boss. He developed the infamous “celere” (lightening) police squads which fired into working-class and peasant crowds on more than one occasion, most notably in Modena, where in January 1950 the units left six dead and 51 wounded.27 Scelba had also acquired a reputation among the smart set as a boorish and superstitious peasant, the type of creature that the brave new secular world would hopefully eliminate. The Lay press ridiculed him, particularly for an unfortunate slang term, culturame, that he let slip at the 1949 DC Party congress at Venice. It would dog him for the rest of his life. A challenge to translators, the word alludes to what Scelba considered a culture of garbage that had begun to plague Italy. The progressive writer and editor Luigi Russo depicted him as a boorish field hand (campiere), a sicilianuzzo, a fraud from top to bottom, and, worst of all, a phony Catholic.28 Shortly after Prime Minister Scelba’s first parliamentary vote of confidence in March 1954, Paese sera displayed on its front page the infuriating photo of him and Montagna at the wedding in Sicily of Giuseppe Spataro’s son, an image that Avanti! reprinted over the caption “lovely DC friendships.”29 On the 10th, the Chamber of Deputies erupted in an uproar over the picture and suffered the heckling of the Communist Giancarlo Pajetta, who linked Scelba’s peasant and worker victims with the “moral question” of Wilma Montesi. Referring, then to the notorious photo, he concluded, “You, gentlemen of the Government, you are Montagna’s friends or the friends of his friends.”30 Scelba retorted, “I’ve been photographed with you and I’m certainly not your friend.” The argument reerupted on March 23 when Pajetta repeated his accusation. On this occasion Scelba and other DC figures engaged in a spirited defense, one of frequent and lively confrontations in both the Chamber and in the Senate. The DC deputy from Verona, Giuseppe Bettiol, announced that his “honorable colleagues on the Left (had shown themselves to be) Lenin’s shrewd disciples.” True to form, instead of an honest search for the truth, he continued, they wielded scandal as a weapon to “stir bewilderment and doubt” among the people and to rock bourgeois society. Scelba then added that the government had “nothing to fear . . . (if we) extend an appeal to the sense of responsibility of all men who

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believe in the law’s guarantees . . .” But the prime minister’s plea was cut short in mid-sentence by a hubbub started by Pajetta and his colleague, the firebrand Communist Pietro Ingrao.31 In another speech to the Senate, Scelba echoed the question found in many newspapers – Italian and foreign – why were Italians wasting their time on the Montesi scandal and ignoring the bigger issues, particularly the then pressing and serious debates over the European Defense Community.32 Outside of Parliament, the Montesi case took more toll on government activity. In her study of Prime Minister Scelba’s relations with the United States, Maria Eleonora Guasconi wrote that Montesi “revealed a world of favoritisms, abuses and collusion that shed a negative light on DC circles (and) had gravely damaged the Party’s image and indirectly favored the opposition.”  33 Such was the DC obsession with Montesi, that at a party conference on a completely unrelated topic – underdeveloped areas – an in-house circular called on every speaker, before their discussion of the business at hand to “briefly but promptly, with serenity and certitude, face the ‘Montesi issue.’ ” This had become necessary since the government’s enemies, particularly the “Social-Communists,” had started to capitalize on it in a “campaign of vile and low speculation” for the purpose of discrediting Italian democracy. They were completely hypocritical, insinuated the circular, when Unità and Avanti! had never condemned the dozens (decine) of their own mayors who had been imprisoned for misconduct; nor did they express outrage over one Communist deputy sentenced in 1949 for having, during the war, acted as a prison guard for Italian soldiers captured in the Soviet Union. In fact, continued the piece, even Togliatti had drafted a letter of solidarity for that comrade. Under such circumstances, every speaker at the DC conference needed to stress that that the party had nothing to do with the caso.34 The Montesi cloud hung over the Scelba government through the course of 1954 and caused the Socialist leader Pietro Nenni to conflate Italy’s Great War military catastrophe and the scandal when he famously called Capocotta the “Caporetto of the bourgeois state.” In the end, however, Scelba survived Montesi on September 27 with a final vote of confidence in the Senate.35 The Muto trial continued until March 22 when Caglio’s incendiary evidence combined with damning revelations linking Montagna and the police that emerged from Interior Minister Fanfani’s independent investigation, known as the Pompei Report, and prompted the government to suspend the proceedings and re-launch its own inquiry on the 26th under Raffaele Sepe of the Roman Appeals Court. Known as a meticulous and irreproachable investigator, Sepe

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would weed through a mountain of informants, which included Adriana Bisaccia, whom he asked to identify Tupini in a police lineup. When she failed, he had her incarcerated, killing her credibility once and for all.36 Sepe also returned to square one, asking many obvious questions that had never been addressed. He and his staff returned to the beach at Tor Vajanica; he analyzed Montesi’s coat, which changed colors according to various reports; he attempted to understand why, at two different times, the corpse was dressed in different underclothes; and he cooperated with the Coast Guard in testing offshore currents. In September 1954, after recording roughly 500 interviews in 16,000 pages, the State completed its inquiry and ruled that Montesi had been the victim of foul play. Consequently, Rome charged Piccioni and Montagna with manslaughter and accused Polito with a cover-up but, considering his age and health, placed him under house arrest. Lesser indictments were brought against nine others.37 Attilio Piccioni, who still enjoyed Scelba’s support, insisted that he devote his energies in his son’s defense and resigned from the foreign ministry.38 Public interest in the Montesi case received extra pushes from some bonuses, little sub-scandals that periodically surfaced. One such foible concerned Muto’s defense attorney, Giuseppe Sotgiu. Somewhat incongruously the right-wing journalist hired this flamboyant Communist lawyer who was well known for his pattern of grasping every opportunity to take aim at the Christian Democracy. Catholics reported that he was a former Mason. A few months after the Muto trial’s suspension, Sotgiu and his wife became caught up in their own scandal as participants and witnesses in wild orgies. For his “serious crimes against morality,” according to the Quotidiano, and to squelch rumors, Sotgiu had been expelled from the PCI. The Catholic Action paper even attempted to link him to the death of a young Roman woman of 22, Adelaide Montorzi – a gambit that too closely resembled the Montesi case and eventually proved baseless.39 Another scandal led to Wilma Montesi’s Uncle Giuseppe, who came across as a poor man’s Montagna, one who harbored a peculiar fascination, what the police called “a morbid fascination,” in his niece. The plot thickened when the public discovered that Uncle Giuseppe was employed by a close friend of Piero Piccioni.40 Such extra morsels, however, could not maintain forever interest which had begun to crest. In November of 1954 the accused were released on bail while others had begun to pursue other interests. The Black Swan composed a memoir, The Daughter of the Century, and she finally obtained her big break, acting in a B-Film, called, appropriately, “The Girl of the Via Veneto.”41 The affair had

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become a lurid embarrassment that dragged on until January 1957 when, after frequent delays, a trial finally got underway in Venice under Judge Mario Tiberi at the Fabbriche nuove near the Rialto Bridge.42 Piccioni and Montagna still stood charged with manslaughter, while Polito remained accused of complicity by shielding the two. Lesser indictments were brought against nine others, mostly caretakers at Capocotta.43 By then, the tone of the Catholic press reports became more exasperated and pointed. The Osservatore Romano, for instance, claimed the case had developed into a ridiculous four-year-long “sectarian campaign.”44 Convinced that the entire opposition press considered it an open-and-shut murder case all along and were all too ready to print only the most garish details, the Vatican paper held little hope for the “political” proceedings and grieved for the nation’s international reputation when throngs of foreign reporters would cover the “affair” with all of their “usual pleasantries” over Italy’s disgrace.45 For their part, the Socialists marveled that the Vatican organ stood alone in the world in that it still bought the footbath theory. Except for Bisaccia, practically everyone who had been interrogated since Montesi’s death appeared as witnesses in Venice. Many were merely publicity hounds, including magicians and fortune tellers, lending a circus air to the proceedings; although Judge Tiberi gave them all their due, even an incredible 11 hours of shtick from the “Wizard of Milan.”46 Some such “witnesses” were immediately arrested after their ridiculously phony testimonies. At the end of May the government’s case collapsed. The prosecutor, Cesare Palmintieri, frustrated by the “irresponsible” press coverage, admitted in court that no firm evidence showed that Piero Piccioni had ever even met Wilma Montesi, that he had an alibi substantiated by his on-again-off-again fiancé, the movie star Alida Valli, and that the manslaughter charges were groundless. On the 28th the Venice tribunal acquitted Piccioni, Montagna, and Polito in what the Osservatore Romano sarcastically labeled “the reversal of the century.”47 The audience burst into applause while Polito “burst into tears” and Piccioni “trembled visibly.” The affable Montagna “tanned and healthy-looking,” maintained an “air of indifference” while the defense team of about 40 lawyers pushed through the crowd shaking hands.48 The Catholics had won and even Paese sera admitted “through clenched teeth” that it, too, had gone too far.49 The Roman daily Il Messaggero wrote “of all the terrible suspicions which tormented public opinion, nothing is left: no orgies, no white slavery, no boatloads of prostitutes, nothing.”50 The crime of Wilma Montesi’s death was never solved – rather it entered the lore of the dolce vita in no small part thanks to Federico Fellini and his classic

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film of the same name. Its final scene depicts, some have claimed, a dead “sea monster” that fishermen drag up onto the beach, a creature which “obliquely” may have represented Montesi.51 Beyond Wilma Montesi, herself, the scandal left little carnage. Few went to prison. In 1960 Uncle Giuseppe and his girlfriend were condemned for conspiring to present false alibis, un-needed alibis as it turned out. In 1964 Montagna successfully brought a defamation suit against Caglio and Muto. They appealed the decision for years although both eventually served, respectively, two years and two years and four months.52 Nor did the affair bring down the Scelba government or have any long-lasting effect on the Christian Democracy. Scelba had more to fear from Fanfani than he did from the Lay and Marxist camps; and their quarrel concerned Fanfani’s ambition more than ideological rifts. The Montesi scandal also revealed a split between Fanfani’s faction in the DC and those sympathetic to Attilio Piccioni who had formed the concentrazione “current” within the party that supported Giovanni Gronchi who, as President of Italy in 1955, would “counterbalance” the party secretary’s faction.53 Over 50 years later, in 2009 the Communist leader Pietro Ingrao, who had acted during the Montesi scandal as L’Unità’s editor, claimed that Fanfani, Piccioni’s rival, had secretly provided embarrassing information to the Left, although, based on his study of the as-yet unpublished Fanfani diaries, the historian Agostino Giovagnoli doubted this.54 In a broader sense, the Montesi scandal illustrates modernization and secularization in 1950s Italy. That the whole nation was very openly discussing a sex scandal of this magnitude says something about its media and culture. Such a conversation was legally impossible under the Fascists and logically impossible under the Liberal regime that preceded them. Ironically, under the traditionalist Christian Democrats, the mere fact of such an open discussion showed that Italy had shed some of its traditionalist past.

Notes   1 The Montesi case triggered a number of journalistic accounts. Some of the earlier attempts in English include Melton S. Davis, All Rome Trembled, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1957 and Wayland Young, The Montesi Scandal, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1958. A more scholarly recent work, focusing on the media, is Karen Pinkus’s The Montesi Scandal, The Death of Wilma Montesi and the Birth of the Paparazzi in Fellini’s Rome, Chicago: The University of Chicago

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Press, 2003. See also her essay, “Chi l’ha vista? Reflections on the Montesi Case,” in Stephen Gundle and Lucia Rinaldi, eds., Assassinations and Murder in Modern Italy, Transformations in Society and Culture, New York: Palgrave, 2007. More recent Italian treatments include Francesco Grignetti, Il caso Montesi. Sesso, potere e morte nell’Italia degli anni ’50 Venice: Marsiglio, 2006 and Massimo Polidoro, Cronaca nera: Indagini sui delitti che hanno sconvolto l’Italia Farigliano: Edizioni Piemme, 2005, pp. 141–180. Stephen Gundle’s Death and the Dolce Vita. The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s, Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011, must be considered the definitive text on the Montesi case.   2 Stephen Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 134–135.   3 Agostino Giovagnoli, “Dal partito del 18 aprile 1948 al ‘partito pesante.’ La Democrazia cristiana nel 1951” Italia contemporanea June 2002, n. 227.   4 On the Catholic morality campaign, see Roy Domenico, “The Devil and the Dolce Vita: Cultural Politics and Catholic Efforts to Save Italy’s Soul, 1950–1974” unpublished manuscript. See also Marco Barbanti, “La classe dirigente cattolica e la ‘battaglia per la moralità,’ 1948–1960. Appunti sul ‘regime clericale.’ ” Italia contemporanea December 1992, n. 189, pp. 605–634.   5 On the political left, the API mirrored the Socialist Falchi rossi and the Rondinelle of the Union of Italian Women. It never succeeded much beyond Emilia, Tuscany, and the major cities. Sandro Bellassai referred to the API as the most “hard pressed” (stentata) of the Communist organizations. Sandro Bellassai, La morale comunista, Pubblico e privato nella rappresentazione del PCI (1947–1956) Rome: Carocci editore, 2000, pp. 321–328.   6 “Giorni di matrimonio simbolico” and “Difesa urgente” both in Il Quotidiano July 26, 1950.   7 The Vatican web site, www.vatican.va, contains the text of Summi maeroris.   8 Bellassai, La morale comunista. pp. 327–329. On Cimenti’s denunciation, see Chamber of Deputies, Atti parlamentari, Legislatura I, Discussioni – seduta del Ottobre 19, 1950, pp. 229–235. On the Monitum see “Il Monitum del S. Officio,” Rivista del clero italiano October 1950.   9 “Sciocchezza e iniquità ‘osculatae sunt,’ ” Osservatore Romano (henceforth, OR) February 3, 1955. 10 “La sezione D.C. di Padova per l’asilo di Pozzonovo,” Il Popolo February 22, 1955. 11 Grignetti, Il caso Montesi. p. 70. 12 Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 7 and 43. 13 Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 20–25. The funeral mass was celebrated at the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. On drug smuggling in the Tor Vajanica area, see Gundle, pp. 208–210. 14 Paolo Murialdi, La Stampa Italiana del dopoguerra 2 vols. Bari/Rome: La Terza, 1978, pp. 260–279. Muto had ties to the neo-Fascist Movimento sociale italiano.

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15 Giuseppe Carlo Marino, La Repubblica della forza. Mario Scelba e le passioni del suo tempo, Milan: Francoangeli, 1995, pp. 226–227. 16 In the American press, Time printed its first story during the Muto hearing, and the New York Times followed soon after. “How Did Wilma Die?” Time, February 15, 1954; “Scandal Imperils Scelba Regime as Italy’s Police Chief is Shelved,” New York Times, March 12, 1954. Both mentioned frequently, and lamented, what it considered the absurd level of public interest in the case. On the following September 10 the New York Times called the scandal “one of the greatest propaganda godsends that the Communist Party ever had.” In 1955 the young reporter Gabriel García Márquez covered the affair in a series of articles for the Colombian El Espectador. After producing what one biographer termed “one of his most effective pieces of reportage,” García Márquez moved on to cover the Venice film festival. Gerald Martin, Gabriel García Márquez, A Life New York: Knopf, 2009, pp. 180–183. 17 Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 71–73. 18 For examples of the Catholic dismissal of the Montesi affair as the work of scandalmongers, see the “Voci ed echi,” columns in OR for May 17–18, 1954 and June 30–July 1, 1956. The same column of July 2, 1954, termed much of the press activity “journalistic bad conduct (malcostume giornalistico).” Francesco Olgiati condemned the Montesi affair and the related Sotgiu scandal (see below) as part of a Marxist effort to undermine the family in his article, “Gli assalti attuali contro la famiglia Cristiana,” Rivista del clero italiano January 1955. 19 “Il rinvio degli atti della Procura Generale,” September 12, 1954; and “Inaudita falsificazione delle sinistre,” September 13, 1954; both in Il Popolo. 20 Fausto Villainc, “Per la moralità della stampa,” Iniziativa June 1953; “Abbasso il fotografo!” OR March 6, 1955. 21 Libertà di stampa e censura preventiva, Il Quotidiano January 7, 1950. 22 “Voci ed echi,” OR December 1, 1954. 23 Davis, All Rome Trembled, pp. 299–300; Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 230. 24 Grignetti, Il caso Montesi, p. 117. “Montesi Case Disclosures Rock Scelba Government,” New York Times, March 21, 1954. 25 Davis, All Rome Trembled, p. 90. Caglio and Montagna met in Spataro’s office. 26 The Carabinieri serve under the Defense Ministry whereas the Interior Ministry directs the Pubblica sicurezza. At this time (August 1953 until January 1954) Giuseppe Pella headed Italy’s first post-De Gasperi government. Fanfani served as his interior minister while Andreotti was an undersecretary in the prime minister’s office. Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 106–108. Caglio also contacted the Mayor of Florence Giorgio La Pira, who recommended that she bring the information to Fanfani. Gundle notes (p. 117) that Montagna secured Pavone’s release from a Nazi jail during the war and probably saved his life. Davis revealed

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that Dall’Olio and Rotondi maintained close ties to the Fanfani circle and that the two priests and others among the Jesuits urged Caglio to leave Montagna. He also suggests that Jesuits put Caglio into contact with Muto. Davis, All Rome Trembled, pp. 105–106. 27 The Sicilian Scelba was also associated with the mysterious death of the bandit Salvatore Giuliano, a legendary figure linked both to the Sicilian independence movement and to the Mafia. Scelba’s police ambushed and killed him in 1950 although Giuliano’s lieutenant, Gasparre Pisciotta, claimed from prison that the chieftain was part of a much larger network that included Scelba, who had therefore ordered him “silenced.” The day before Scelba became prime minister, moreover, the talkative Pisciotta died in his cell from a cup of strychnine-laced coffee. “Il banditto Pisciotta è morto ieri in carcere,” Il Quotidiano February 10, 1954. 28 Luigi Russo, “ ‘Culturalume’ e ‘culturame,’ ” Belfagor IV 4 July 31, 1949, pp. 462–464. Corrado Pizzinelli, Scelba Milan: Longanesi 1982 p. 112. Stephen Gundle translated the word as “manure culture.” Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 181. 29 Avanti! placed the photo on page one of its March 17, 1954, issue. The caption also acknowledged that it came from Paese sera. The photo continued to haunt Scelba in 1960 when reference to it surfaced in a Chamber debate. Grignetti, Il caso Montesi, p. 257. 30 Chamber of Deputies, Atti parlamentari, Legislatura II, Discussioni – seduta del Marzo 10, 1954, p. 6172. 31 Chamber of Deputies, Atti parlamentari, Legislatura II, Discussioni – seduta del Marzo 23, 1954, pp. 6291–6311. Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 113. 32 Scelba’s Senate speech of September 25, 1954; reprinted in Mario Scelba, Contro lo scandalismo, Discorsi tenuti dall’On. Mario Scelba, Presidente del Consiglio, al Senato, il 25 settembre 1954, e alla Camera dei Deputati, il 30 settembre 1954. Rome: Centro di documentazione del Consiglio dei Ministri, 1954. Gabriel García Márquez also noticed that, elsewhere, French minds focused more on the Tour de France than on the Defense Community debates. Martin, Gabriel García Márquez, A Life pp. 177–178. 33 Maria Eleonora Guasconi, “Il governo Scelba e gli Stati Uniti: la ‘leverage’ di una media potenza,” in Pier Luigi Ballini, ed., Mario Scelba, Contributi per una biografia Rome and Soveria Mannelli: Istituto Luigi Sturzo and Rubbettino Editore, 2006, ­­pp. 362 and 374. 34 Istituto Luigi Sturzo (Rome) Segreteria Politica Fanfani, Scatola 35, fascicolo 4. “Appunti ed elementi di documentazione sulla vicenda Montesi” n.d., c. October 1, 1954. 35 Davis, All Rome Trembled, pp. 236–241.

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36 On the Pompei Report, see Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 125–130, and 138 regarding Bisaccia. 37 The State also requested the passport of Prince Maurice of Hesse, the grandson of King Victor Emmanuel III and nephew of Italy’s last King Umberto II. The government, however, lost interest in Prince Maurice. Some minor characters such as the Capocotta guards were charged as well. Saverio Polito had an interesting past. He had been the official in 1943 entrusted with the arrest of Mussolini’s wife, Rachele. She accused him of molestation while on the ride to prison and when the Germans resurrected Mussolini’s dictatorship, the Duce incarcerated Polito and had him sentenced to 24 years in jail. After the war, as inspector general of the PS, Polito was involved with the purge of anti-Fascist partisans in the police force. Romano Canosa, La Polizia in Italia dal 1945 ad oggi Bologna: Il Mulino, 1976, pp. 119–120 and Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 28 and chapter 16. On the Sepe investigation, see Gundle, chapter 10. 38 “Il ministro Piccioni dimissionario, sostituito dall’onorevole Gaetano Martino,” Il Popolo September 19, 1954. The Liberal Minister of Public Instruction Gaetano Martino took Piccioni’s place in the cabinet and was, in turn, succeeded at Public Instruction by Giuseppe Ermini. See also “Italian Minister Resigns to Help Defend Son in Scandal,” New York Times, September 19, 1954. 39 “Denunciato il comunista Sotgiu per gravi reati contro il morale,” Il Quotidiano November 17, 1954. 40 Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 187–190 and 254–257. 41 Caglio’s memoir was released as Una Figlia del secolo Rome: dell’Orso, 1955. Marino Girolami’s “The Girl of the Via Veneto” (La ragazza di Via Veneto) was released on January 30, 1957, and apparently no copies exist today. Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 244. Always looking for an angle to criticize the proceedings, the Osservatore Romano impishly sprinkled its articles with references to Caglio as “the daughter of the century,” and other witnesses as the this or that “of the century.” Gundle also notes (pp. 214–215) that, astonishingly, Montagna announced plans to produce a film on the scandal. This project, however, apparently went nowhere. See also “La Caglio o della vita intensa” in the Socialist Avanti! of September 13, 1956, which discussed the lives of the “dramatis personae” during the 1956 “lull.” Piccioni maintained his jazz performances and finished work on the musical score of a Gina Lollobrigida film, “Nôtre Dame de Paris.” Caglio apparently also considered a cabaret act. 42 “Il Processo di Montesi ha inizio stamane a Venezia,” Il Popolo January 21, 1957. 43 By 1957 the elder Piccioni had resumed his diplomatic career as Italy’s delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. 44 N.A. “Gli scandalisti alla sbarra del ‘processo politico,” OR January 30, 1957.

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45 N.A., “La ‘camicia del nesso,’” OR January 21–22, 1957. See also “Il punto del ‘processo politico’” OR January 27, 1957; and “Evoluzioni alla ‘sbarra,’ ” OR January 31, 1957. The Osservatore again expressed concern on foreign impressions, in that Italy, “land of scandalizers,” appeared as “a drug mecca and a testing ground for related deprevations.” “Il sole e le nebbie,” OR February 6, 1957. 46 Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 243. 47 “Il rovescio del secolo,” OR May 30, 1957. The only conviction concerned the hapless Adriana Bisaccia, who received a suspended sentence for lying under oath. 48 “Montesi Trial Prosecutor Hits Press Coverage,” May 21, 1957; “Palmitieri Says ‘No Proof,’” May 22, 1957; and “Three Montesi Accused Found Innocent,” May 28, 1957 all in the Rome Daily American. 49 Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 269. 50 Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, p. 263. 51 Pinkus, The Montesi Scandal; Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 304–305. 52 Grignetti, Il caso Montesi, pp. 252–258; Gundle, Death and the Dolce Vita, pp. 306–309. 53 Giorgio Galli, L’Italia sottoterranea. Storia, politica e scandali Rome/Bari: Laterza, 1983, pp. 39–41. See also Vincenzo La Russa, Amintore Fanfani Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2006, pp. 162–163; and Giorgio Galli, Mezzo secolo di Dc Milan: Rizzoli, 1993, pp. 122–123. 54 “Caso Montesi, la talpa di Fanfani,” Corriere della sera July 2, 2009.

Section II

Conclusions

Paralleling History: Scandal and the Lessons of the 2012 Election Neal Allen

The 2012 American elections will not be remembered as particularly affected by scandal (with the possible exception of the Herman Cain affair), as no major scandal drove presidential or congressional election results. Barack Obama, even though he had been in office for almost four years, did not have to confront any major scandals that might have complicated his reelection bid, with the possible exception of the Benghazi consulate attack discussed below. There was also no congressional scandal equivalent to the House Bank and Post Office scandals of 1992, affecting congressmen and congresswomen or senators as members of an institution or political party. Attention to isolated scandals, however, can reveal important ways scandal can affect electoral outcomes, and its limits within the unique structure of American elections. In particular, the 2012 election shows that scandal often emerges from candidates speaking to friendly audiences, that scandal can make uncompetitive races competitive, and that scandal is filtered through electoral structures and candidate qualifications. First, scandals that affect the course of campaigns and eventual outcomes often emerge from a candidate’s communication to supportive groups that differ from the majority of voters. The dynamics of a closed fund-raising event, communication in an advocacy media environment like talk radio, or speeches before friendly audiences can give a candidate a false sense of disconnection from the broader electorate. George Allen’s “macaca” moment in 20061 is an example of this phenomenon, as he was speaking in rural Southwest Virginia that he called “the real America” when he said things that turned him from a clear favorite to a narrow loser.

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The highest-profile example of this phenomenon is Mitt Romney’s 47% comment, given at a closed fund-raiser at a private home. The self-selected audience (except for at least one of the food service workers that filmed the comments), receptive to Romney’s argument that the Democratic coalition “wants stuff ” from government, created for the candidate a space conducive to expressing views that alienated many potential supporters. The mostly closed environment also might have contributed to the logical incongruities of Romney’s comments, in which he conflated the approximately 47% of voters who strongly supported Obama in most polling with a different group, the 47% of citizens who do not pay income taxes. While Romney’s 47% comments may not have cost him the presidency, Congressman Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape” clearly cost him election to the Senate. Aiken, while a six-term congressman, was an outsider in the Republican caucus. His support, and much of his activity while a congressman, was located in conservative Christian settings. Akin’s clear positioning on the right flank of the Republican electorate in Missouri, and his pattern of controversial statements, led the Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill to actively work to aid him and hamper his opponents in the primary. Polls before and after Akin’s narrow primary victory showed that McCaskill’s strategy of aiding Akin was wise, but insufficient to overcome the partisan dynamics of Missouri.2 But when Akin made comments on a St. Louis Fox News broadcast, an environment supportive of his particular message, a safely Republican race became a competitive race favoring the Democrat. Stating that “if it’s legitimate rape, the woman’s body has ways to shut that thing down,” he transformed McCaskill from moderate Democrat doomed by the increasing social conservative lean of her state (like Blanche Lincoln running in Arkansas in 2010) into a clear favorite. Even in Missouri, a state Mitt Romney won by 10%, Akin could only manage 39% of the total vote. Akin’s communication style and message, which helped him to succeed in a conservative House district and a Republican primary, was a crippling scandal when fully expressed in a general election environment. Second, as the Akin example demonstrates, scandal can make a previously uncompetitive race competitive. The George Allen example in 2006 clearly fits, and continued to 2012 as he ran behind Mitt Romney in his unsuccessful attempt to reclaim his Senate seat. In 2012, Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Akin in Missouri lost very winnable Senate elections because of the scandal

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surrounding their comments on rape. Before the comments, they were both headed to victories, albeit smaller than would have likely been achieved by the more moderate candidates they defeated in Republican primaries. After the comments, they became a kind of embarrassment for their potential constituents, and the race became about something much more than how conservative the electorates of Missouri and Indiana had become. Third, the 2012 elections also demonstrate how the effect of scandal is limited by the structural features of American elections. Scott DeJarais of Tennessee was hit by one of the worst possible scandals imaginable that did not involve illegal activity. A practicing physician, he was heard on audio tape attempting to convince his mistress (a former patient) to have an abortion. Although his 56.3% was far below Mitt Romney’s 63.5%, he still survived because of extremely favorable top of the ticket dynamics and a partisan gerrymander. DeJarais’s scandal-tarred victory is particularly notable because his Democratic opponent, a strongly anti-abortion state legislator, was well-positioned to take advantage of the incumbent’s abortion comments. While DeJarais might lose his medical license, and will face a difficult Republican primary in 2014, the combination of declining Democratic allegiance by white Southerners and favorable redistricting saved his reelection. Finally, the 2012 presidential election was notable in that the events that led to the death of the American ambassador and three other State Department employees in Benghazi did not have a significant negative effect on Barack Obama’s reelection. It certainly fit the pattern of an influential scandal, with heavy media coverage, a series of revelations that reflected negatively on the administration, and clearly important negative policy outcomes. Conservative media commentators, Senate Republicans like John McCain and Lindsay Graham, and the Romney campaign treated it like a major scandal. It also reached its height as a story in campaign coverage just before the presidential debates. Romney’s inability to dent Obama’s advantage on foreign policy shows how the structure and candidates in the 2012 presidential campaign limited the effect of scandal. Romney was not an ideal messenger for the Benghazi-as-scandal narrative, in that he had no foreign policy experience and no current position with any connection to foreign policy. He also showed by his factually unclear (if not explicitly incorrect) attack on Obama in the second debate that he was unable to take advantage of the opportunity that debates afforded him. His focus on whether Obama called the Benghazi incident an “act of terrorism” allowed Obama (with an assist from moderator Candy Crowley) to demonstrate his

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greater familiarity with foreign policy details. Romney’s need to force a broad critique of the administration’s Libya policy into the town-hall debate format actually worked to neutralize the issue and allowed Obama to mostly avoid the Benghazi issue in the later foreign policy-centered debate. These episodes of consequential or less-than-consequential scandal from the 2012 American elections reveal the historical continuity of scandal as a phenomenon affecting politics. The lack of effect of the Benghazi attack on Obama’s reelection campaign demonstrates, like the case of Dwight Eisenhower’s chief aide Sherman Adams discussed in Michael Birkner’s chapter, that presidents can withstand scandals even if they inspire criticism of the chief executive as national leader. Eisenhower did not have to deal with the Adams scandal until almost a year into his second term. Obama withstood nearly constant criticism of the Benghazi response from Fox News and Senate Republicans through the election, but was forced to jettison Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice as a possible Secretary of State because of the scandal. Roy Domenico discussed in his chapter on the Dolce Vita scandal in Italian politics the connection between media, politics, and the conflict between traditional and liberalizing views of Italian culture. The Akin and Murdoch scandals reveal a parallel interaction of national media and traditional morality, with debate over women’s sexuality made more salient in a way that repelled persuadable voters in post–sexual revolution America. Akin and Murdoch were perceived to be attempting to resolve cultural conflicts on terms acceptable only to a subset of Christian conservatives, and alienated much of what was going to be a winning general election coalition. In searching for the sources of the endemic corruption of the Pennsylvania legislature over the past several decades, George Hale identifies the sorting of districts into safely competitive Republican and Democratic districts as an important factor. The Scott Dejarais scandal, and its lack of effect on the general election outcome, shows the limits of scandal in a nationally polarized political environment. If a similar scandal involving abortion, infidelity and professional ethics had afflicted a Republican candidate in the 1990s or 2000s, when rural and small-city white voters in Middle Tennessee were persuadable by both parties, Dejarais would likely have been replaced by a Democrat. But now instead of that Democrat fighting to defend a marginal seat in 2014, Dejarais is defending a safe seat in a Republican primary. The Dejarais victory in 2012 may indicate that many congressional seats have become relatively scandal-proof, at least in general elections. Partisan

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polarization has converted the position of member of Congress, as long as that member can maintain support among a majority of the small primary electorate, into an insulated institutional position similar to that of a Supreme Court justice. Craig Smith’s discussion of Associate Justice Tom Clark’s unwillingness to appear before congressional committees that were investigating scandals arising from his time as attorney general demonstrates how the separation of powers insulates justices from scandal’s effect. While the Akin and Murdoch rape comment scandals are evidence that scandal can affect election results, partisan polarization has the possible effect of limiting the future impact of scandal on election results.

Notes 1 2

In which he referred to an Indian American, a volunteer for his Democratic opponent, who was videotaping Allen’s public events. According realclearpolitics.com, Akin led McCaskill in every public poll in the Spring and Summer of 2012, until his rape comments in August led to a stable McCaskill advantage.

Section III

Shaping the Perceptions of Scandal

Introduction Stephanie Jirard

Arguably the greatest impact of political scandal lies in our perception of the government. When we hear of scandal, we automatically assume guilt and oftentimes this assumption falls into the larger understanding of American politics. We think politics is a dirty business and politicians are generally corrupt, thus the resulting ideas about politics and those within the system have lasting significance for the populace. Scandal also leaves a long trail for those involved in the scandal itself, and thus these chapters about perception are especially important. This section examines the shaping of perception as it relates to scandal, examining the ways political scandal changes the political conversation. The first chapter is written by Neal Allen, who tackles the subject of political scandal and race. Going back to the civil rights movement, Allen looks at how the threat of scandal changed the way activists progressed. He also examines how civil disobedience in the South was itself considered “scandalous,” which greatly affected both the movement and its public perception. Allen brings this examination up-to-date with analysis of the Obama/Rev. Jeremiah Wright connection in the 2008 election to show just how pernicious the mere threat of scandal can be to political candidates. Allen argues that the threat of scandal disproportionately affects underrepresented groups, which adds an important layer of analysis to this larger examination. In Chapter 9, the focus turns from race to sex. Joan Conners examines the now-infamous Rep. Anthony Weiner/Twitter scandal through the lens of political cartooning. His name alone was fodder enough for the comedians who lampooned the New York Democrat for sending picture Tweets of himself in flagrante. But Connors’s closer examination of the scandal writ-large shows that the cartooning representations of Weiner, his transgressions, and his postscandal actions greatly contributed to the media framing of the event and its

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aftermath. Since political cartooning is a form of criticism rooted in metaphor and symbolism, the representations in the work of dozens of cartoonists are both instructive and illustrative. The final chapter in this section and in the book continues the examination of the fine art of apology. Misty Knight hones in on a specific type of justification: the self-defense rhetoric that so many politicians employ when caught with their pants down. Knight uses rhetoric scholarship to analyze the self-defense rhetoric of John Edwards to help explain why this was, in the end, unsuccessful. Her chapter also examines the broader implications of the apology in order to explain the success of certain politicians and the failure of others. Together, this section looks at how the perception of scandal is as informative as the scandals themselves. The consequence of our sensitivities has a lasting impact on the way we view politics and those elected to serve us. They also influence the direction of the scandal coverage and therefore the actions of its players. If perception is, in fact, reality, then this section of the book is especially important.

8

Scandal in the Politics of Race: From Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama Neal Allen

In this chapter I discuss three related episodes in the history of race and ethnicity in America, identifying the role of political scandal in each. First, I discuss the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) campaign against Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, focusing on his links to suspected Communists and his sexual behavior. I show how the FBI used the threat of scandal, and attempted to create a scandal themselves, to limit the transformative potential of the civil rights movement. I then discuss the role of scandal in the downfall of Birmingham, Alabama, police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, and the segregationist power structure he represented. I argue here that nonviolent protests successfully made white supremacy a kind of scandal in regional, national, and international politics, helping to lead to the end of legal segregation. The last section highlights the disproportionate role that scandal plays in the advancement of minority candidates for high political office like Governor, Senator, and President, owing to the limited number of viable minority candidates and structural features of the American system of candidate recruitment and promotion. I close the chapter with a discussion of how the then presidential candidate Barack Obama’s experience dealing with the controversy over his pastor Jeremiah Wright demonstrates the continuing importance of political scandal on the politics of race in the United States.

Scandal and the civil rights movement Scandal as a social phenomenon is about the violation, or perceived violation, of societal standards. Scandal is a means by which communication structures and

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networks are employed to police the boundaries of acceptable behavior, thus maintaining social structures and arrangements by enforcing common values. Something is only a scandal if it offends common values. In the politics of race in America, scandal has worked to maintain existing structures of exclusion. A high-profile and illustrative example is the public reaction in the South and nation against the action of President Theodore Roosevelt entertaining black leader Booker T. Washington for dinner at the White House. By marking Washington’s presence as scandalous, supporters of segregation were able to communicate to white Americans less powerful than Roosevelt, and those politicians desirous of his position of power, that their own statuses were at risk if they participated in crossing the color line.1 In the era of the civil rights movement, political scandal worked in complicated and often conflicting ways. The ongoing transformation of social structures and values led to the use of scandal by both supporters and opponents of integration. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, acting as self-appointed guardians of traditional American social and political values, used the threat and reality of scandal to blunt the effectiveness of Martin Luther King Jr. as a leader of the national movement for racial justice. The work of the movement in which King played a leading part also benefited from scandal, however, as nonviolent protest actions were able to expose how the segregationist power structure was fundamentally opposed to American values of justice and fairness. The civil rights movement succeeded in making the practice of segregation a kind of national scandal, helping to activate national political power to end legal segregation and exclusion of minorities from voting. The following section analyzes the FBI– King relationship and the career of segregationist Birmingham, Alabama, police commissioner Bull Connor from the perspective of political scandal.

The FBI campaign against Martin Luther King Jr. The FBI in the 1960s subjected Martin Luther King Jr. to a multi-year campaign of surveillance and intimidation in a failed attempt to weaken him as a movement leader, and then to eliminate him from national politics entirely. This campaign was ordered and directed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and relied on approval of its tactics by attorneys general and the support of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. By directing its substantial investigatory resources at King, the FBI attempted to be a counterweight to the revolutionary potential of

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King and the civil rights movement by capitalizing on the existence of potentially embarrassing and damaging characteristics of its most prominent leader. Scandal can threaten political movements and organized mobilizations on two related fronts. Their core arguments and reason for existence can be undermined by claims of hypocrisy, and individual characteristics of their leaders can present vulnerabilities for opponents of change. The FBI struck at the broader civil rights movement on both fronts in their attack on King. Hoover and his agents attempted to brand King a communist-sympathizer, moral degenerate, and radical revolutionary, and thus remove him as a moral leader. The motives of the FBI to investigate King varied, and shifted over time. King’s early work in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and 1956 attracted little interest from the Bureau. It was not until King called for more minority FBI employment in The Nation in February 1961 that Hoover and the FBI took an active interest in the civil rights leader.2 The FBI’s classification of King as an institutional enemy was strengthened by comments he made in a November 1962 New York Times article, arguing that the FBI was too closely connected to local Southern whites to provide protection for black protestors.3 The animus of the Bureau toward King would expand to include criticism of him as outside of the bounds of sexual norms, and in the last years of his life the Bureau came to see him as a threat to the American capitalist system. Information about King also served the institutional interest of the FBI, as it gave Hoover the opportunity to feed the curiosity of his employers in the White House and provide them resources for managing the civil rights struggle. The FBI used a variety of methods to investigate King. In the early 1960s, a key role was played by Morris and Jack Childs, high officials in the American Communist Party who served as double agents for the FBI. It was through them that the Bureau would learn of the past work of Stanley Levinson, a close advisor and confidant of King. Levinson has provided financial support for the American Communist Party in the 1950s, but FBI could establish no contemporary party work by 1962. Wiretaps of Levinson’s phone were used to track his connection to King, which FBI officials then used to warn executive branch officials about King’s communist connections.4 Surveillance would later expand to King himself, including telephone wiretaps and bugs placed in hotel rooms. The expense of time and labor in electronically tracking a public figure eventually led the FBI to recruit a member of the SCLC staff, office accountant James A. Harrison. Of particular interest to the FBI was King’s personal sexual behavior. Bureau wiretaps captured audio of

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King engaged in sexual contact in the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.,5 and forwarded to executive branch officials reports from a woman who claimed to be a prostitute hired by King.6 The FBI used information about Martin Luther King Jr.’s alleged communist connections and sexual indiscretions in a variety of ways intended to undermine him as a public figure and person of influence. Most pernicious was the delivery of tapes of King’s hotel rooms and a letter addressed to King himself that threatened exposure of his indiscretions and counseled either ending his career as a leader or even committing suicide: King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days . . You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

The letter was mailed to the SCLC offices in New York. King’s wife, Coretta, to whom staff forwarded the package thinking it was a copy of one of her husband’s speeches, received the package. The FBI made several attempts to interest newspapers in stories of King’s alleged communist connections and his sexual behavior. They also provided transcripts of wiretaps and other surveillance to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and to Attorneys General Robert Kennedy, Nicolas Katzenbach, and Ramsey Clark. The Bureau’s dissemination of negative King material to executive branch officials may have had its intended effect. President Kennedy, when meeting with King in the White House, took him aside and warned him of the potential negative affect of a scandal, in this case his connection to alleged communists. Kennedy asked if King was familiar with the Profumo scandal in Britain,7 with the intimation that a similar media event could harm the civil rights struggle. King responded by temporarily cutting off public contact with Stanley Levinson.8 Robert Kennedy, speaking in a then-secret interview given after leaving the Justice Department, said that the information provided by the FBI worried him and his brother. When we were sending the legislation up or when we were so involved in the struggles of Birmingham, Alabama, if it also came out what he was doing, not only would it damage him, but it would also damage all of our efforts and damage any possible chance of the passage of legislation.9

The attorney general was concerned not only by the existence of King’s connections to alleged communists, but by the possession of that information

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by the FBI. The dissemination of King material by Hoover to both Defense Department officials and Southern senators sparked fear in the Kennedys that a leak would add another hurdle to their stalled civil rights push in Congress. The FBI’s campaign against King extended to “warning” individuals and groups that might be sympathetic to King that he was either dangerous or opposed to American values. Bureau officials attempted to dissuade the Pope, prominent Baptist ministers, and labor leaders from meeting with King.10 Hoover also attempted to dissuade the Ford Foundation from awarding a grant to the SCLC. Coretta Scott King argued that “The FBI treated the civil rights movement as if it were an alien enemy attack on the United States.” David J. Garrow agreed with this assessment in his study of FBI files on King The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Bureau functioned not simply as a weapon of one disturbed man, not as an institution protecting its own organizational interests, but as the representative, and at times rather irrational representative, of American cultural values that found much about King and sixties’ movements to be frightening and repugnant. The FBI’s primary role was to serve as a “relentless guardian” of “acceptable political and cultural values,” and to protect and maintain “the existing social order” against those who appeared “to threaten that order.” The Bureau was not a renegade institution secretly operating outside the parameters of American values, but a virtually representative bureaucracy that loyally served “to protect the established order against adversary challenges.”11

The chosen weapon of this counterrevolutionary campaign was the gathering of potentially scandalous information, followed by dissemination to politicians and community leaders vital to the movement’s success.

Bull Connor and segregation as a scandal It is clear in the twenty-first century that while the FBI was correct that King and the movement he was part of were part of a conflict that implicated the security of Americans and the maintenance of fundamental values, but that King was on the side of protecting individual Americans and promoting justice. The movement’s crucial antagonist in its time of greatest triumph, the Birmingham demonstrations that led to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor. Scandal was present in his career in

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four important ways. First, he was able to construct an early career in state and municipal politics based on treating integration as the ultimate scandalous act. Second, his political career was derailed by a sex scandal, and could only be revived by the segregationist backlash stimulated by Brown v. Board of Education. Third, Connor’s career in local politics was ending as the SCLC came to town because of a successful push by Birmingham’s business community to reorganize out of office segregationist officeholders that they deemed to exert a negative effect on the city’s reputation. Most importantly, his violent defense of segregation against nonviolent protest helped to make segregation a national scandal that necessitated concerted action in Washington. Connor became a national figure by being chosen by his opponents. Birmingham was chosen as the site for direct actions demonstrations in 1963 because of the likelihood that Connor would react to nonviolent protest with police violence. After Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference failed to move national leaders with their 1962 demonstrations in Albany, Georgia, they sought a city that would provide a better setting for dramatizing the oppression of Jim Crow segregation. Albany sheriff Laurie Pritchett had quietly arrested protesters, briefly held them in jail, and then released them. He had arranged with several neighboring law enforcement jurisdictions to take arrested protesters, making it impossible to “fill the jails.” King and SCLC left Albany without a symbolic or policy victory. Connor provided the antagonist to nonviolent protest that Pritchett had not. Bull Connor occupied the position of Birmingham public safety commissioner because his politics of segregationist militancy was successful at the ballot box in the backlash period of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He took advantage of the opportunities presented by the backlash against court-ordered integration by presenting voters with a consistently extreme position on racial issues. Connor’s record in office from his first stint in municipal government was clearly segregationist, and he lacked any connection to racial moderation. That record would provide the foundation for his second period in municipal office, which coincided at its end with the climactic protests of 1963. As public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Connor had frequent opportunities to implement his views on race and segregation as public policy. Birmingham, like most Deep Southern cities, was segregated in housing and public accommodations. But as an urban area, it was home to an active civil rights community by regional standards, particularly in the form of activist reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Birmingham also was the site of events that brought to

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the Deep South national figures in progressive and civil rights protest. Local civil rights activists, while certainly vulnerable to attacks like the bombing of Shuttlesworth’s church and parsonage in 1956, were able to carve out space for activism in urban areas that would be unthinkable in the rural Deep South. Connor began building a reputation as a strong defender of segregation soon after his first election to the Birmingham City Commission in 1937. When the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, a regional group that worked for labor and civil rights, met in Birmingham in 1938, Connor enforced city segregation laws. Meeting attendees, who included Alabama senator Lister Hill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alabama governor Bibb Graves, and Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, were forced to hold separate meetings for whites and blacks. Connor publicly proclaimed that, as long as he was commissioner, “negroes and whites will not segregate together.”12 Such a pronouncement may have mangled vocabulary, but it clearly cast integration as a scandal worthy of exclusion from legality. Ten years later another Birmingham meeting of a civil rights group that included whites and blacks gave Connor the opportunity to burnish his segregationist image. The Southern Negro Youth Conference came to town in May of 1948, weeks before the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia that would see Connor and other southern delegates bolt the party. Connor attempted to use his influence to keep the group from meeting in Birmingham altogether, pressuring local black ministers not to let their churches be used as a meeting place. The black Alliance Gospel Tabernacle agreed to host the meeting, and the city police arrested three white conference attendees for violating the city segregation ordinance. The church responded by erecting a barrier in the sanctuary separating white and black seating areas, and designated the front entrance for blacks and the back entrance for whites.13 When U.S. senator Glen Taylor of Idaho, a liberal running as Henry Wallace’s vice presidential candidate on the Progressive Party ticket, attempted to enter through the front door, was arrested by police. He was threatened with jail and the kind of treatment regularly meted out to black arrestees, and released on bond. Taylor was later convicted, sentenced to 180 days in jail, but never returned to Birmingham to serve jail time. The incident gave Connor a chance to be quoted in local media identifying the meeting with non-southern attempts to flout segregation laws and legal order generally.14 Connor’s role as Alabama delegate to the 1948 Democratic Convention gave him an additional platform for his segregationist views, a platform that also had statewide relevance. While committed to renominating President Truman when

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he began his campaign for a statewide at-large delegate spot, Connor withdrew his endorsement after Truman’s February address to Congress in favor of a strong civil rights program. Connor said that “segregation is absolutely necessary and must be maintained to avoid serious difficulties” and in a campaign flyer sought to tie segregation to broader conservative themes: It is my hope that, as one of your delegates, I can help roll back the attempt of meddlers, agitators and Communist stooges, to force down our throats, through our own Democratic Party, he bitter dose they are now offering us under the false name of Civil Liberties.15

Connor won election at that year’s state Democratic convention, and went to Philadelphia pledged to oppose any pro–civil rights platform with a walkout. He kept his pledge and supported Strom Thurmond for president. Issues not directly related to segregation would leave Connor out of office when Brown v. Board of Education sparked a sustained backlash among southern whites. Although he had long been criticized for misusing public resources and putting his own interests above the needs of the police and fire departments, he declined to run for reelection in 1953. Connor’s public image was sullied by an impeachment inquiry and a morals conviction for violating city ordinances prohibiting occupying a hotel room with a woman not your wife, and having intercourse outside of marriage. Two impeachment trials ended in mistrials, and the Alabama Supreme Court overturned the morals charge, but Connor decided against putting himself before the voters again in 1953. Bull Connor would spend four years out of office. A victory for his old post of city commissioner in 1957 was his first electoral victory since 1949. By 1957 the statewide furor over a failed court-ordered attempt to integrate the University of Alabama had established support for segregation as the dominant issue in the white Alabama electorate, and Connor would win every city and statewide race until 1972. After his office was eliminated in a Birmingham government reorganization that took effect just after the civil rights protests of 1963, Connor was elected to two terms as chairman of the state Public Utilities Commission. His statewide identification with coercive and violent opposition to desegregation allowed him to build the statewide constituency that had eluded him in 1950. Connor also continued to be selected as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1964 and 1968. While Connor benefitted from the post-Brown white backlash that attempted to defend traditional Southern social patterns, those patterns were becoming

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a toxic scandal for Southern communities in the national context. The rise of Atlanta as “the city too busy to hate” was a model for how “New South” cities could benefit from a reputation for racial peach, if not inclusion. Connor was both a symbol of Birmingham as a city completely committed to segregation, and a decision-maker with the potential to deploy municipal resources to coercively and violently defend segregation. While at the time of the 1963 demonstrations Connor was mainly a local and regional figure in the struggle over racial inclusion, he interacted with the national civil rights movement on Easter Sunday in 1962. White vigilantes attacked an integrated group of Freedom Riders attempting to integrate a Greyhound bus terminal, with no police present at the Birmingham station. Connor, who had been asked by local black leaders to protect the protestors from the kind of attacks experienced on previous stops, claimed that he lacked the staff to respond to the bus station because he was short-staffed on Mother’s Day.16 By this point the nationwide movement toward desegregation was negatively impacting Birmingham’s quality of life and ability to attract new businesses and economic development. The Birmingham Barons, a minor league baseball team that had once employed Bull Connor as its radio announcer, canceled its 1962 season to avoid violating city segregation ordinances by playing visiting Southern League teams that now had black players. A federal court order to desegregate city parks led Connor and his fellow segregationist city commissioners to close all city parks. This sparked opposition from the Chamber of Commerce and local fraternal organization, and the Birmingham News called in a front-page editorial for citizens to oppose the closure because businesses make relocation decisions based “on the approach of a city in facing such a problem as now stands on our doorstep.”17 While Connor and his fellow Commissioners had been overwhelmingly elected to four-year terms in 1961, local business leaders attempted to push them out of local politics by reorganizing city government. A successful referendum shifted to a City Council system of government, and Connor was defeated in a run for the mayor under the new system. His traditional style and practice of militant segregationism had become a scandal harming Birmingham’s economic development. While Connor retained his power over police and fire departments during the transition to a new city government, the Southern Christian Leadership Council chose Birmingham to make segregation a national political scandal. When nonviolent civil rights protestors marched to integrate downtown retail

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businesses, Connor ordered city public safety officers to violently end the marches. When SCLC leaders included children in a march on Easter Sunday of 1963, police officers and firefighters continued to use dogs, clubs, fire hoses, and fire cannons against protestors. National television coverage of the events led to a clear national address by President Kennedy, and the substantive commitment of his administration to passing civil rights legislation that had languished in Congress. This drive came to fruition when Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 through a recalcitrant Senate to passage. A year later, similar protest events in Selma, Alabama, stimulated passage of the Voting Rights Act.18 The nonviolent direct action civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr. as its national spokesman, had successfully transformed segregation into a scandal in the national political consciousness.

The disproportional impact of scandal on the election of a non-white president The eruption of the comments of Senator Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright into a dominant national media story in March of 2008 threatened to set back or even derail the candidacy of the Democratic frontrunner and favorite to be elected president in November. Wright’s assertion that the September 11th terrorist attacks were partly the result of flawed American foreign policies, and his statement “God Damn America” in reference to endemic poverty in the black community, forced the candidate to defend his connection to perceived American values and his viability against Republican John McCain in the general election. The fact that Obama had to overcome a scandal in his drive to the presidency, while complicated and exacerbated by shifts in the media landscape, is not unique in American history. Many successful recent presidential candidates weathered significant scandals during their campaigns: Nixon and the Watergate break-in in 1972, George H. W. Bush and Iran-Contra in 1988, Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs and draftdodging in 1992, and the Clinton–Gore campaign finance scandal of 1996. Also history shows that the existence of a scandal-inducing history for a candidate is also a core feature of our candidate-centered campaigns, as Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984, and Clinton in 1996 could easily have lost what turned out to be easy reelections.

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A simple counterfactual, however, shows the uniqueness of the place of the Wright scandal19 in American politics: if it had brought down the Obama campaign, would America ever (or at least in the foreseeable future) elect a black president? Because of the continued underrepresentation of blacks in offices like senator and governor that usually produce presidential candidates, and the limited opportunity structure for black politicians, the answer is likely no. This chapter concludes with analysis of scandal’s disproportionate influence on minority political advancement, and what the Jeremiah Wright episode reveals about the place of scandal in an American political environment where the legacy of exclusion remains a limiting, but not eliminating, factor for black candidates. A lasting achievement of the social revolution in which Martin Luther King Jr. and Bull Connor played key roles is the increased opportunities for minority candidates for office. Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008 is merely the most prominent example of the massive increase in minority representation in state and national office since the height of the civil rights era. In 1964,­ 4 out of 435 members of the U.S. House were black, and 3 were Latino. By 2010 there were 43 blacks, 23 Latinos, 10 Asians, and 1 Native American.20 The initial stimulus for this increase came from the increase of minority ballot access after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with race-conscious redistricting becoming particularly important starting in 1992. Combined with the election of several black big-city mayors beginning with Carl Stokes of Cleveland in 1967, higher office in American is no longer a completely white-dominated phenomenon.21 The election of Barack Obama is rightly understood as a product of the forces of inclusion unleashed by the civil rights movement. Black voters, who made up a quarter of the Democratic nominating electorate, were crucial to Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton for the nomination. His massive support among blacks balanced against Clinton’s among Latinos and working-class whites, and like all recent Democratic candidates he enjoyed the support of the vast majority of black voters in the general election. His general election percentage of 53%, the highest of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, shows a level of receptiveness of Americans to a black candidate for president that was impossible for most of American history. Obama’s election, however, does not change the basic opportunity structure for black candidates for president, and scandal remains an outsized threat to black attainment of the presidency, and other high political offices. Even though the presence of black American in the White House, as either dinner

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guest or president, is no longer itself a scandal, the paucity of viable candidates for president means that a scandal that affected one of the few viable black candidates for high office could significantly set back the process of inclusion in American political leadership. Serving as vice president, governor, or senator has become an effective prerequisite for election to the presidency. With the exception of Dwight Eisenhower, all presidents elected in the 20th and 21st centuries have held one of those offices. Besides Eisenhower, the last major party nominee for president to not hold those offices was Wendell Wilkie in 1940. Of presidential candidates who, like most successful black politicians, reach the House as their highest level of election, Democrat Morris Udall of Arizona in 1976 is the only House member to make a credible run for a major-party nomination that included primary and caucus victories. Gerald Ford was chosen as Nixon’s vice president while serving in the House, but as minority leader he had reached a leadership position not yet attained by any non-white member. Having served as vice president, senator, or governor, hopefully without being defeated for reelection to those offices, has become part of the effective eligibility criteria along with age and citizenship status. In looking at the American political landscape in 2008, Barack Obama was not only the “Great Black Hope,” he was the only black hope. Only four other living black Americans fit the eligibility criteria for being president, and none of them were at the time viable candidates. Edward Brooke was 88 years old, and had been defeated for reelection to the Senate from Massachusetts in 1978, and was a liberal Republican far out of step with his party. Former one-term Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun, who had briefly run for president in 2004, had been defeated for reelection in 1998 partly because of a influence-peddling scandal involving her husband, and had a sharply left-wing profile unlikely to produce a successful general election candidacy. Doug Wilder, former governor of Virginia and briefly a presidential candidate in 1992, was 77 years old and focused on local politics as mayor of Richmond. Deval Patrick had just been elected as governor of Massachusetts.22 The contrast between Barack Obama and the two other major Democratic candidates was sharp, in that their failure to attain the White House did not radically set back the chances of someone of their demographic groups becoming president. If former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, who we now know was attempting to cover up an affair and out-of-wedlock child with questionable six-figure donations from campaign donors,23 had withdrawn from the race there would have been several

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white male alternatives in that contest and others. The current Senate contains 77 out of 100 white males, and the group of former senators and governors is even more overwhelmingly white. Much of initial momentum for Edwards’s candidacy came from his similarity to previous Southern white male presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, a group that has produced five of the last nine presidents. Even if Hillary Clinton does not run for president in 2016, the bench of possible female candidates is much deeper than that of blacks. The current Senate contains 17 women, and two female former governors are even in the Obama cabinet. The opportunity structure for black politicians, while providing clear avenues for advancement as House members, limits the ability of black politicians to attain high statewide office or the vice presidency. While many former majorparty presidential candidates have been House members – John McCain, Al Gore, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush – their House districts were reflective of their states’ political partisan balance and provided a springboard to statewide runs. Most black House members represent majority or plurality-black districts, mostly urban, that are substantially more liberal than their states.24 The kind of record necessary to win the Democratic primary in such a district, fend off potential challengers from the left for renomination, and represent a constituency characterized by urban or rural poverty is not the best foundation for running statewide.25 Obama’s successful run for U.S. Senate from Illinois in 2004 was not only improbable,26 but likely to be reproduced infrequently.27 An illustrative example of the effect that a scandal can have on minority electoral advancement in the national context comes from the case of Henry Cisneros in Texas. Cisneros was a rising star in national Democratic politics upon his election as mayor of San Antonio in 1981. His effectiveness at crafting a moderate and media-friendly record based on economic development gained him national attention, and a well-covered meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale in 1984, as he made Mondale’s short list of seven for vice president. He was on track to run for governor in 1990, with the Almanac of American Politics in 1987 calling him “a Mexican-American who carries Anglo as well as Hispanic precincts in San Antonio, a graduate of Texas A&M and Harvard, who is not a stereotypical liberal and could just end up as the Democrats’ dream candidate in some future election.”28 Even if he did not run or lost a race for governor, he could have been a leading candidate for governor or senator in the 1990s or 2000s. A possible statewide run would help Democrats to mobilize the state’s growing Latino population, and help

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cement their Democratic voting habits. Cisneros’s pro-business profile would allow this Latino mobilization without alienating white voters with the more confrontational politics that had traditionally characterized Latino House members like his San Antonio neighbor Henry B. Gonzales. Cisneros’s statewide political ambitions feel victim to a 1987 adultery scandal, as he admitted a long-term extramarital affair. He removed himself from consideration for governor and pursued a private sector career. He later asked not to be considered by Ann Richards, who won the 1990 governor’s race he passed on, for appointment to replace retiring senator Lloyd Bentsen, instead becoming Clinton’s secretary of housing and urban development. The return of the adultery scandal during his HUD tenure, as his former mistress sued for breach of contract when he ended payments to her after his decline in income in government service, led to a plea bargain on a charge of lying to the FBI and the dashing of any hopes of a future run for statewide office. The Democratic Party of Texas has been on a two-decade unsuccessful quest for a candidate with the qualities of Henry Cisneros.29 In their best opportunities to retake the Senate seats and governorship they lost in the 1980s and 1990s, Democrats have found candidates with only parts of Cisneros’s profile. Victor Rodriguez, a schoolteacher who had never run for office, defeated two white moderate House members for the right to take on Republican senator Phil Gramm, who was weakened by his failed presidential run. Rodriguez’s campaign inexperience and liberal policy positions led to an easy Gramm victory. In 2002 the Democratic grassroots and establishment united behind wealthy banker Tony Sanchez, who self-funded a run against Republican governor Rick Perry. Sanchez turned into a lackluster speaker and candidate, and his lavishly self-funded campaign was unable to generate the increase in Latino turnout necessary for Democratic victories downballot. In 2012 an open Senate seat briefly attracted a high-profile but politically inexperienced Latino Democrat, retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who raised little money and left the race just before the filing deadline. The failure of Democrats to nominate a strong Latino candidate at the top of the ticket after scandal hobbled the career of Henry Cisneros contrasts with that of a similar figure, former lieutenant governor Ben Barnes. Having served as speaker of the Texas House and lieutenant governor and with the backing of the conservative Democratic establishment that dominated state politics at the time, Barnes was poised for an easy 1972 gubernatorial and a possible national political career. His tangential connection to a 1971 scandal involving gifts of

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stock by an insurance company owner to the governor and state legislators led to a third-place finish in the 1972 primary, and he moved on to a highly successful career as a lobbyist.30 Barnes’s removal from electoral politics, while removing a potentially effective leader of state and party politics, did not affect the electoral advancement of white males, or even conservative pro-business white males. Conservative, business-friendly white males continued to dominate Texas politics to the present day. The only major shift, outside of the single term of Ann Richards as governor, was a shift from Democratic white men to Republican white men.

Conclusion: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and race in American politics The fact that U.S. political system has elected a minority candidate to its highest office, unlike a state like Texas, is best explained by the particular strengths of Barack Obama as a candidate. His rhetorical ability made him a national figure with his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, and helped to sustain his momentum as an inspirational figure throughout his brief Senate career. He benefited from being a Democrat in an election year favorable to his party. His campaign raised more money than any previous candidate for president and fielded an unprecedented grassroots mobilization founded on the use of new technologies and social connections. Obama constructed a coalition of blacks and well-educated reformist white liberals which was large enough to overcome Hillary Clinton’s more traditional Democratic coalition. Barack Obama was well on his way to winning the Democratic presidential nomination when video clips of Wright emerged in March 2008. But what if the Wright scandal had hit earlier? A scandal that came a month or two before might have blunted Obama’s post-Iowa caucus momentum. Even a small shift of early contest and Super Tuesday delegates to Clinton would have sustained her through Obama’s February winning streak, and produced a fair fight going into the Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania primaries where her demographic coalition was strongest. A scandal before the January 3 Iowa caucuses would likely have been debilitating to Obama, as it would have raised questions about his viability in the general election. Without the strong Iowa victory, Obama likely would have lost significant later black support to Clinton, which would have made his nomination victory impossible.

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In an electoral system focused on the characteristics and life experiences of individuals, scandal can magnify the effects of past discrimination. While Henry Cisneros is far from unique in having details in his personal life that can make a public campaign difficult, his uniqueness in a white-dominated political class in 1980s Texas gives his personal scandals an enhanced significance in the politics of race. Political scandal is an individual phenomenon that can have an aggregate effect when working in a political system still affected by past exclusions. When Obama as an individual candidate successfully weathered the Jeremiah Wright scandal, he also preserved the possibility of the first non-white president. I conclude this chapter with three observations about the continuing place of scandal in the politics of race in America, as demonstrated by the Jeremiah Wright scandal. First, scandal is a mechanism for starting a dialogue on issues of race and political change. Wright’s comments, combined with Obama’s status as a longtime parishioner of Trinity United Church of Christ, called into question Obama’s relationship to the history of race in America. Michael Tesler and David. O. Sears argue that Obama’s twenty-year association with Wright as a member of his Trinity United Church of Christ immediately threatened his carefully crafted post-racial image. The Obama candidacy, after all, had been situated as the antidote to the same identity politics that Wright preached.31

Obama’s “association” with Wright allowed his opponents to amplify the critique of him, and by extension the Democratic Party poised to nominate him for president, as outside of the American mainstream. This critique prompted Obama to make a speech about race at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, in which he spoke much more directly about race in America than he had previously. Second, the Obama campaign’s continued success after the Wright affair shows that minority candidates for the presidency can succeed even after their suitability as candidates is questioned. Tesler and Sears argue that while racial resentment among white voters exerted downward pressure on the vote for Obama, its effect was evident before the Wright controversy and was unaffected by it.32 Minority candidates, like anyone running for office, are vulnerable to personal scandal. This vulnerability, as argued above, makes minority political advancement to the presidency tenuous. Non-white candidates are not, however, so weakened by their outsider status that they cannot withstand a high-profile scandal. Just as the civil rights movement was bigger than Martin Luther King

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Jr.’s personal behavior and the alleged communist sympathies of his advisors, the Obama campaign was more substantial than his relationship to his pastor. Third, the negative reaction in May of 2012 to the possibility33 of a pro-Republican Super PAC revisiting the Wright controversy reveals the contemporary bounds of acceptable argument about race in America. The proposed issue advertising campaign, by political consultants to the Ending Spending Fund in a memo titled “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama,” sparked swift condemnation by the Republican establishment, including the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The use of such a racially divisive argument has itself become a bigger potential scandal than Obama’s association with Wright, showing the progress of racial inclusiveness as a fundamental value in contemporary American politics.

Works cited Barone, Michael, et al. 1987. The Almanac of American Politics 1988, 1990, 2012. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989, 2011. Davis, Deborah. 2012. Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and the White House Dinner that Shocked the Nation. New York: Atria Books. Eskew, Glenn T. 1997. But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Garrow, David J. 1983. The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Penguin Books. Hersch, Burton. 2007. Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America. New York: Carroll and Graf. Klarman, Michael J. 2006. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manning, Jennifer E. 2007. Membership of the 112th Congress: A Profile, Congressional Research Service, 2012, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41647.pdf. Nunnelley, William A. 1991. Bull Connor. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Tesler, Michael and David O. Sears 2010. Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Notes  1 See Davis 2012.  2 Garrow 24.  3 Garrow 54.

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Scandal! Garrow 46. Hersch 375. Garrow 116. An affair between a Cabinet Minister and a woman, who was also involved with a Soviet spy, contributed to the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1963. Garrow 61. Quoted in Garrow, 94. Garrow 131, 142. Garrow 202. Nunnelley 30. Nunnelley 33. Nunnelley 33–34. Nunnelley 32. Nunnelley 101. Quoted in Nunnelly 115. See Eskew, But for Birmingham, Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights. I focus on the Wright comments because they constitute the most significant scandal affecting Obama in the 2008 campaign, but any kind of scandal would fit into the argument that scandal is more important for the broader phenomenon of minority achievement of higher office. A scandal involving previous officeholding like the bribery scandal that brought down Vice President Spiro Agnew, or a personal scandal like the adultery and lying under oath of Bill Clinton would also have the same effect on black attainment of the presidency that a more serious manifestation of the Wright scandal would have produced. It is plausible that scandals, unlike the Wright comments, that do not have any race-specific content would have disproportionate effects on a non-white candidate, but that subject is outside the focus of this chapter. Manning 2012. While no longer providing nearly all representatives, whites remain the dominant racial and ethnic group even in the House, where minorities have had the greatest success. Non-Hispanic whites now make up only 69% of U.S. residents, while making up 80% (350/435) of House members elected in 2010. Patrick ruled out a 2016 presidential run in July 2013. In June of 2012, facing charges that gifts of rent and other expenses to his former mistress Rielle Hunter were actually illegal campaign contributions, Edwards was acquitted of one charge and the jury deadlocked on the remaining five. This discussion is focused on black Democrats running for president and steppingstone offices, since the vast majority of actual and potential black candidates are Democrats. Two black House members, Tim Scott of South Carolina

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(now appointed to the Senate) and Alan West of Florida, were elected in 2010. Their success in Republican primaries, particularly Scott’s defeat of several credible candidates that included the son of Strom Thurmond, shows that Republican voters are willing to nominate black candidates whose conservatism fits their districts. Herman Cain’s short run as a prominent Republican candidate for president in 2011 also supports the possibility of future black Republican success. Many black House members are further hamstrung by representing majority or plurality-black districts in conservative Southern states. The white electorate in Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Alabama is so predisposed against Democrats that a black candidate is a decided long-shot even if they get the Democratic nomination. Some have noted the importance of scandal harming other candidates in that race for Obama’s success. Multi-millionaire Democrat Blair Hull and Republican nominee Jack Ryan both suffered from disclosures from previous divorce proceedings. Obama, however, was leading both races before Hull was damaged and Ryan withdrew and was replaced by fringe conservative activist Alan Keyes. Obama’s rise is also notable in the context of black politics in that he lost a race for the U.S. House, losing by 31 percentage points to incumbent Bobby Rush. The record and style that Obama developed representing a more middle-class black and white constituency in the State Senate, which served him so poorly in running for House, was helpful in running for Senate and president. Almanac 1988, 1131. Twin brothers San Antonio mayor Julian Castro and congressman Joaquin Castro, however, might be viable statewide candidates in the near future. Barnes reentered the national political conversation in 2004, as he claimed to have used his influence while in office to get future president George W. Bush into a coveted Texas Air National Guard unit to avoid service in the Vietnam War. Tesler and Sears 32. Tesler and Sears 42. New York Times, May 17, 2012.

9

He “Can’t Say with Certitude”: Framing the Anthony Weiner Scandal in Political Cartoons Joan L. Conners

Introduction Political cartoonists violate every rule of ethical journalism – they misquote, trifle with the truth, make science fiction out of politics and sometimes should be held for personal libel. But when the smoke clears, the political cartoonist has been getting closer to the truth than the guys who write political opinions.

MacNelly as quoted in Adler 1980, p. 74 This comment by the late cartoonist Jeff MacNelly made in 1980 still rings true today. Political cartoons, while part of newspaper content, have little in common with the news stories that accompany the pages in print. Winch (1999) says political cartoons allow newspapers to help reflect as well as form public opinion about newsmakers and events in a humorous way. Political cartoons are categorized as a form of opinion published in mass media, similar to editorial columns, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor. These fulfill a different role in mass media than objective news reporting, although both have long histories in American mass media. “Political cartoons are a ‘safe’ area to express opinions and to make accusations, as opposed to news reports, which are to be factually based and not inflammatory” (Conners, 1998, p. 113). While we could debate the notion if contemporary news reports represent these objective qualities and goals, the point to be made is that political cartoons are not expected to be purely objective – they are, rather, visual expressions of opinion. While the messages of cartoons are often open to interpretation (Carl, 1970),

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they are heavily laden with metaphors and symbols common to one’s culture to provide an opportunity for understanding. DeSousa and Medhurst (1982) describe political cartoons as attempting to tap “the collective consciousness of readers” (p. 85). There have been a variety of analyses of political cartoon images and content conducted previously, often involving investigations of images of political figures, such as images of Nixon before and after Watergate (Goldman and Hagen, 1978), the Ayatollah Khomeni of Iran (DeSousa, 1984), as well as Saddam Hussein of Iraq (Conners, 1998). The analysis of presidential candidates in cartoon images has been conducted regularly since the 1970s; for example, such study has included Hill’s (1984) analysis of Carter vs. Ford in 1976, DeSousa and Medhurst’s (1982) examination of Reagan vs. Carter in 1980, as well as more recent studies of Bush vs. Gore in 2000 (Edwards, 2001), and Obama vs. McCain in 2008 (Conners, 2010; Edwards, 2009; Zurbriggen and Sherman, 2010). Beyond the study of political cartoons for interpretations of events and as rhetorical devices, which may reflect and comment upon political elites’ situations, it is not clear what the impact of such images is on audiences. The influence of political cartoons may not be to change attitudes or beliefs, since the understanding of a cartoon can differ from individual to individual. DeSousa and Medhurst (1982) suggest the importance is “how readers use cartoons to understand their culture or maintain their sense of identity within it” (p. 90). Political cartoons are filled with symbols to represent concepts and to simplify more complex events or ideas. Symbolic politics (Sears, 1993) would suggest these symbols do influence people, and therefore we can conclude that political cartoons may evoke emotion to the degree that there is potential influence on attitudes or behavior. While other research has examined news coverage of political scandal to identify the dominant themes in such coverage, this analysis will explore how political cartoons frame a scandal, specifically the sexting scandal involving New York congressman Anthony Weiner that eventually resulted in his resignation in 2011. This chapter will first discuss the use of media framing as a tool for analysis of mass media content, and how it has been used in a few past instances for examining coverage of political scandal as well as examining political cartoon imagery. Following a brief timeline of events of Congressman Weiner’s downfall in 2011, the chapter will then present a qualitative analysis of political cartoon representations of the Weiner scandal and discuss the implications of such imagery.

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Media framing Framing analysis examines how mass media organize content for audiences, how a news story is framed in different coverage, or what “frames” are presented over the course of a news event. Media frames either attend to, or ignore, particular content around an event or issue. Some things are included in the frame, if we think of it as a picture frame, while other content is cropped out, not included. Tankard’s (2001) discussion of framing suggests this inclusion/ exclusion process, when he suggests that the media influence how a story is framed by eliminating voices or weakening arguments of those attempting to generate news coverage for their cause. Reese (2007) conceptualized frames as “structures that draw boundaries, set up categories, define some ideas as out and others in, and generally operate to snag related ideas in their net in an active process” (p. 150), which also suggests some items are included in a frame, while others are excluded. The origins of the notion of news framing are often attributed to Gamson and Modigliani (1987), who define a frame as a “central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events.. . . The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue” (p. 143). Entman’s (1993) notion of framing is also central to the literature on framing as it involves more of a process. He says, “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and or treatment recommendation for the item described” (p. 52). The focus in this analysis will be the media frames themselves, but framing research often considers factors of an individual media consumer’s frame as well. While a media frame refers to how the media present events or relay information, an individual frame involves how an audience member processes and interprets information (Scheufele 1999). Hallahan (1999) identified seven models of framing from previous research including the framing of issues, attributes, situations, choices, actions, responsibility, and news frames; both individual and mediated frames are included in these models. While frames may appear quite deliberate and intentional in this type of analysis, the process may not be so evident, to either those structuring media content or those consuming it. As Tankard (2001) notes, the “power of framing comes from its ability to define the terms of a debate without the audience realizing it is taking place” (p. 97). Media frames may be most influential for

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novel news stories, as Gibson (2009) states, “When the story is new, an audience searching for meaning may be more willing to embrace the media’s framing and follow the frame’s suggestions for making sense of the first time event” (p. 53). An examination of framing research involving a variety of political themes provides context for the importance of this approach to analysis beyond the conceptualization described above. The framing of political candidates and campaign events is a frequent subject of such research, such as Manusov and Harvey’s (2011) analysis of the framing of key nonverbal behaviors in news coverage of the 2008 democratic primaries. They found three frames applied to key nonverbal behaviors, such as to Hillary Clinton’s tears in New Hampshire, and to Barack and Michele Obama’s fist bump: an informative frame (providing a glimpse into a character), a performative frame (the purpose of a particular behavior), and an interpretive frame (“arbitrary meanings that could be ascribed to the behavior”) (p. 293). Miller et al. (1998) examined campaign coverage in contrast to candidate press releases to see what frames candidates wished to have represented in news coverage that were actually represented in media stories. They state, “analysis of frames can suggest the extent to which the media imprint their own power on issue coverage” (p. 314), which implies the potential influence of media to shape how an issue is presented to, and therefore perceived by, an audience. Devitt (2002) explored campaign coverage of female candidates compared to male opponents in five gubernatorial races in 1998, and distinguished between an issue frame (actions or positions on public policy issues), a personal frame (personal or professional background), and a strategy frame (horse-race description, candidate tactics, etc.). The analysis found little difference in the concentration of issue frames or personal frames between male and female candidates, and that for both the male and female candidates strategy frames dominated coverage; an interaction with gender reporter was found, however, in that male reporters used the personal frame for female candidates more than male candidates, and used the issue frame less for female candidates. These studies all employ framing analysis of political election contexts, but operationalize it in ways appropriate to their context and research questions; this may suggest the method’s flexibility for use in analysis, but also problems in the lack of a single clear approach to conducting framing analysis. Additionally, two other specific studies provide further support for the focus of the use of framing in this analysis, specifically examining opinion content and the focus on symbols, such as those featured in political cartoons, to provide interpretations of news events. Squires’s (2011) analysis involved what she

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called the counter-framing of the subprime mortgage crisis and race in editorial pages, in which she found a split between editorials, columns, and other opinion pieces that presented a dominant frame that ignored discrimination in housing practices and those that challenged that frame and addressed the housing crisis in terms of past and contemporary racism. While addressing very different issues than this current analysis, Squires’s works suggests a unique role that opinion pages in newspapers may play in offering frames of an event that may differ from traditional news stories. In considering the use of symbols, Dimitrova and Lee (2009) state, “Frames often appeal to principles and employ emotionally charged symbols. Frames therefore rely on various symbolic devices in order to resonate with the public.. . . These devices are used in combination in order to construct distinctive interpretive packages within news stories” (p. 539). They explored imagery in news coverage language for specific frames of distributive (fairness of the outcome) or procedural justice (fairness of the procedures) of coverage of Saddam Hussein’s execution (or neither, or a combination of both frames) in U.S. news, and found different interpretative packages that demonstrated those frames, the most dominant being a flawed execution interpretive package, which questioned the procedure of Hussein’s execution as well as his treatment prior to his death. The focus on symbols as part of framing analysis is evident in these examples and provides the foundation for extending that approach to visual symbols such as those found in political cartoons.

Framing of scandals As we saw above that politics is a rich arena for framing analysis research, the narrower focus on political scandal has also been the subject of past research for discovery of frames in media coverage, which ties more directly to the framing analysis of Weiner’s sexting scandal and subsequent resignation. A few examples of contemporary framing research of political scandals will help situate the framing analysis of Congressman Weiner’s scandal. One recent technology-based political sex scandal studied was that of Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Griffin’s (2008) analysis considers the frames constructed by individuals beyond the mass media in this scandal. Griffin’s analysis of framing in the Kilpatrick text messaging scandal evaluated how interested parties (politicians, faith-based leaders, city employees, and residents) reacted to the scandal, looking at issues of forgiveness and blame, as well as

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how Kilpatrick himself framed the events in his first public statements about the crisis. An analysis of media coverage of sex scandals involving politicians, including North Carolina senator John Edwards, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, and Idaho senator Larry Craig, concluded two frames were present in media coverage across the three scandals: a lying/denial frame, and a political future frame (Sipes, 2011). Sipes notes the particular challenge in these scandals of politicians publicly saying one thing while privately doing something else, as in Sanford and Craig’s scandals, but that “perhaps the most damning elements of political sex scandals is lying” (p. 108), which results in the concentration of media attention on that particular aspect of these scandals. An analysis of the framing of New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s scandal involved both media framing and audience framing. Liao (2010) analyzed the framing of Eliot Spitzer’s scandal of being a client of a prostitution ring while serving first as New York attorney general and then governor of New York, as well as framing of his subsequent resignation. The analysis included both media framing, in stories in the New York Times and USA Today, as well as individual/audience framing, through analysis of online comments to the New York Times website, which may well have been influenced by the frames in its news coverage. He found in addition to the four types of frames Entman (1993) notes, problem definition, causal interpretation, moral valuation, and treatment recommendation, that many audience responses offered an “emotional catharsis” frame involving readers’ disappointment or shock as well as their questions about the scandal. Two other political scandal framing analyses examined the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal during Clinton’s presidency. While other allegations of infidelity existed against Clinton, this scandal led to a move toward impeachment, yet Clinton remained in office with high approval ratings. Yioutas and Segvic’s (2003) analysis of media framing of the Clinton–Lewinksy scandal in the New York Times and Washington Post found that more than half of the news stories focused on the topic of the sex scandal itself, followed in frequency by themes of the allegations being politically motivated, how Clinton’s approval and job performance ratings remained positive during the scandal, as well as comparing this scandal to other political scandals. They suggest the comparison to other scandals may have minimized the impact of the scandal on the public, as they report polls conducted in 1998 found more than half of Americans thought the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal was not as bad as Richard Nixon’s

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involvement in Watergate. Shah et al. (2002) also examined news frames of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, in a broader model of public opinion on Clinton. They found in an analysis of nearly 1,400 news stories that 78% reflected frames about Clinton’s behavior, 18% reflected frames of conservative attacks, and about 4% contained a liberal response frame. Their analysis of public opinion of Clinton during the scandal suggests the favorable public support may have been a public backlash to the conservative attack frame, reinforced further by coverage of liberal elites questioning such attacks. While the majority of framing studies analyze the media content itself, few studies examine additionally the impact of such media frames. One study relevant for this discussion is Kepplinger, Geiss, and Sibert’s (2012) involving both content analysis of media coverage of four scandals and surveys of public opinion within a few weeks after each scandal broke in Germany. They found frames varied in print and television news coverage from degree of damage caused, involvement of selfish goals, awareness of negative outcomes, and who to blame for the scandal. In surveys, they found audiences framed the scandals most often either with a guilt frame, that the actor is to blame for the scandal and should be punished, or an excuse frame, in which the damage caused was minor, the actor was not to blame, and either no or mild punishment should be incurred in the case. They conclude that “individuals do not simply adopt the various fragmentary media frames” but develop “complete audience frames” (p. 672) that media coverage contributed to. They found that audiences “use the hints in media coverage as a guideline or frame for processing coverage” (p. 678) and build upon the picture the news media provided for them. These examples demonstrate the use of framing analysis in past political scandals, validating its use in the analysis of the portrayals of Anthony Weiner. They also suggest a broad range of questions that can be addressed in framing analysis research.

Framing analysis of political cartoons Although not very common, scholars have applied framing analysis to political cartoons in a few previous studies. However, in a seminal work on political cartoon research by DeSousa and Medhurst (1982), they identify framing as one of four key functions of political cartoons, in addition to entertainment, aggression-reduction, and agenda-setting. They maintain,

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the idea of cartoon as frame for events and issues is consistent with media research that maintains that the role of various media increases when the topic in question is one with which the consumer has little personal experience.. . . the political cartoon, as a message system within a major medium (newspaper), serves to provide readers with capsule characterizations of complicated issues. (p. 95)

In their analysis of cartoon images of the 1980 presidential campaign, they discovered nine metaphorical patterns, such as campaign as combat, as a race, as a circus, among others. Other cartoon analyses have examined the political cartoon framing of presidential candidates since DeSousa and Medhurst’s work. Khang and Ki’s (2002) analysis studied the political cartoon imagery of candidates in the 2000 presidential election. They found a candidate character frame to dominate 2000 cartoon imagery of candidates, with specific discussion of images of immorality, which relates to the current study. Overall they found that Al Gore was portrayed as weak on character and honesty, and George Bush was weak on competence as a viable president. More recently, Palmer’s (2011) analysis of cartoon imagery of President Barack Obama, from his candidacy through his first year in office, found a shift from the focus on political tactics of the candidate during the campaign to policy issues and development for Obama as president. One other example of framing analysis went beyond examining the portrayal of candidates, and instead considered other political campaign events. Makesom (2006) analyzed political cartoon portrayals of protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and reports an “analysis of the underlying social order behind the cartoons rather than their persuasive effectiveness” (p. 78). As noted above, much of framing research presents a similar divide – the context for the frames in media coverage versus the impact of media framing on audiences. His analysis explored the frames of conflict, human interest, morality, and responsibility, and found the frames shifted from the issue of the Vietnam War raised by the protests to the issue of the First Amendment of the media covering the events. He concludes, “mainstream cartoonists treated anti-war activists with neither sympathy nor disdain. They simply ignored them” (Makesom, 2006, p. 85). This finding contrasts a conclusion I have made in cartoon representations of political candidates, that “to be featured in a political cartoon is traditionally be the criticized, or the source of satire” (Conners 2005, p. 480), and presumably to be absent may be a sign of neutrality or support. But Makesom’s conclusion

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is appropriate, that what one may have expected to be a central focus of political cartoons of protests was not featured in cartoonists’ work about the events.

Background on Weiner scandal Anthony Weiner represented New York’s Ninth Congressional District from 1999 until his resignation in 2011. He ran an unsuccessful bid for mayor of New York in 2005 and was believed to be planning for another run in 2013 until this scandal arose. A frequent user of social media, Weiner posted statements via Facebook and Twitter on May 27 that his Twitter account was hacked, in response to online rumors that he had sent a sexually suggestive photograph of himself to a female college student following him on Twitter. On May 30, Weiner’s spokesman, Dave Arnold, stated, “We’ve retained counsel to explore the proper next steps and to advise us on what civil or criminal actions should be taken. This was a prank. We are loath to treat it as more, but we are relying on professional advice” (Parker, May 31, 2011, A17). In an interview on June 1 with MSNBC’s Luke Russert, Weiner stated, “I can’t say with certitude” if he was the person in the photo or not, and denied that he sent the photo. He reiterated that the photo was sent as a prank by someone who hacked into his account (Hernandez, June 1, 2011). The report in the New York Times blog included a transcript of the MSNBC interview, including this excerpt: RUSSERT: That’s not a picture of you? REP. WEINER: You know, I can’t say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated, pictures can be dropped in and inserted. One of the reasons that I’ve asked a firm that includes an Internet security arm is to take a look into what the heck happened here to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But let’s kind of keep in mind why this is so silly. You know, someone committed a prank on me. Someone somehow got access to my Twitter account, and right away put up a picture that made fun of the name Weiner and that’s what happened. RUSSERT: But Congressman, you would remember if you were to take a photograph of yourself like that.

On June 2, Weiner announced that he had finished answering questions about the photo sent via Twitter and was returning to focusing on his work in Congress (Parker and Stelloh, June 3, 2011). On June 6, Weiner held a news conference

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and confessed to sending the photo of himself via Twitter and lying about it. He admitted to, according to the New York Times coverage, “a pattern of sending inappropriate and at times explicit photos and messages to women he met over the Internet” (Newman, Chen, and Barbaro, June 6, 2011, para. 2). In his apology, he stated he did not intend to resign his congressional seat. Amid pressure from House Democrats to resign, Weiner announced on June 11 that he would seek a leave of absence from the House and was entering a psychological treatment center (Hernandez and Barbaro, June 12, 2011). On June 16, 2011, Weiner held a news conference and announced he was resigning his congressional seat, stating, I am here today to again apologize for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment I have caused. I make this apology to my neighbors and my constituents but I make it particularly to my wife, Huma.. . . today I’m announcing my resignation from Congress, so my colleagues can get back to work, my neighbors can choose a new representative and most importantly that my wife and I can continue to heal from the damage I have caused. (Newman and Parker, June 16, 2011)

Analysis of Weiner scandal portrayed in political cartoons Cartoons created by American political cartoonists between May 28 and June 18, 2011, available through The Cagle Post Cartoons and Commentary (www. cagle.com), were identified, and those featuring some theme related to Anthony Weiner was downloaded for further analysis. The vast majority of cartoon images in Cagle’s collection are published in daily newspapers, but a handful are available only in online venues. Any cartoon that featured either a visual image to Weiner or to the actions of his scandal, or a text-based message (referring to his name in some way, or even more generally to the scandal itself), were downloaded for further analysis. Of 58 American political cartoonists, 45 (78%) featured an image related to the Anthony Weiner scandal between May 28 and June 18. Only 13 did not feature any cartoons making reference to Weiner, and those cartoonists created between one and seven images total during that time period, so their coverage of any issues or news events during this time period was quite small. From a total of 425 cartoon images political cartoonists created between May 28 and June 18, 2011, 85 images (20%) made some reference to the Anthony Weiner scandal.

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The rest of this analysis will focus on those 85 images in a qualitative analysis of frames in the themes of coverage. Not all cartoons contained visual symbols directly featuring the politician, although many contained such representations; others referred to some aspect of the scandal but connected it to an unrelated issue. For example, a R.J. Matson image (Roll Call, 6/17/11) features a person commenting “Ewww! Some congressman just exposed his big federal budget cuts on Twitter”; other imagery used issues of Medicare or Social Security similarly. A political context or setting carried over in these other images, as did some reference to a use of technology to communicate about that issue, but otherwise these types of images made little reference to Congressman Weiner specifically. How quickly did this political scandal reach the cartoonists’ radar screens? Many cartoons reflected the news events of the scandal itself, as would be the case with other newsworthy events. Many cartoons were published within a few days of the scandal breaking; the first in this collection was published on May 31. The story itself broke online via Anthony Breitbart’s website biggovernment.com May 28 and 29. Two other events in this scandal produced a number of other images – within a day or two after Weiner held his first news conference admitting he sent the photo on June 6, and when Weiner announced his resignation at a later news conference on June 16. Given the fleeting nature of news in general, and the competition from other news (especially the early stages of the 2012 presidential election), the Weiner scandal played out in political cartoons for a short period of time before the attention of the cartoonists was drawn elsewhere.

Findings: Frames in cartoon imagery In his own words The concentration of political cartoon imagery around these key events also demonstrates how a news source’s own words, specifically a politician’s own words, are the focus of political cartoon content. For example, Weiner’s comment “I can’t say with certitude” as a potential denial of his involvement in the sexting incident appeared in a few cartoons in this sample; one example also associated Weiner’s phrasing with President Obama in a different context. The image by Mark Streeter (Savannah Morning News, 6/10/11) portrays a Republican elephant quizzing Obama on the economy, to which Obama is portrayed as responding

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“You know, I can’t say with certitude” as well as “My policies do tend to get punked, pranked, and hacked a lot,” alluding to Weiner’s initial explanation for the picture sent via Twitter. The power in political cartoons to rely on a newsmaker’s own words in an image stems from a number of factors; first, audiences of the cartoon may be familiar with the public statement of a newsmakers, from other reporting in print, online, as well as broadcast sources; second, there is instant legitimacy in the content of the image, as the cartoonist is not putting words in a newsmakers’ mouth or casting him or her in a false light by making up statements. Frequently used as a tactic in negative political advertisements, quoting an official in his or her own words can be a compelling and powerful image for the public to see a controversial or negative statement made by directly by a politician.

Critiquing Weiner Beyond using the Weiner scandal as a basis for connection to other news events or political themes, many political cartoons criticized Weiner’s actions themselves. Two specific commentaries that were presented in the political cartoons were portraying Weiner as a liar and Weiner as stupid. Many of the “Weiner as liar” images relied on the Pinocchio allusion in the cartoons, with Weiner’s nose growing longer as the lies continued. Khang and Ki’s (2002) analysis of cartoons found Pinocchio imagery in the portrayal of Al Gore when he ran for president in 2000, specifically highlighting his claim that he had invented the Internet. As Sipes (2011) notes in her analysis of media frames of three political sex scandals, “Perhaps the most damning element of political sex scandals is lying” (p. 108). In the Anthony Weiner case, to be caught in a lie in this scandal, as demonstrated in many cartoon images, has the potential for continuing beyond this particular incident. If the public concludes “once a liar, always a liar,” such an accusation has the potential to doom any future political or professional success for an individual; therefore this particular critique can be quite damaging. A number of cartoon images directly referred to Weiner as stupid or incompetent given his actions; for example, a Nate Beeler (Washington Examiner, 6/6/11) cartoon features Weiner only in white boxers with red hearts, and arrows labeled “pantless” pointing to his boxer shorts, “shirtless” pointing to his chest, and “witless” pointing to his head. Another image (by Jimmy Margulies, New Jersey The Record, 6/8/11) features a man sitting on a park bench sweating in

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the hot summer sun, with a woman next to him reading the paper with the headline “Weiner”; she comments “It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.” This image utilizes a technique common in political cartoons, playing upon popular phrases or images in connection with an unrelated event. Overall, these examples demonstrate the willingness of political cartoonists to be very direct in their criticism of Weiner’s actions, and not dilute that critique, which might soften the impact of their images on readers. While other forms of media messages such as news reporting strive to maintain objectivity, political cartoons are opinion-based vehicles that readers expect to take a position typically in the form of a critique of some event or individual.

Guilt by association (with other scandals) While the events surrounding Weiner’s scandal and resignation were unique from other political sex scandals, Weiner’s scandal is associated with other contemporary sex scandals. Popular references to political sex scandals included John Edwards and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a number of cartoon images also associated Weiner with former president Bill Clinton. That particular connection is perhaps more relevant in the context that Weiner’s wife was working for Hillary Clinton, and that Bill Clinton had officiated their wedding ceremony. The framing of Weiner in “guilt by association” with other political sex scandals has important implications. The scandal may be interpreted as one in a long line of similar events, with a “here we go again” connotation to readers; that comparison to past scandals may reinforce a notion of “outrage” about how problematic our political system is in terms of maintaining expectations of ethical conduct of our elected officials. Or the linkage of the Weiner scandal to other contemporary political sex scandals may affect a reader’s interpretation of the current scandal, perhaps to be perceived as “not as bad as” others (i.e., Edwards and Schwarzenegger) whose adulterous affair resulted in the birth of a child with one’s mistress; in comparison to those, sexting might seem quite tame in terms of scandalous conduct. But as noted in some of the frames discussed above, growing public concern with Congressman Weiner likely stemmed more from his attempts to deny his involvement, and to lie about his conduct, than the sexting itself. Those actions are, however, the focus of another frame commonly represented in this political cartoon collection that will be discussed further below.

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Sexting A popular theme in political cartoon representations of Congressman Weiner involves sexting, the sending of explicit photos by cell phone, which was the basis for the scandalous conduct. Many cartoon images show children as being involved in receiving e-mail messages from a politician or following their congressman on Twitter. Such images heighten the potential disgust of Weiner’s behaviors, as the subjects featured in the cartoons are not adults of voting age, but rather innocent children (however, Weiner did allegedly have e-mail conversations with a 17-year-old girl prior to this sexting scandal being made public). A Mike Luckovich (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 6/8/11) cartoon plays off of the Family Circus comic strip, with daughter Dolly reporting to her mother that her little brother “Jeffy’s playing Congressman” as he takes a picture of himself in his underwear. The contrast of innocence to Weiner’s own behavior, either in children using technology without realizing what inappropriate conduct might occur online, or in the suggestion of children imitating Weiner’s actions, may be more offensive to readers than many of the other frames discussed here. These examples suggest a distressing potential spillover of this conduct by others or into other contexts; this may not be an isolated incident involving only Congressman Weiner, but rather others can easily engage in such behavior. While Weiner was noted as a tech-savvy congressman in his use of social network sites, many other elected officials are becoming more involved in communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook; these cartoon images suggest the upsetting notion that it may continue with others in this new communication technology context.

Other current events Many cartoons that associated Weiner with past sex scandals also tied the scandal with other current events; for example, a June 5, 2011, image by Clay Jones (Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star) features an image of Weiner, Edwards, and Schwarzenegger putting their heads in an oven labeled “Career Suicide,” with them stating in unison, “Who needs Kevorkian?”; this alludes to assisted suicide proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who passed away on June 3, 2011. Other cartoons connected the sex scandals, and specifically Weiner’s use of a cell phone camera, to the World Health Organization’s May 31, 2011, announcement that cell phones may cause cancer. One cartoon making this connection, by Joe Heller (Green

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Bay Gazette, 6/9/2011), features customers looking at cell phones in a store, with one commenting, “Have they started putting warning labels about the potential cancer risk from cell phones?” The packaging reads “WARNING! Just because this is a ‘smart phone,’ it does not imply that the user is ‘smart’.. . .e.g., congressmen, quarterbacks, & celebrities.” Such examples demonstrate a common pattern in contemporary political cartoons of linking two simultaneous and apparently unrelated news stories to each other; for example, Halloween events and late stages of a presidential campaign are often connected in cartoon images. These examples of connecting the Weiner scandal to other contemporary news events demonstrate what Medhurst and DeSousa (1981) refer to as situational themes. They say, “Idiosyncratic and transient situations which appear unexpectedly” are one inventional resource of political cartoons (p. 202). Medhurst and DeSousa also note, “Such events may have an immediate impact and contain a timely message, but they have little salience beyond their immediate context. It is this truism which makes so many historical cartoons incomprehensible to modern readers” (p. 202). An analysis of cartoon images of the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (Makesom, 2006) also found cartoonists connecting one news event with others, specifically with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia one week earlier. As Makesom notes, “The sight of Soviet tanks rolling into the Czech capitol followed by militarylike tactics in Chicago made for an uneasy juxtaposition” (p. 80), and that study describes a number of cartoons making such parallels between the two events. While the contexts connected to the Weiner scandal discussed above make sense in a contemporary analysis, Medhurst and DeSousa’s perspective, as well as Makesom’s example, demonstrates the challenge of studying such imagery with greater distance in time from the context of the originally published cartoons.

Discussion The analysis reported here identified a number of different frames found in the cartoon images of Congressman Anthony Weiner’s scandal and resulting resignation from office. While some frames are unique to this particular case, such as the one focusing on sexting, others likely persist in visual imagery of other scandals; for example, using an official’s own words and associating one scandal with other similar scandals are likely common in other political cartoons of scandal. However, it is less clear that these frames might continue across other media contexts and appear in content such as news reporting; they would be

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more likely in other opinion-based media vehicles such as commentaries by opinion columnists. The connection of one event to other similarly timed events in cartoons is an approach that would not easily apply in other media content, as each news event would likely merit separate coverage and attention. Therefore, the analysis of a political event such as scandal through political cartoons not only offers the opportunity to compare frames across coverage but also presents frames that are quite unique to visual media. Cartoons critiquing Weiner’s conduct, either the original sexting incidences, or his lying about them prior to resigning his seat from the House of Representatives, are influential visuals in the construction of a public figure’s identity. If we accept the cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” and apply it to political cartoons, these images encapsulate a variety of emotions and criticism in a visually memorable manner. When combined with opinion columns in media coverage that raised questions about the veracity of Weiner’s original statements, as well as brief but intensive news media coverage of this case and Weiner’s resignation, all of those variables accumulate to construct an identity for the public that will be difficult for the public official himself or herself to challenge or reconstruct through one’s own efforts. Political cartoonists who addressed and featured the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal in their images walked a delicate line between offering commentary on sexually inappropriate conduct and being inappropriate themselves in their humorous visuals about the case. This is a case that confirms Lamb’s (2004) statement in his discussion of the limits on political cartoons that “Ultimately the decision about what is lyrical and what is vulgar rests with the [Editorial page] editor. But sometimes real life complicates that decision” (p. 163). In this case the scandal involved inappropriate conduct by a public official – how could a cartoonist cover it as a developing event without referring to the sexting behavior? Past scandals and media coverage of them, including references made in political cartoons, may have softened tougher defenses against publishing such images, and perhaps public outrage has softened as well, given the concentration on previous sex scandals. Lamb (2004) refers to Hartford Courant cartoonist Bob Englehart’s explanation that (Lamb’s words here) “any drawing containing sex of sexual organs also usually ends up on the drawing-room floor, although the Clinton scandals made these drawing more acceptable” (p. 164). These political cartoon images are part of the national narrative of the Anthony Weiner scandal. In a single frame and oftentimes very few words, political cartoons can encapsulate a mood or sentiment that might take an

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opinion columnist paragraphs to articulate. The combination of visuals, with cultural and literary allusions incorporated into many of them, along with brief text that may appear as a headline, or as words spoken by a character or person featured in the image, results in a compelling and provocative image of opinion. Cartoons are a unique version of storytelling from other media narratives, being more similar to the satire of late-night comedy than to the rest of the contents of a newspaper. But in considering the vast amount of messages on an event a reader or viewer may consume, cartoons are a memorable part of that intake. How cartoonists frame political scandals are part of that media mix, the combination of news, opinion, and even gossip that media audiences may ingest. Therefore, how cartoonists portray such scandals and the events surrounding them do have the potential to influence how readers perceive such political events, and how they complete their own frame of interpretation of a political scandal.

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Edwards, Janis L. 2001. “Running in the Shadows in Campaign 2000: Candidate Metaphors in Editorial Cartoons.” American Behavioral Scientist, 44, 2140–2151. ———. 2009. “Presidential Campaign Cartoons and Political Authenticity: Visual Reflections in 2008.” In edited by Robert E. Denton, The 2008 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective. Lanham, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Entman, Robert. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication, 43, 51–55. Gamson, William A. and Andre Modigliani. 1987. “The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action.” In edited by R. D. Braungart, Research in Political Psychology, Volume 3. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 137–177. Gibson, Katie L. 2009. “The Discipline Function of the Press.” Women and Language, 32, 51–59. Goldman, Mitchel and Margaret A. Hagen. 1978. “The Forms of Caricature: Physiognomy and Political Bias.” Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 5, 30–36. Griffin, Donyale. 2008. “Framing Kwame Kilpatrick: Third-Party Response to the Detroit Mayor’s Text Message Scandal.” Paper Presented at the Annual Convention of the National Communication Association, San Diego, CA. Hallahan, Kirk. 1999. “Seven Models of Framing: Implications for Public Relations.” Journal of Public Relations Research, 11, 205–242. Hernandez, Raymond. 2011. “Weiner Can’t Rule Out that Twitter Photo is of Him.” New York Times Blogs (accessed via Lexis Nexis), June 1. Hernandez, Raymond and Michael Barbaro. 2011. “Weiner Agrees to Get Treatment as Calls for Resignation Intensify.” New York Times (accessed via Lexis Nexis), June 12, A1. Hill, Alette. 1984. “The Carter Campaign in Retrospect: Decoding the Cartoons.” In edited by Martin J. Medhurst and Thomas W. Benson, Rhetorical Dimensions in Media: A Critical Casebook. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Kepplinger, Hans Mathias, Stefan Geiss, and Sandra Siebert. 2012. “Framing Scandals: Cognitive and Emotional Media Effects.” Journal of Communication, 62, 659–681. Khang, Hyoungkoo and Eyun-Jung Ki. 2002. “Framing the Presidential Candidates in Editorial Cartoons.” Paper presented at the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Miami, FL. Liao, Weimin. 2010. “Framing Political Sex Scandal in Cross-Cultural Context between China and the United States: A Comparative Case Study.” China Media Research, 6, 67–80. Makesom, Harlen. 2006. “Beat the Press: How Leading Political Cartoonists Framed Protests at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention.” Journalism History, 32, 77–86. Manusov, Valerie and Jessica Harvey. 2011. “Bumps and Tears on the Road to the Presidency: Media Framing of Key Nonverbal Events in the 2008 Democratic Election.” Western Journal of Communication, 75, 282–303.

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10

Shattered Dignity: The Apologia of John Edwards Misty L. Knight

There’s unpopular, there’s widely loathed, there’s despised, and then there’s John Edwards. Americans are a tolerant people, but they have a line, and evidently, when you cheat on your cancer-stricken wife, lie about it to everyone while running for president, and then decline to acknowledge fathering a love child for two years, you’ve crossed it.

Belinda Luscombe, Time Magazine, January 23, 2010

Introduction In 2006, former U.S. senator, 2004 vice presidential candidate, and 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards began a relationship that would serve as the catalyst for the destruction of his political and personal reputation. According to a variety of sources, Edwards met filmmaker-videographer Rielle Hunter, who was subsequently hired to chronicle Edwards’s campaign and, during this time, Edwards and Hunter began an affair (Friedman, Morison, and Griffin, 2011). At the time, Edwards was married to Elizabeth Edwards, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer which went into remission, and then eventually returned in an incurable form which finally caused her death in December 2010. On October 10, 2007, the National Enquirer reported the Edwards–Hunter affair, which Edwards publicly denied saying, “It’s completely untrue, ridiculous. . .” (Friedman, Morison, and Griffin, 2011). Hunter had a baby on February 27, 2008. On August 8, 2008, Edwards appeared on Bob Woodruff ’s ABC News

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show admitting the affair, but denying the paternity of Hunter’s baby, instead saying that their affair had ended before she could have become pregnant. All of the accusations, the denials, the admissions, and the media coverage did nothing to improve Edwards’s image. Not shockingly, the August 18, 2008, issue of Newsweek named John Edwards the first person to ever score “100” in their 1 to 100 scale known as the “dignity index” of dubious behavior (“Dignity index,” 2008, 8). A CBS News/New York Times poll indicated that, despite the fact that 30% of Americans viewed him favorably during his 2007 presidential campaign bid, now “only 3% of Americans now hold a favorable view of John Edwards” (April 22, 2012). How did Edwards sink so low? Could his dignity ever be reclaimed? Less than a year later, an investigation into Edwards’s use of campaign finances began. During this period, investigators uncovered a series of questionable donations made to Edwards by individuals who were also his political supporters. Prosecutors claimed that wealthy donors, Rachel “Bunny” Mellon and Fred Baron, gave Edwards approximately $1,000,000 to be used for covering up the Hunter affair and pregnancy (Biesecker, May 4, 2012). Part of the cover-up money went to Andrew Young, a longtime Edwards’ aide, who originally claimed paternity for the Hunter child and then wrote a “tell-all” book revealing Edwards’a affair with Hunter and claimed that Edwards was, indeed, the child’s father (Bailey, June 6, 2011). On January 21, 2010, Edwards stated, “It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter” as he finally admitted that he was the father of Hunter’s baby. Then, on June 3, 2011, Edwards was indicted on criminal charges involving the alleged use of campaign funds for the coverup of the affair and pregnancy. He was charged with four counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions, one count involving the falsifying of documents, and one count of conspiring to receive and conceal the illegal contributions. The federal corruption case ended on May 31, 2012, with an acquittal by the jury on one charge involving the $725,000 given to Edwards by Mellon, and a failure to come to a unanimous decision by the jury on the other five counts (Johns, Metzger, and Reiss, May 31, 2012). The judge declared a mistrial and the possibility of a retrial was aborted when the Justice Department announced on June 13, 2012, that it would forgo pursuing a retrial of the case against Edwards (CNN Wire Staff, June 13, 2012). Why does this particular scandal cause so much concern? What makes Edwards any different than any of the myriad of politicians caught in a sex scandal? The fact that he was a rising political star as a former U.S. senator, vice

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presidential candidate, and presidential candidate was significant, but it was the image he created for himself in the campaigns that truly created his ethos. His persona of the poor boy who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and overcame poverty to grasp the American Dream gave the impression that he had truly climbed the ladder to success through dignity and hard work. The fact that such personal and moral failures happened to him suggests that this could happen to anyone, not just politicians born into privilege. Understanding the apologist in this study requires an understanding of his persona. Persona is the interplay between an individual’s public and private selves (Spohrer, 2007). Furthermore, Black (1970) discusses the concept of more than one persona. A first, or public, persona deals with characteristics or traits that the individual holds as a model for leadership or position. A second persona deals with the audience implied by the leader. For instance, the audience members become part of the apologist’s strategy through their participation in tabloid journalism. Prior to the Rielle Hunter affair, John Edwards had not been questioned about his proclivity for extramarital activity. While he had been questioned about his $400 haircuts, his posh 28,200 square foot home in North Carolina, and his general vanity, there was not a history of “other” women as part of his public persona (see Skenazy, 2008, A4). However, as he manufactured his apology on ABC News, he allowed the issue to become a part of the second persona as it was revealed through the tabloids. John Edwards’s apologia for the Rielle Hunter affair and subsequent trial for campaign finance violations will provide a noteworthy case study in the contemporary use of political apologia. Such case studies allow audiences to fully understand the motivations of the politician and provide suggestions for those seeking strategies for self-defense rhetoric. An examination of apologia and image restoration techniques in this case will provide a basic understanding of the rhetorical strategies used by Edwards and his surrogates as well as an understanding of whether or not such strategies actually worked to repair Edwards’s evaporated ethos.

Apologia and Kategoria The study and practice of “apologia and political rhetoric are interwoven any time a political figure responds to an accusation against his or her character, and public response is often judged according to its perceived sincerity and

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accuracy” (Knight 2011, 114). In order to determine the success of the apologist’s goal to appear sincere and accurate, we must first understand a background in what should be said, how it should be framed, and the intended impact of the rhetorical strategies. Thus, this review will consist chiefly of an analysis of political apologia through the lens of prominent theories of apologia, image restoration, and crisis management, and it will examine John Edwards’s apologies as subjects for rhetorical study. Since ancient times, critics have explored the concept of apologia, or the attempt to defend one’s self through persuasive speech. According to Downey (1993), apologia can “manifest a variety of styles including appeals to traditional cultural values, invective, references to a greater divinity, reliance upon legitimate bases of power, factual accounts of an issue, and inductively reasoned organization” (42–43). Such self-defense strategies have long been employed in order to seek exoneration from attacks or accusations of wrongdoing, or kategoria. Experts indicate that apologia occurs “when one’s character is attacked” or even in the event that there is a perception of character attack (Kruse 1981, 290). Because of this, apologists seek to repair their reputations through the use of rhetorical self-defense strategies (Kruse 1981). In so doing, Kruse indicates that they are not only responding to accusations, they are rebuilding or reframing audience’s perceptions in such a manner as they wish to be perceived. In this way, the defendant can “repair his character if it has been directly or indirectly damaged by overt charges, or rumors and allegations, which negatively value his behavior and/or his judgment” (Kruse 1977, 13). The speech of self-defense or apologia has a long history dating back at least to ancient Greece. It is generally in the form of a very personalized discourse as noted by Ware and Linkugel: “a personalized defense by an individual of his morality, motives, and reputation” (1973, 274). A number of scholars have argued that the successful or unsuccessful use of apologia can even alter the course of history (Vartabedian 2007). The use of apologia among politicians has been well documented (Gold 1978, Knight 2000, Knight 2011, and Vartabedian and Vartabedian 2003). Gold (1978) stated the significance of apologia to political campaigns and suggested that “any attack casting suspicion upon one’s moral character may hinder one’s ability to achieve goals and, unless deflected, may destroy the ability to function as a public leader” (307). Ware and Linkugel’s (1973) landmark work defined apologia as a speech made in defense of character, and this was certainly a consideration for

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Edwards. However, Ryan’s explanation argues that “the historical usage of apologia includes both ethical and policy defenses” (Hearit 2001, 5). In the case of Edwards, his apologetic discourse not only contained dimensions of ethics, but also had to consider legal ramifications. “Apologiae are responses to public criticism – criticism that most frequently, although not always, has an ethical dimension” (Hearit 2001, 5). Such public criticisms or accusations are defined as kategoria (Ryan 1982). Kategoria may be based in legal accusations as well as media speculation (Len-Rios and Benoit 2004). Edwards faced both challenges. Ryan (1982) argued that one should analyze two variables in apologia: (1) the actual defense (the apologia) in light of (2) the specific attack (the kategoria). Ryan (1982) stated that by examining the apologia and kategoria, the critic can better understand those issues most relevant to the act of self-defense. He stated that “the critic cannot have a complete understanding of accusation or apology without treating them both” (Ryan 1982, 254). We can see then, based on Ryan’s assertions, that an examination of either apologia or kategoria would be incomplete without the other. Kategoria or accusations must exist in some form or there would be no need for apologia or self-defense. Without apologia, the accusations would simply stand as facts.

Kategoria Originally, Aristotle identified the contrast between kategoria, the accusation, and apologia, the response (see Aristotle cited in Kennedy 1991). According to Benoit and Drew (1997), kategoria has two parts: “the target is alleged to have committed an act (blame or responsibility) and that act is characterized as reprehensible (offensiveness)” (154). If, indeed, apologia exists to the degree that kategoria has served as an instigator, we should understand the context (Marsh 2006). Edwards battled attacks and accusations across three fronts. First, he was forced to answer to claims of an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter. Next, assertions that he had fathered Hunter’s child forced him to deal with the Hunter affair again. Finally, the allegations that he had violated campaign finance laws by accepting money from supporters to help pay to cover-up the affair and pregnancy brought him to court. In Edwards’s case there were two categories of attacks or accusations: character and legal. What may be most surprising about the Edwards’s scandal is the fact that it ended up in the courtroom. “The lack of legal prosecution for crimes

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associated with sex scandals of political figures reinforces. . .” the scandalous behavior of the politicians in question because the fact that they suffer “no legal consequences may mean a public rebirth” (Jirard 2011, 149). That Edwards was indeed brought up on charges and faced a judge and jury for alleged misdeeds made this case more unusual than most political sex scandals. However, the fact that charges were eventually dropped and no legal sanction was taken pushes the case back toward the “norm” of political sex scandals. The original attack came with the claim that Edwards had an affair with a worker connected to the campaign. On October 10, 2007, the National Enquirer broke a story reporting that Edwards had an extramarital affair with someone who had formerly worked on the campaign. The next day, Edwards denied the charges. The second accusation emerged when Hunter’s pregnancy was discovered. Again, the National Enquirer served as the breaking news source. They published a photo of a pregnant Rielle Hunter. Later, they reported that Edwards had visited the mother and baby, but Edwards denied any connection or paternity. The final attack was the investigation and indictment regarding alleged campaign finance violations. On June 3, 2011, Edwards was indicted. He faced six counts involving conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions, and false statements. On May 31, 2012, the jury found Edwards not-guilty on one charge involving illegal campaign contributions but could not come to agreement on the other counts. The judge declared a mistrial and the Justice Department later determined that they would drop all charges. As we move into a discussion of the apologia used by Edwards, it is important to clarify the distinction that: “An ‘apologia’ is not an apology” rather, it is a “defense that seeks to present a compelling counter description” of the original accusation (Hearit 1994, 115). Such a counter-description of the three attacks (the affair, the pregnancy, and the campaign finance violations) can be understood through a variety of scholarly lenses that examine why and how Edwards might defend himself. First, we will begin with a description of Edwards’s approach.

Apologia ABC News’ Bob Woodruff ’s August 8, 2008, interview with John Edwards is a remarkable artifact for analysis. According to ABC News, Edwards initiated contact and requested to be interviewed about allegations that he had a sexual affair with a campaign employee (Schwartz, Ross, and Francescani, 2008).

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Edwards and Woodruff agreed to a forty question-and-answer segment on Woodruff ’s ABC News Nightline show. While admitting to the affair during the course of the interview, Edwards refused to comment about when the initiation and dissolution of the relationship occurred. He only specified that the affair was over before he initiated his campaign for president on December 28, 2006 (Schwartz, Ross, and Francescani, 2008). Prior to the announcement, John Edwards was one of the three top candidates for nomination as the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party along with Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Edwards dropped out of the race on January 30, 2008. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, was a visible and sympathetic figure throughout the campaign. In fact, during the ABC News interview, Woodruff asked Edwards, “Your wife, Elizabeth, is probably the most admired and beloved person in this country, she’s had enormous sympathy because she’s also gone through cancer, how could you have done this?” (see “Transcript,” 2008). Up to this point, Edwards’s use of apologia was not well documented. For the purpose of this work, we will examine the following Edwards’s statements for the study: August 8, 2008 (admission of affair and denial of paternity during ABC News Nightline with Bob Woodruff), January 21, 2010 (paternity admission in press statement), June 3, 2011 (press statement denying campaign finance violations), and May 31, 2012 (remarks to the press after the verdict announcement). According to Kennedy (1963), there are four components required in apologia. First, there must be an accusation or attack of some form. Next, the apologist must either refute the charges or provide some form of counterattack or point the finger of blame elsewhere. Then, the apologist should provide an explanation of the self-defense rhetoric. Finally, the apologist must provide some statement that serves as a “summation which reasserts the moral integrity of the apologist” (Kennedy 1963, 151). Additionally, indicating awareness that words alone are not enough, the apologist should show “proper regard for the process of correction” and this action should prompt positive regard among audience perceptions (Goffman 1971, 100). These early descriptions of what apologia must entail have held through to the key theorists which guide the analysis in this work. Critical perspectives developed by theorists such as Ware and Linkugel, Benoit, and Hearit allow critics both a framework and a lens through which to examine rhetorical artifacts of an apologetic nature. These methodologies for examining self-defense rhetoric have been utilized by various scholars for a wide variety of political and other contexts. Further explanation of each theory will

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allow greater understanding of exactly where Edwards’s statements succeeded or failed in his attempts at self-defense.

Ware and Linkugel’s categories Believing that “an attack upon a person’s character. . .does seem to demand a direct response,” Ware and Linkugel established the basic groundwork for rhetoricians studying apologia in what has now become a classic examination of self-defense rhetoric, “They Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia” (1973, 274). While earlier scholars used more historical perspectives based solely on Aristotle’s writings, Ware and Linkugel provided a contemporary connection to apologia and modern apologists. Their work claimed to provide a framework to both “discover those factors which characterize the apologetic form” and “to discover the subgenres or the types of discourses within the genre” (274). They identified four “factors” which are critical in contemporary apologia. These factors are denial, bolstering, differentiation, and transcendence. Denial is an attempt for the rhetor to deny any connection to the offense or accusation (“I didn’t do it!”). Bolstering is a strategy in which the rhetor attempts to identify with behaviors, individuals, or events that the audience might perceive in a positive light (“Just look at what I did do!”). The next strategy, differentiation, is a way for the rhetor to ask the audience to look at the situation through a different lens (“This is what I was really doing.”). Transcendence, the final strategy identified by Ware and Linkugel, asks the audience to look away from the mess and into the glory of what could be (“I have become so much more than these petty issues.”).

Denial In an attempt to employ the first strategy identified by Ware and Linkugel, the apologist “may deny alleged facts, sentiments, objects, or relationships” (1973, 275). Strangely enough, Edwards managed to deny all four. When the National Enquirer broke the news of Edwards’s involvement with Rielle Hunter, he responded to journalists claiming no knowledge of a relationship. When he finally admitted the affair on Woodruff ’s news show, he denied any sentiment toward Hunter claiming that he was not in love with her. After the National Enquirer next announced Hunter’s pregnancy, he denied the paternity of the baby in a statement to the press on August 8, 2008. Further, in response to

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Woodruff ’s questions about the veracity of the reports during the interview on the same date, he denied the reports while also attacking the source, saying, “Not true. Published in a supermarket tabloid. That is absolutely not true.” In so much as one can identify a baby or human being as an “object,” it can be an example of denial in this category. He did finally confess that the baby was his in 2010, almost two years after the baby’s birth. Finally, Ware and Linkugel categorize the denial of a relationship. Edwards did this with both the original and continued relationship with Hunter. Further, in his statements to the press on June 3, 2011, Edwards admitted that “there’s no question that I’ve done wrong. And I take full responsibility for having done wrong. And I will regret for the rest of my life the pain and the harm that I’ve caused to others.”

Bolstering Bolstering is a strategy in which the “speaker attempts to identify himself with something viewed favorably by the audience” (Ware and Linkugel 1973, 277). During the early period of denial, Edwards attempted to stay close to his wife, Elizabeth, and their children in an attempt to identify himself as a family man. In the Woodruff interview, Edwards reminded the audience of a painful moment from his past saying, “Now, I was slapped down to the ground when my son Wade died in 1996.” He continued by talking about his political successes which soon followed that tragic family event and then solemnly said that those successes buoyed him up with “adulation, respect, admiration” which led him to “self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want.” After the earthquakes that devastated Haiti in January of 2010, he accompanied other public figures and celebrities on a relief mission to the ravaged country. It was likely no coincidence that the trip was timed within days of his admission that he was the father of Hunter’s baby. When asked about his recent announcement regarding the baby’s paternity, Edwards responded, “I’ve said what I have to say for now and I’m here to help the people.”

Differentiation In employing differentiation, the apologist attempts to reframe the context of the accusation and create a new reality for the audience because “strategies which place whatever it is about him that repels the audience into a new

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perspective. . .has proven useful in numerous apologia” (Ware and Linkugel 1973, 278). The apologist may frequently implore the audience to hold judgment until all the facts are revealed. Edwards repeatedly appealed to the public affirming his willingness to take a paternity test to prove that he was not the father of Hunter’s baby. During his interview with Woodruff, Edwards stated, “I would welcome participating in a paternity test. Be happy to participate in one. . .Happy to take a paternity test, and would love to see it happen.” Often, this strategy is to buy the apologist enough time to reframe those facts in a more self-serving manner. During Edwards’s remarks to the press on June 3, 2011, he admitted his wrongs and claimed to take full responsibility, but then continued his statements by claiming, “But I did not break the law, and I never, ever thought I was breaking the law.” Basically, Edwards says that what he did was wrong, but not illegal. Further, his legal defense team claimed that all of the $1 million that was received was a personal gift rather than a campaign contribution. The differentiation was to claim that a “personal gift” was allowed to be used for personal reasons as opposed to a campaign donation which should not have been used for anything but campaign needs. Their strategy allowed them to claim that prosecutors were incorrect in their charges of campaign finance abuses.

Transcendence “Transcendental strategies. . .move the audience away from the particulars of the charge at hand in a direction toward some more abstract, general view of his character” (Ware and Linkugel 1973, 280). Edwards chose to describe his rise through the political sphere as he offered a rhetorical self-defense for his actions. As he described his transition from being a successful lawyer to becoming a national public figure, he claimed that the evolution “fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want. You’re invincible. And there will be no consequences” (ABCNews.com).

Benoit’s Image Restoration Ware and Linkugel (1973) and Benoit (1995) have both provided widely cited strategies or categories of the apologetic form. Ware and Linkugel, as noted previously, set forth four factors or strategies: denial, bolstering, differentiation, and transcendence (275). Starting with these factors as a basis, Benoit’s Theory of Image Restoration combines previously developed theories and builds a

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more fully developed form for analysis of apologia. According to Benoit (1995), image restoration must occur if an individual has been accused of committing or being responsible for a specific offensive act that has occurred. The focus is on the concept of one’s image, which is the “perception of a person (or group, or organization) held by others” (Benoit and Brinson 1999, 145–146). Benoit and Brinson (1999) claim that “Threats to our reputation frequently compel us to attempt to repair our reputation: whenever we perceive that our image is at risk, we are inclined to take restorative action” (146). Image restoration strategies have long been used by politicians including Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton (Benoit 1995, Knight 2000, and Vartabedian and Vartabedia 2003). Benoit’s theory rests on the concept of image restoration as what he asserts is the basic goal of the apologist. He indicates that effective apologia is a goal-directed activity and that the main goal is the preservation of a positive image or reputation (Benoit 1995). In order to restore one’s image, there are a series of defense strategies that Benoit presents in his Theory of Image Restoration (1995). These key strategies are denial (“I did not do what you say I did”), evading responsibility (“It wasn’t my fault that it happened”), reducing offensiveness (“It wasn’t as bad as you say” or “Let’s look at all of the good that I’ve done”), corrective action (“It won’t happen again because I plan to do something to prevent it. . .”), and mortification (“I am remorseful over this event”).

Denial The term “denial” indicates a simple rejection of levied accusations; however, Benoit suggests that there are many methods in which someone may employ a denial strategy. The apologist may deny committing the action in question, deny that the action actually occurred, deny doing any harm while admitting to the act, or deny responsibility while shifting blame to another (Benoit 2006). Len-Rios and Benoit (2004) assert that denial is often a “preferred response” for political apologists (Len-Rios and Benoit 2004, 104). However, one who employs denial when evidence is clearly stacked against him/her is selecting the wrong strategy, as Edwards discovered. During the interview with Woodruff, Edwards admitted his affair with Hunter. However, he denied the paternity of the baby that she had and, interestingly enough, denied that he was in love with Hunter. Edwards’s final denial during the Woodruff interview involved the attempt to pay others to cover up the scandal in order to clear his name during the campaign. This denial

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was continued into the phase of indictments as well as the trial for campaign finance violations as he plead not-guilty to the charges. As a rhetorical strategy, this is clearly denial. However, denial is often a legal necessity as the burden of proof rests with prosecution and the apologist attempts to avoid punishment. The legal responsibilities will be explained in more depth in the discussion of Hearit’s crisis management strategies.

Evading responsibility Benoit (1997) describes the evasion of responsibility as an opportunity in which the defendant can point to an instigator who provoked the action, show how lack of control over the situation led to the action, explained how the action came about by accident, or indicate that there were good intentions when the act was committed. During the August 8, 2008, interview on ABC News Nightline, Edwards responded oddly to Woodruff ’s questions about a photograph published in the National Enquirer that supposedly showed him holding Hunter’s baby. He claimed that he “cannot make any sense out of that (picture). . .I don’t know if that picture is me, it could well be, it looks like me. I don’t know who that baby is, I have no idea what that picture is.” Pressed further by Woodruff who asked, “But are you saying you don’t remember holding that child of Miss Hunter?” Edwards insisted, “I’m saying you asked me about this photograph, I don’t know anything about that photograph, I don’t know who that baby is. I don’t know if the picture has been altered, manufactured, if it’s a picture of me taken some other time, holding another baby – I have no idea.” He continued, “Do you know how many pictures have been taken of me holding children in the last three years?” His attempts to dissemble and distract Woodruff and the viewers about the picture certainly indicate a significant evasion strategy. Both Edwards and his legal team made a number of statements indicating his ignorance of the contributions from Mellon and Baron, saying that they made the decision to pay for Young’s and Hunter’s expenses on their own without his knowledge. To this end, Edwards said during his Woodruff interview, “I had nothing to do with any money being paid, and no knowledge of any money being paid, and if something was paid, it wasn’t being paid on my behalf.” In response to a specific question about payments to Hunter by Fred Baron, Edwards’s former finance chair, Edwards said, “So what he chose to do or not do, I can’t explain, he’ll have to explain. . .Is it possible that he was worried that in fact something had happened with me, and he wanted to help? Of course that’s

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possible. I think all these things are possible.” Further, Andrew Young, Edwards’s former aide, served as the original scapegoat going so far as to indicate that he, not Edwards, was the father of Hunter’s baby. When the subject was broached during the Woodruff interview, Edwards indicated that he did not know the full truth, but that Young claimed paternity, so he wasn’t going to question that. In a separate press release, he stated, “I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby.”

Reducing offensiveness Apologists employing this strategy may bolster their image, minimize the harm done, differentiate between one’s own actions and those of others which were worse, transcend the accusations, attack their accusers, or offer some form of compensation to the victim (Benoit 1997). Edwards used a number of unsuccessful attempts to reduce the offensiveness during his responses to the accusations. During his interview with Woodruff, Edwards continually repeated that he had disclosed all information about the affair to his wife, Elizabeth, and that she had forgiven him and continued to reassert that forgiveness implying that the American public should forgive him as well. After all, if the beloved cancer-fighting woman scorned has forgiven him, why shouldn’t we? While he claimed to be beating himself up over the Hunter affair, he overstated his assumption that others “can’t possibly beat me up more than I’ve already beaten myself up.” Well, indeed the viewers could, and unfortunately, his comments such as his defense to Woodruff ’s accusation of, not only infidelity, but cheating on a spouse with cancer, got quite a bit of media coverage. It “happened during a period after she was in remission from cancer. . .” just didn’t cut the mustard with the American public.

Corrective action Corrective action is “perceived as more effective and appropriate than most image restoration options” (Benoit and Drew 1997, 159). This indicates that audiences want to see true remorse expressed in vindication for the victim of the alleged offense. In employing this strategy, apologists “may offer to repair existing damages and/or to take steps to prevent recurrence of the offensive act” (Benoit and Drew 1997, 156). Often, “the public confession – the public taking of responsibility – involves a ritual sacrifice” on “the theory that you’re

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no longer fit to hold [the job] or simply because an offering signals true remorse and means you are serving your figurative time, even if you’re not going to serve actual time” (Holmes 2011). According to an article by political analyst George Stephanopolous, Edwards must “focus on deeds, not words” because his “once fabled rhetorical skills” are invalid since “no one will buy his speeches” (May 17, 2012). In an attempt to demonstrate corrective actions, John Edwards admitted in his January 21, 2010, statement to the press that he was indeed the father of the baby with his former mistress and that he was providing financial support to his daughter. In his statement, he indicated an interest for involvement in her life saying, “I have been able to spend time with her during the past year and trust that future efforts to show her the love and affection she deserves can be done privately and in peace.”

Mortification Mortification requires some level of acceptance of responsibility on the part of the accused. A variety of studies imply that “mortification can be vital to image restoration efforts” (Len-Rios and Benoit 2004, 104). More specifically, a number of politicians found that their waning support actually increased after they accepted responsibility for their actions and appeared to be contrite (Benoit 2006). An examination of Edwards’s apologia quickly indicates that, once he confessed his misdeeds, he relied heavily on mortification as a self-defense strategy. During the course of the interview with Woodruff, Edwards stated, “Two years ago, I made a very serious mistake, a mistake that I am responsible for and no one else. In 2006, I told Elizabeth about the mistake, asked her for her forgiveness, asked God for his forgiveness. And we have kept this within our family since that time” (ABCNews.com). At points in the Woodruff interview, Edwards made statements of mortification such as, “I alone am responsible for it [his affair and the ensuing problems].” Further, he said, “I made a serious mistake. . .” and continued to admit “a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism” that led him to his behavior. Frequently, politicians apologize saying, “I take fully responsibility for my actions” but it may merely be an empty statement used because they have “poor quality apologies. . .that have transformed the concept of contrition into something that can be used to subtly deflect attention away” from themselves (Holmes, June 7, 2011). Edwards attempted a mortification strategy again in his January 21, 2010, statement in which he finally admitted the paternity of his daughter, Quinn. He apologized saying, “to all those I have

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disappointed and hurt, these words will never be enough, but I am truly sorry.” His final comments on the matter occurred after the announcement of the verdict on May 31, 2012, as he stated, “I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong, and there is no one else responsible for my sins.” He continued as he made certain that he blamed no other party involved and claimed full responsibility saying, “I am responsible, and if I want to find the person who should be held accountable for my sins, honestly, I don’t have to go any further than the mirror.”

Hearit’s crisis management strategies One may also think of apologia as a plea for absolution through the telling of one’s story (Hearit 1994, 1996, 2001). After all, “this understanding is consistent with the etymological origins of apologia” (Hearit 2001, 5). So apologia is used as a persuasive tool to make excuses and provide “explanations that attempt to situate behavior” and an effective apologia is one that provides the most “plausible” story (Hearit 2001, 5). Hearit and Brown (2004) state that successful apologia must “bring absolution on two levels” (464). The apologist must make the appropriate rhetorical response and then offer some form of corrective action (Hearit and Brown 2004). Hearit developed a system of rhetorical strategies to manage public relations crises and proposed five postures for an apologist to consider: denial, counterattack, differentiation, apology (not to be confused with apologia), and legal response (could be Denials or Silence for legal reasons). Note the connection between Hearit’s postures with those posited by Ware and Linkugel or Benoit. They overlap with strategies such as denial (one of Ware and Linkugel as well as Benoit’s key strategies), counterattack (a part of Benoit’s “Reducing Offensiveness”), differentiation (one of Ware and Linkugel’s strategies and a part of Benoit’s “Reducing Offensiveness”), and apology (a part of Benoit’s “Mortification”). However, Hearit’s work adds the idea of the legal component to provide a specialized basis for denying charges or refusing to speak to them. This is particularly useful in the Edwards’s case because of the ensuing legal troubles caused by the alleged misuse of campaign contributions.

Denial Hearit explains denial as a simple rejection of guilt in which one may argue that the facts will clear the accusations (2001; Hearit and Brown 2004). This supports

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Ware and Linkugel’s categorization system as well as Benoit’s theory of image restoration strategies. Edwards continued to use denials in a variety of manners regarding the affair, the paternity of Hunter’s baby, and the campaign finance violations. Since Edwards’s denial attempts were discussed in depth in the previous two sections, his use of this strategy is already satisfactorily documented.

Counterattack By shifting blame, apologists “achieve absolution by transferring it [guilt] to another” (Hearit and Brown 2004, 460). When Edwards accused the media of “buying into these lies” of the relationship between himself and Hunter, he was attempting to move the blame from himself to an aggressive media looking for scandal (which he claimed did not exist). Further, Edwards repeatedly attacked the National Enquirer calling it a “supermarket tabloid” throughout his interview with Woodruff. Admitting that they did find truth, he countered it by reminding viewers that “there’s also a lot of these, you know, supermarket tabloid allegations are just lies, they’re complete lies. But this, this mistake, is the truth.” In his written press release, he was even more explicit, saying, “When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough.”

Differentiation Again, Hearit defines differentiation much as Ware and Linkugel did. Hearit (2001) indicates that apologists employing differentiation are attempting to “distance themselves from their guilt” (16). Edwards’s attempts to distance himself from the accusations were discussed in the earlier segment detailing Ware and Linkugel’s apologetic strategies.

Apology Accepting guilt through “engaging in a process of self-mortification” in addition to “a strategy of corrective action” allows apologists another method to handle accusations (Hearit and Brown 2004, 460). In both Edwards’s press release as well as his interview with Woodruff on August 8, 2008, Edwards apologizes for his “error in judgment” saying, “It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I

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am sorry.” Perhaps it is “inadequate,” but he needed to say it anyway. On January 21, 2010, Edwards issued a statement finally admitting to the paternity of his daughter, Quinn Hunter. Stating “it was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me,” Edwards simply admits his wrongdoing.

Legal response In 2008, Edwards was indicted on six counts of conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions, and false statements. He plead not-guilty and, upon leaving the courthouse, made a public statement saying that he had “done wrong” but that he “did not break the law” (“Transcript: John Edwards’ Statement” June 4, 2011). Once the trial began, he remained silent and let his legal team provide his voice. Interestingly, his legal team opted to use former aide Andrew Young as a stooge implying that he (Young) was unreliable and had so much to gain from the court case that he was willing to lie (CNN Wire Staff May 31, 2012). During the trial, Young testified that both Baron and Mellon were paying to cover Hunter’s living expenses and also admitted that he had personally profited from their contributions. The defense team argued that Young was continuing to benefit despite his involvement in falsely claiming paternity of Hunter’s baby and his financial gains and could, therefore, not be believed. The prosecution claimed that the defense was attempting to “distract jurors from focusing on the charges against Edwards” (CNN Wire Staff May 31, 2012). When the trial was over and the verdict announced, Edwards told reporters that “While I do not believe I did anything illegal, or ever thought that I was doing anything illegal, I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong” (Stableford May 31, 2012).

Discussion Edwards was a former U.S. senator from North Carolina, a twice-failed presidential primary candidate, and a failed vice presidential candidate on the general election ticket with John Kerry in 2004. There was some speculation that Edwards could be on the 2008 ticket with Barack Obama, but that was not likely even before the “Hunter Affair” (Yost, 2008, A6). Regardless, at 55 years of age, Edwards had a seemingly promising political future. He was, after all, the “Democratic golden boy with the Carolina drawl, boyish grin, and flip-flop hairstyle” (Jonsson 2011). However, the aftermath of the scandal leaves Edwards

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a bleak outlook toward a political career. In fact, his “lying and the media coverage of the scandal have, to this point in time, abbreviated his potentially long-lasting, high-profile political career” (Sipes 2011, 108). He “doesn’t get invited to political events, the University of North Carolina has distanced his name from a poverty foundation he initiated, and few people come to shake his hand” (Jonsson 2001). This analysis reviewed Edwards’s attempts to employ apologia and rebuild his image in the aftermath of the attacks, or kategoria. In early attempts, Edwards relied heavily on denial. However, as he moved into the less traditional interview situation with Bob Woodruff, he attempted to appear that he was truly sorry and accepting responsibility for his decision to have an affair with Hunter. At the time, this seemed effective as he was attempting to say that he was not in love with Hunter, but had made a mistake which violated the marital vows with his true love. This attempt at mortification rang false after Elizabeth Edwards’s death and John Edwards continued his relationship with Hunter. His rhetorical blunders simply continued to mount. In any crisis, including Edwards’s reputational crisis built by the scandal, it is vital for individuals to avoid contradictions in the apologetic or image restorative strategies they employ (Coombs 2004; Ihlen 2002). As Benoit (1997) states, “mortification cannot be guaranteed to improve one’s image. One must appear sincere” (264). During Andrew Young’s interview with Bob Woodruff, he claimed that the only reason Edwards ever admitted the affair, much less the paternity of the baby, was because the facts had already been revealed and he was trying to backtrack, and that the confession was an empty exercise. Young stated that he believed Edwards’s statement was made up of “words, empty words. If that is what he [Edwards] wanted to say, he should have said it two years ago. I think it’s just a PR campaign” (Ferran, Ross, Shubailat, and Francescani 2010). The fact that Edwards’s statement came out just prior to the release of his former aide’s tell-all book provides some support for Young’s claim. This lack of sincerity in expression of regret contributed to Edwards’s continued downfall. Because his continued denials ended up being proven true, his reputation was irreparably damaged throughout the trial for campaign finance violations. During the course of the trial, jurors had such difficulty determining the veracity of his claim to ignorance of donations that a mistrial was declared and the Justice Department eventually dropped charges. Because Edwards did not testify, the jurors were unable to deliberate the truth or falsity of his position. Additionally, the prosecution was unable to meet their burden of proof and realized that they

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did not have enough evidence to retry the case. Regardless of the failings of the prosecution, Edwards’s ethos suffered irreparable harm. As other politicians who have found themselves in similar quandaries have found, Edwards has discovered that “. . .although apologia have as their goal the repair of a social relationship, they are a remarkably ineffectual vehicle by which to accomplish such a purpose” (Hearit 2001, 17). The premise behind apologia for image restoration is centered on achieving a face-saving goal that might allow the apologist to recreate his or her identity in a more positive light (Burns and Bruner 2000). Despite the fact that the charges against Edwards were dropped, his reputation served such harm that previous hopes that he could come back were dashed. Stephanopoulos remarked that he has never seen approval numbers as low as Edwards received in the CBS News/New York Times poll and that “those kind of numbers rule out a political career” (May 17, 2012). Perhaps future politicians who find themselves in Edwards’s situation will learn from his mistakes or, better yet, learn in time to avoid them altogether. Despite the utility of an analysis such as this one, one should note the limitations inherent within it – namely, isolated speech artifacts may not yield the same important discovery that a pattern of self-defense could provide. An examination of John Edwards’s rhetorical artifacts throughout his political career and beyond his terms in elected office could allow critics to observe a variety of strategic self-defense tactics. Scholars such as Knight (2000) have observed scandal-plagued Bill Clinton’s strategies in patterns or trends which give greater depth of understanding, but Edwards does not have the background to allow such in-depth examination to determine whether or not the ABC News interview and the interviews surrounding his trial are indicative of a characteristic style or merely isolated instances. Further, most studies of apologetic rhetoric employ limited strategies (Benoit and Drew 1997). While this study attempted to include a variety of strategies identified by top scholars in this specific field, there may have been others that may have proven valuable that were not included. It appears that, in the case of apologia studies, the framework of analysis for examination of strategies is quite adequate (Burns and Bruner 2000), but the politician’s actual statements that are available for analysis using the established framework may not provide an encompassing insight. The final limitation which makes the study of apologia so incredibly difficult is the vital presence of the rhetorical situation. There is no “cookie cutter” way for a politician to react in a scandal. While studies indicate that mortification and corrective action tend to be the most useful rhetorical strategies in apologia, the given situation may

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indicate that the accused employ other strategies instead (Benoit and Drew 1997). Therefore, the value of such studies in apologia may prove to be more useful as a reflective analysis of what did or did not work in a given situation rather than a prescriptive tool for bumbling politicians embroiled in the midst of a scandal. In the future, there are a number of directions that scholars might consider in similar analyses. Note that those connected to the apologist may be important considerations in forthcoming research. When Bob Woodruff asks Edwards “how could you have done this (to your wife)?” was Edwards less effective in employing self-defense strategies than someone whose wife was not so publicly battling cancer? When Edwards publicly denied the paternity of his daughter and then later recanted, saying, “It was wrong for me to ever deny she was my daughter,” was his ethos irrevocably damaged? Perhaps further exploration of Bitzer’s notion of the rhetorical situation developed in his classic 1968 study outlining the importance of exigencies, audience, and constraints to the apologist could develop a more entrenched understanding of this situation. Edwards specifically requested an opportunity to be interviewed by ABC News. The critical moments here reflect the considerable influence of media in contemporary apologia. Media coverage and even sound bites certainly can have a significant impact on the more immediately perceived effectiveness of apologia. There also are obviously expanded apologetic form choices for the contemporary apologist. For example, in this case, Edwards chose an interview format over the traditional apologetic address for his initial statements, but later opted for brief prepared statements before the press. It appears that Edwards’s choices may have resulted in a bizarre mutation of classic apologia. The apology continues to be an intriguing rhetorical moment, and the preceding issues are among those that critics and apologists have grappled with in the past decades, and they will surely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As it was in ancient times, the contemporary apology appears to be an important, albeit more media- and technologically driven, rhetorical force in our times. Indeed, future apologists should choose their rhetorical devices accordingly. As Benoit (1997) notes, “apologies are not easy for anyone to give” but politicians are in a unique position and, when they do employ apologia, their public “may think about what might happen” and “the potential future consequences” of future mistakes while in office (255). Simply put, it would be better if politicians quit making “mistakes” and stay far away from illicit sexual

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activity if they want to continue their political careers. Even Edwards seemed to see the “writing on the wall” when, during his interview with Woodruff, he responded to a question about his political future by saying, “I’m not sure I had a political career for the future anyway.” Happily, it isn’t only scholars who have words of advice for those who find themselves in such political sex scandals. According to Biesecker (2012), in the campaign finance violation trial, a friend of 101-year-old Rachel “Bunny” Mellon was asked about Mellon’s impressions of how her $725,000 was spent. “She thought maybe you [Edwards] should probably pay for your girlfriend yourself.” These are truly words of wisdom for future politicians.

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Conclusions As this volume indicates, political scandals rarely manifest themselves in simple, predictable patterns. Because of the violation of trust that is inherent with scandal (financial, ethical, or sexual) by those entrusted with public service, these aberrations are newsworthy and have genuine impacts. While many treatises on politics pay attention to formal institutions and recognize political behavior, all too often we ignore, or underestimate, the lasting impact political scandals have. This volume was designed to rectify that oversight. Since men are not angels, and men are the ones elected to office, political scandals are one of the few sure things in modern America. As has been made apparent from this volume, scandals come in many forms and some are more enticing than others, but all deserve consideration because all contribute to our perceptions about politics and our impression of those elected to office. The sexual scandals in particular capture our attention and our media coverage and are fodder for myriad jokes about our lawmakers. The financial scandals are similarly tantalizing since these stories play into the prevailing understanding of politicians-as-crooks. Election scandals are mostly viewed through an historical lens, but these too are instructive as they present to us the impression that elected officials are power-hungry spotlight-worshippers who will lie, cheat, and steal to obtain power. As our all-too-human politicians continue to become ensnared in scandal, we will undoubtedly continue to overgeneralize and view the greater group as malevolent and wanting. This will be a big mistake. There are hackneyed phrases about babies and bathwaters, or bad apples spoiling the bunch, that speak to the dangers of oversimplification. When we make sweeping assumptions about those whom we elect to serve us, we do far more damage to our political system than the politicians who betray our trust. Arguably, when a politician fails and is ensnared in scandal, he seeks to satisfy his own needs first, before those of his constituents. To some degree, we are all guilty of varying degrees of selfishness and so this type of error is explicable and easy to understand. Yet although humans are accident prone, we should not assume bad behavior on the part of all those elected to office. The vast majority of elected officials, regardless of their ideological position or party affiliation,

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are hardworking, good Americans who want to make a positive difference for their constituents. It is worth remembering what is newsworthy: that which is out of the ordinary. As the old journalistic aphorism reminds us, you never read about the airplanes that don’t crash. In other words, viewing politicians as wholly malevolent does a great disservice to the people we have hired to represent us. Furthermore, not only have we asked these people to do our civic heavy-lifting, we have concomitantly made it more difficult for them to achieve their goals. It is, today, far more expensive to run for office than in the past, the races are increasingly nasty and personal, and once they are in office we tend to complain. Wrapping the whole lot of politicians together as one is unfair to them and unfair to the system in which they work. It’s not all bad. The wicked stuff gets all the attention because this is what sells the news, but it is relatively uncommon and it is a poor reflection on ourselves. When a politician is ensnared in scandal, we take a certain amount of joy in their downfall, but it would be wise to remember that we were the people who elevated the politician in the first place to a position where he could fall so far. Perhaps we should remind ourselves, as well, that the exposure of a scandal is an indicator that the system does work, albeit with some occasional hiccups. Political systems in which scandals, graft, and corruption are endemic are ones that are barely functional. Thus, the situation in which the press and public are continuingly outraged and scandalized by these offenses is evidence of a selfcorrecting system. Additionally, we should be careful of committing the fallacy of attributing trends or generalizations to a specific person. Nothing good ever happens when we make sweeping generalizations about a representative body or about a group of people. As our trust in government diminishes, so too does our hope for progress and national improvement. An inspired and optimistic electorate will vote for inspiring and hopeful leaders, but a cynical body politic who believes “they’re all bums” will likely stay home on Election Day. Worse, this kind of cynicism will invariably lead to political candidates who will not only play upon our contempt but use it for their own purposes. As the editors, one of the conclusions we draw from this volume, and its authors, is the sense of how important this subject is to the study of politics. Beyond the prurient and salacious interests in these events and stories, the effects of political scandals writ large are rarely explored in an academic and

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rigorous manner, particularly from a multidisciplinary perspective. As detailed within these pages, scandals have the effect of changing operating procedures, governments, those who serve, and, perhaps most importantly, the public’s perception of politicians and political systems. We continue to need further explorations and studies of this phenomenon, if only to better understand politics in general.

Index Note: Letter ‘n’ followed by locators refers to notes. Abramoff, Jack 6, 16 ABSCAM scandal 5 Acheson, Dean 108 Adams, Brock 22 Adams, Sherman characteristics of 127–8 Eisenhower campaign and 127–8 exposé on 139–40 gift taking of 140–3 Goldfine and 129–32 lessons from 146–7 mental condition 144–5 reason for downfall of 138–9 refusal to resign 136–7 resignation of 137–8 tax troubles 146 testimony on Goldfine 133–4 Agnew, Spiro 228n. 19 Akin, Todd 202–3 Albert, Carl 49n. 2 Alcorn, Meade 137–8 Allen, George 201, 202 Alliance Gospel Tabernacle 217 Almanac of American Politics, The (Barone) 58, 223 Amerasia case 90–2 Amerasia scandal 100, 102–3, 117n. 13, 118n.16 American Communist Party 213 Anderson, Jack 139, 149n. 19 Andreotti, Giulio 188 antebellum period, corruption in Pennsylvania and 159–60 apologia accepting guilt and 266–7 bolstering stage of 259 corrective action 263–4 crisis management strategies 265–7 denial stage of 258–9, 261–2, 265–6

differentiation stage of 259–60 evading responsibility 262–3 image restoration 260–1 John Edwards and 256–8 legal response 267 mortification 264–5 reducing offensiveness 263 scandal and 253–5 transcendence stage of 260 Attualità (Italian newspaper) 185 Axtell, Enos 89 Baker, Bobby 145 Barnes, Ben 224–5, 229n. 30 Baron, Fred 252, 267 Barta, Carolyn 40 Bates, Jim 22 Beeler, Nate 242 Bellassai, Sandro 182 Benedict, Al 166 Benghazi 203–4 Biddle, Francis 95, 99 Bisaccia, Adriana 188, 191–2 Bisek, Callista 22 Black, Hugo 96–7, 116n. 6, 217 Boehner, John 20 bolstering stage of apologia 259 Bonior, David 44 bonusgate (Pennsylvania) 167–9 Braun, Carol Mosely 222 Breitbart, Anthony 241 bribery, in Pennsylvania 159–60, 170 Brooke Edward 222 Brown v. Board of Education 216, 218 Brownell, Herbert 103, 106, 109 Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) 92, 113 Burke, J. Herbert 25 Burrus, Rufus B. 112, 124n. 96 Bush, George H. W. 220

Index Bush, George W. 238 Byrnes, James 106–7 Byrnes, John 93 Cagle Post Cartoons and Commentary (www.cagle.com) 240 Caglio, Anna Maria Moneta 188, 190–1, 197n. 41 Cain, Harry 147n. 5 Cain, Herman 201 campaign finance violations 15 Campbell, Alexander 93 Cantor, Eric 51 Cardin, Ben 45 Carlson, Margaret 40 cartoons, political see political cartoons Castro, Joaquin 229n. 29 Castro, Julian 229n. 29 Catholic Action 180–2 Catholic Film Center (CCC) 181 Catholic politics, sex scandal and Communist Party and 182–3 Democrazia cristiana 179–80 favoritism 190 immorality, combating 182–3 kissing, campaign against public 181 media 185–7, 192 Montesi scandal and 179, 183–7, 190–3 personal morality 184 scandal fallout 192–3 Scelba scandal and 188–90 trial of Piccioni 188–9 Catholic Youth Tourist office (C.T.G) 181 Caudle, Lamar 90 Chelf subcommittee and 98–101 Clark scandal, complicity in 92–4 conviction of 120n. 46 interview, Des Moines Register 106 Justice Department cleanup and 95–6 Center for Public Integrity 155 Charlie Wilson’s War (film) 25 Chelf, Frank 98 Chelf subcommittee, Tom Clark and 97–101, 120–1n. 46 Childs, Jack 213 Childs, Morris 213 Chotiner, Murray 132 Cianfrani, Buddy 164

279

Cimenti, Fiorenzo 182 Cisneros, Henry 223–4 Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods 167 Civil Rights Act 215 civil rights movement 211–15 see also politics of race, scandal and Civil War 159, 161 Clark, Ramsey 108, 114, 123n. 80, 214 Clark, Tom 87–125 Chelf subcommittee and 97–101 congressional investigation of 88–92 ethical dilemmas of 109–10 house subpoena 105–12 Justice Department cleanup 94–6 Keating and, under fire 101–5 Lamar Caudle complicity and 92–4 steel seizure reprisals and 96–7 summary 112–15 Clinton, Bill 21, 22, 220, 236–7, 243 Clinton, Hillary 221, 243 Clinton–Gore campaign finance scandal 220 Coelho, Tony 6, 34 Cohen, Sheldon 146, 154n. 71 Colfax, Schuyler 49n. 2 Collins, Tai 21 Commission on Legislative Reform 170 Communist Youth Front (FGCI) 182 computergate, Pennsylvania 167–9 concealment 3–4 Congress, financial scandals in 6–14 congressional incumbent departures 51–66 congressional investigation, Tom Clark see Clark, Tom congressional scandals classification of 4 financial 8–14 leadership 29–46 see also leadership scandals, congressional other types 25–6 political 14–18 sexual 18–24 summary of 27–8 typology of 34 congressional scandals, electoral effects of 67–80 election context and 70–3 election years and 68

280

Index

political survival and 68–70 probit analyses 79 reelection rates, scandals and 73 scandals/election context 72 statistical analysis, of scandal effects 73–80 summary statistics 75 Connor, Bull 215–20 consequences for scandalous behavior 31–6 Conservative Opportunity Society (COS) 43 Cook, Charlie 57–8 Cooper, Richard 135 Coplon, Judith 95–6, 119–20n. 38 Corbett, Tom 167–8 Corcoran, Tommy 91–2 Corriere della sera (Italian newspaper) 184 corruption causes of political (Pennsylvania) 156–8 state, theories of 157–8 counterattack, crisis management strategy 266 court packing, Roosevelt and 87–8 Craig, Larry 236 Crane, Daniel 19–20 Credit Mobilier scandal 5, 49n. 2 crisis management strategies 265–7 Crummer mail fraud case 100–2, 113 Crummer, Roy 100, 105 Cunningham, Randy 6, 22 Dallas Morning News 40 Dall’Olio, Alessandro 188 Dawson, Donald 112 DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) 40 DeConcini, Dennis 5 De Gasperi, Alcide 180, 185, 188, 195n. 26 Dejarais, Scott 203–5 DeLay, Tom 6, 15 Democratic National Convention 225, 238, 245 Democratic Office of Legislative Research 168 denial stage of apologia 258–9, 261–2, 265–6 see also apologia departures, congressional incumbent see congressional incumbent departures

desegregation 219 Des Moines Register 106, 132–3 DeWeese, Bill 168–9 differentiation stage of apologia 259–60, 266 dignity index 252 Dodd, Thomas 6 Dolce Vita (film) 192–3 Dolce Vita scandal see Catholic politics, sex scandals and Doolittle, John 6 Douglas, William 103–4, 121–2n. 65 Dred Scott v. Sanford 111, 124n. 92 Dwyer, Budd 166 e-mail, destruction of (PA scandal) 167 Edson, Peter 102 Edwards, Elizabeth 251–3, 257, 263 Edwards, John 251–74 accepting guilt, apology and 266–7 apologia and 256–8 bolstering stage of apologia 259 corrective action stage of apologia 263–4 counter attack, strategy 266 cover up with campaign funds 223 crisis management strategies 265–7 denial stage of apologia 258–9, 261–2, 265–6 differentiation stage of apologia 259–60, 266 image restoration 260–1 kategoria and 255–6 legal response 267 media frames and 236 mortification, apologia 264–5 popular references to 243 reducing offensiveness 263 scandal 251–3 similarity to Carter and Clinton 223 summary 267–71 transcendence stage of apologia 260 Eisenhower, Dwight, Adams scandal and 106, 119n. 26, 127–8, 134, 145 election, presidential (of 2012) 201–5 impact of race on Obama 220–5 election scandals 275

Index elections, congressional scandals and see congressional scandals, electoral effects of electoral politics 38 Englehart, Bob 246 evading responsibility, apologia and 262–3 Famiglia Cristiana (Italian Catholic review) 186 family considerations 51–2 Family Front 181 Fanfani, Amintore 180, 188 favoritism 35 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 89 Martin Luther King, Jr., and 212–15 race, civil rights movement and 212 Federal Election Commission 15 Federal Trade Commission 131 Feese, Brett 168 Fellini, Federico 192–3 Ferguson, Homer 87 final straw scandal 33 financial scandals, congressional 5–14, 275 involving members of House of Representatives 8–14 as political scandal 157 Fineman, Herbert 165 Firsthand Report (Adams) 144 Flynt, Larry 21 Foley, Mark 20 Foley, Tom 42 Forrestal, James 91, 117–18n. 14 Fortas, Abe 88, 124–5n. 99 Fox, John 129, 133 Frank, Barney 20–1, 32 Frankfurter, Felix 89, 102, 116n. 6 Frost, Robert 136 Fumo, Vincent 165, 167 functionalist theory of scandal 172 Gardner, Colleen 19 Garmatz, Ed 34 Garrow, David J. 215 Gavuzzo, Gino 181 Gedda, Luigi 180 General Accounting Office 6 Gibney, Alex 152n. 48 Gilded Age 156, 161, 170–1

281

Gingrich, Newt 15, 22 scandals of 42–6 Wright scandal and 38–9 Giuliano, Salvatore 196n. 27 Glenn, John 5 Goldfine, Bernard, Adams 129–32, 141–2 see also Adams, Sherman Goldfine scandal 134 Gore, Al 238 Gorey, Hays 40 Graham, Lindsay 203 Gramm, Phil 224 Graves, Bibb 217 Gray, Robert K. 135–6 Gray, William H. 29 Gross, Harold 98 guilt by association 243 Gundle, Stephen 183–4 Hamilton, Alexander 155 HarperCollins 44 Harris, Oren 129 Harris Committee 134 Harrison, James A. 213 Hart, Gary 21 Hartford Courant 246 Hastert, Dennis 20 Hastings, James 7 Hays, Wayne 19 Hendrickson, Robert 109 Herter, Christian A. 135 Hiaasen, Cal 25 Hill, Anita 22 Hill, Lister 217 Hillings, Patrick 95, 100 Hinshaw, Andrew 7 Hiss, Alger 89 Hobbs Anti-Racketeering Act 165 Hoffman, Paul 151n. 44 Hoover, J. Edgar 109–10 Martin Luther King, Jr., and 212–15 House Bank 6, 201 House Ethics Committee 7, 15 House of Representatives, scandals in 6–14 financial scandals involving 8–14 other scandals, involving members of 25–6

282

Index

political scandals in 16–18 sex scandals involving members of 23–4 House Post Office scandals 7 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 89, 106–9, 122n. 72 Howe, Allan 20 HUAC see House Un-American Activities Committee Hunter, Rielle, Edwards scandal and 251–3, 255–6, 258–9 Hyde, Henry 21 hypocrisy 33 image restoration, apologia and 260–1, 269 immoral behavior 4 incumbent departures, congressional 51–66 individual personal scandals 35–7 individuals, corruption of, vs. state 158 institutional consequences, factors involved in 31–6 internal politics, of scandals 37 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Adams scandal and 141–2, 144, 146 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 106, 109 involuntary departures, see congressional incumbent departures Iran-Contra affair 220 Italy see Catholic politics, sex scandal and Jackson, C.D. 144 Jackson, Jesse, Jr. 7 Jackson, Robert 88, 114, 115n. 1, 116n. 6 Jefferson, William 6, 62 Jim Crow segregation 216 junk bond deal 6, 34 Justice Department cleaning up 94–6 corruption in, congress search for 92 see also Clark, Tom Kansas City Star 89 Kansas City vote fraud 89–90, 92, 96, 98–100, 102–3, 113 kategoria, scandal and 255–6 see also apologia

Keating, Charles 5–6 Keating, Kenneth 89, 98, 100 Clark investigation and 101–5 Keating Five scandal 5 Kennedy, John F. Adams scandal and 138–9, 145 Martin Luther King, Jr., and 214 Kennedy, Robert 138–9, 214–15 Kilpatrick, Kwame 235–6 King, Cecil 93–4 King, Coretta Scott 215 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 212–15 see also politics of race, scandal and Klehr, Harvey 91 Koreagate scandal 5 Krock, Arthur 138 Kury, Franklin 162–3 Larsen, Rolf 166 Leader, George 163 leadership scandals, congressional 29–50 conclusions 46 Jim Wright and politics of personal destruction 38–42 Newt Gingrich 42–6 sack the quarterback 37 targeted for importance 37 types of 31–7 Lee, Christopher 21 Levinson, Stanley 213, 214 Lewinsky, Monica 22, 236–7 Lincoln, Blanche 202 Lincoln Savings & Loan 5–6 Lisi, Antonello Galeazzi 188 Livingstone, Bob 21–2, 34–5 lobbyists, corruption and 159, 163–4 Lombardi, Father Riccardo Lombardi 181 Lott, Trent 31, 49n. 4 Lukens, Donald 20, 22, 34 Luscombe, Belinda 251 lying, political sex scandals and 242–3 Mahoney, Tim 20 Mallick, George 38 Manzini, Raimondo 186–7 Manzo, Michael 168 Marchesi, Concetto 183 Márquez, Gabriel García 195n. 16

Index Martino, Gaetano 197n. 38 martyred leader 34 Marx, Louis 142–3 Massa, Eric 22, 62 Mazzei, Frank 165 McCain, John 5, 203 McCarthy, Joseph 90, 107 McCaskill, Claire 202 McClure, John 162, 163 McCormack, John 29–30 McCrary, Tex 93, 119n. 26, 142–3 McDermott, Jim 5 McFall, John 5, 31 McGranery, James 96, 100–1 McGrath, Howard Chelf subcommittee and 98 Justice Department cleanup 94–6 Tom Clark and 93–4, 115n. 1 McInerney, James 117–18n. 14 McPhee, Roemer 149n. 21 media coverage of scandals 57, 60–2 political cartoons and, see political cartoons, Anthony Weiner scandal and media framing, Anthony Weiner scandal and 233–5 Mellon, Rachel 252, 267 Mellow, Robert 167 Michel, Bob 41 Miller, Candice 15 Miller, Merle Plain Speaking 111–2, 124n. 93 Miller, Norman 98 Mills, Wilbur 18–19 Minton, Sherman 88, 113, 115–16n. 4 Mollenhoff, Clark 149n. 19, 1323 Mollohan, Allan 62 Mondale, Walter 223 Montagna, Ugo 187–93 see also Catholic politics, sex scandal and; Montesi Affair Montesi Affair 85, 179, 183–7, 190–3 see also Catholic politics, sex scandal and Montgomery Bus Boycott 213 Montorzi, Adelaide 191 Morgan, Gerry 132 Morris, Newbold 94–5

283

mortification, apologia 264–5 Moss, John 134 Mourdock, Richard 202–3 muckraking culture 128 Murphy, Frank 87–8, 115n. 1 Musto, Ralph 167 Muto, Silvano 185, 187, 190–1 Nation, The 213 National Anti-Blasphemy Crusade 181 National Association of Large Families 181 National Enquirer 251, 256, 258, 266 New York Times 57, 106, 138, 187, 213, 236 Ney, Bob 6, 51–2 Nixon, Richard M. 94 Adams scandal and 134–5, 151n. 39 Watergate and 220 Nolan, Tom 165 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 139, 154n. 70 Obama, Barack cartoon imagery of, analysis 238 election scandals (2012) 201–5 impact of race on election of 220–5 political cartoon of 241–2 Wright, race and 225–7 Obey, David 41 Office of Strategic Services (OSS) 90 official resources, misuse of 14 Oggi (Italian magazine) 179 Olgiati, Francesco 195n. 18 O’Neill, Tip 5, 19 Operation Fast and Furious 67 Orie, Jane 167 Osservatore Romano (Vatican paper) 185–6, 192 Packwood, Robert 22 Paese sera (Italian newspaper) 187, 189, 192 Pagliarini, Carlo 182 Pajetta, Giancarlo 189 paparazzi 183, 186 Paperman, Mildred 153n. 59 Parker-Young company 140 Partisan Voting Index (PVI) 57–8 Patrick, Deval 222 patronage jobs 162, 170 Patterson, Bradley 132, 149n. 21

284

Index

Pavone, Tommaso 189 pay grab scandal, Pennsylvania 166–7, 170 Pearson, Drew 95, 128–9, 136 Peirce, Neal 155 Pendergast political machine 89–90, 117n. 9–10 Pendleton Act, Pennsylvania 162 Pennsylvania General Assembly scandal antebellum period 159–60 bonusgate 167–9 causes, of political corruption 156–8 computergate 167–9 corruption, history of in 155–6 current scandals 166–7 Grand Jury report 169–70 legislative modernization 164–6 partisanship in 171 Pendleton Act 162 Republican era of corruption and 160–2 scandal, persistence of in 170–3 summary 173 in twentieth century 162–4 Pennsylvania Railroad 162, 163 Penrose, Boies 161–2 Perry, Rick 224 Perzel, John 168 Petacci, Claretta 187 Piccioni, Attilio 185, 193 Piccioni, Piero 185, 187–8, 191–2 see also Catholic politics, sex scandal and Pioneers Association of Italy (API) 182–3 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 168 Podell, Betram 34 political cartoons, Anthony Weiner scandal and 231–50 analysis of scandal, as portrayed in 240–1 background on scandal 239–40 critiquing frame 242–3 current events, scandal frame 244–5 framing analysis, of cartoons 237–9 framing scandal 235–7 guilt by association, frame 243 in his own words, frame 241–2 media framing 233–5 sexting 244 summary 245–7

political corruption, causes of (Pennsylvania) 156–8 political scandal(s) 14–18 elements of 3–4 in House of Representatives 16–18 impact of 209 types of 156–7 see also Catholic politics, sex scandal and; politics of race, scandal and political survival, congressional scandals and 68–70 politics, internal, of scandals 37 politics of race, scandal and 211–29 civil rights movement, scandal and 211–12 FBI, Martin Luther King, Jr., and 212–15 Obama, Wright, race, American politics and 225–7 race, impact of on election 220–5 segregation, as scandal 215–20 Politics by Other Means (Ginsberg & Shefter) 36–7 Polito, Saverio 184–5, 191–2 Pompei Report 190–1 Pope Pius XII 180 Popolo (il) (Italian Christian Democratic paper) 183, 185 Post Office scandal 201 Powell, Adam Clayton 6 power scandal, as political scandal 157 Pozzonovo affair 183 premature departures, see congressional incumbent departures presidents, scandals and 204 Pritchett, Laurie 216 professional legislature 164 Profumo Affair 83–4, 214 public denunciation 4 public opinion 38 punishment/consequences, for scandalous behavior 31–6 Pyle, Howard 135 Quay, Matthew 161 Quotidiano (il) (Italian Catholic Action newspaper) 182, 191

Index race impact on Obama election 220–5 politics of see politics of race, scandal and race riots 118n. 22 Radosh, Ronald 91 railroads 159, 161, 162 Rangel, Charlie 7 rape, legitimate 202 Ray, Elizabeth 19 Rayburn, Sam 129 reducing offensiveness, apologia and 263 Reed, Chauncey 103 Reed, Stanley 89, 102 Reflections of a Public Man (Wright) 38 reprimand plus 45 reprimanded congressmen 31 Republican era of corruption, Pennsylvania 160–2 Republican National Committee 107 responsibility, evading, apologia and 262–3 Reynolds, Mel 20 Rice, Donna 21 Richards, Ann 224 Riegle, Donald 5 Robb, Charles 21 Robinson, William 135 Rockefeller, John D. 161 Rodriguez, Victor 224 Rogers, Byron 99, 104 Rollins, Ed 40–1 Roma (Italian journal) 184–5 Romney, Mitt, election scandals (2012) 202–5 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 87–8 Rosenberg, Ethel 103–4 Rosenberg, Julius 103–4 Rosenthal, Alan 169, 171 Rostenkowski, Dan 6 Rotondi, Virginio 188 Russ, William 155 sack the quarterback 35–7, 41 see also Wright, Jim Sanchez, Ricardo 224 Sanchez, Tony 224 Sanford, Mark 45–6, 236

285

Savage, Gus 20 Scelba, Mario 181, 185, 188–90 Schuster, Ildefonso 182 Schwartz, Bernard 131–2, 134, 148n. 7 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 243 Scott, Hugh 31 Scranton, William 162 Seattle Times 22 Securities and Exchange Commission, Goldfine investigation and 132, 133 segregation, as scandal, Bull Connor and 215–20 self-defense see apologia Senate Committee on Government Operations 107 Senate Ethics Committee 5–6 separation of powers 88, 102, 105, 107, 113–4 Sepe, Raffaele 190–1 sex scandals consequences of 31–2 defined 4 House of Representative members and, 23–4 Martin Luther King, Jr., and 213–14 as political scandal 157 technology-based 235–6 see also Catholic politics, sex scandal and; Montesi affair sexting 244 sexual assignation 4 sexual scandals 18–24 see also Edwards, John Sikes, Bob 34 Slaughter, Roger 89 Smith, Lawrence 89 Smith, Nick 15 Sotgiu, Guiseppe 191 Southern Christian Leadership Conference 216, 219–20 Southern Negro Youth Conference 217 speech, self-defense, see apologia Spitzer, Eliot 236 squeeze bills 162, 170 Standard Oil 161 state corruption, theories of 157–8 statistical analysis, of congressional scandal effects 73–80

286 steel mill seizures, reprisals from 96–7, 111–12, 120n. 41, 124n. 95 Stephanopolous, George 264 Stone, Harlan 87 strategic retirement see congressional incumbent departures Streeter, Mark 241 Strip Tease (Hiaasen) 25 Studds, Gerry 19–20 Sun Oil 162, 163 Sweig, Martin 29–30 Sweig-Voloshen scandal 30 systemic flaws, scandals and 35 Taft, Robert 87–8, 115n. 2, 125n. 103 Taft, William Howard 116n. 5 Taft-Hartley law 96 tax offenders, prosecution of 92 Taylor, Glen 217 Taylor, Harvey 162, 163 Thomas, Clarence 22 Thompson, Frank 19 Time-Life 144 Time magazine 40, 251 Togliatti, Palmiro 187 trade-offs model (of the vote) 53 Traficant, James 62 transcendence, stage of apologia 260 transgression 3–4 Trinity United Church of Christ 226 Truman, Harry, Clark scandal and 89, 92, 94, 96–7, 106–8, 110–12 Tucker, Ray 94–6, 98–9 Tupini, Umberto 188, 191 Twitter 244 Tydings, Millard 91 Udall, Morris 222 USA Today 236 Valli, Aldia 187, 192 Vandenberg, Arthur 115n. 2, 125n. 103 Velde Harold 89, 106–7, 109

Index Veon, Mike 168 Victor Emmanuel III (Italy) 197n. 37 Vicuna Coat scandal 139 Vie Nuove (Italian Communist review) 185 Vietnam War 238 Vinson, Fred, Clark scandal and 103, 106, 109–11, 121n. 59 Voloshen, Nathan 29–30 Voting Rights Act 220, 221 Waggoner, Joe 20 Wallace, Henry 217 Walsh, Jerome 89 Walter, Francis 107 Washington Post 19, 21 57, 132 Watergate 36 Ways and Means Committee 18–19 Weiner, Anthony 21, 49n. 3 see also political cartoons, Anthony Weiner scandal and Wheeler, William 103 White, Harry Dexter, scandal 106–10, 122n. 72 Whitehead, Troy 93 Whitman, Ann 137 Wilder, Doug 222 Wilkie, Wendell 222 Williams, Harrison 5 Williams, John 115, 125n. 103 Wilson, Charlie 25 wiretaps, of Martin Luther King, Jr. 214 Woodruff, Bob, Edwards scandal and 251–2, 256–7, 261–2, 268 World Health Organization 244 Wright, Jeremiah election of Barack Obama and 220–5 Obama, race, American politics and 225–7 Wright, Jim 6, 15, 30 politics, of personal destruction, 38–42 Young, Andrew 252, 267, 268 Young, John 19