Abstract
Political scientist Theodore Lowi has termed the study of scandals ‘scandology’.1 This emergent discipline evaluates the dynamics of political scandal and, additionally, endeavours to understand why many scandals have similar lines of development and conclusion. At first glance, all scandals seem to follow different patterns, all seem unique. Yet, in modern American politics there appear a number of components which often recur. Some of the more prominent elements include: the appearance of scapegoats, extensive television and media coverage directed at a narrow band of political issues, a Congress in conflict with the Executive, and perhaps most notably, heightened public cynicism about the integrity of public officials. In any single scandalous episode there is no guarantee that all these particular ingredients will manifest themselves. However, their existence as a collective entity, and the aggregate similarity of scandals across time, facilitates the study of scandals and thereafter an associated comparison of damage control efforts and presidential recovery.
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Notes
Theodore Lowi, ‘Foreword’ in, Andrei S. Markovits and Mark Silverstein, ed. The Politics of Scandal: Power and Process in Liberal Democracies (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988) p. vii.
Suzanne Garment, ‘Political Imperfections: Scandal Time in Washington’ Public Opinion 10 no. 1 (May/June 1987) p. 11.
Phil Williams, Crisis Management: Confrontation and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age (London: Martin Robertson, 1976) p. 20.
See also, Patrick Lagadec (translated by Jocelyn M. Phelps) Preventing Chaos in a Crisis: Strategies for Prevention, Control and Damage Limitation (Maidenhead, Berks: McGraw-Hill, 1993) pp. 25–41.
For example, ‘Outside Advisers Urge Reagan to Act on Crisis’ Washington Post 12 December 1986, p. A1.
Cited in, Suzanne Garment, Scandal: the Crisis of Mistrust in American Politics (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1991) p. 14.
Lowi, ‘Foreword’, The Politics of Scandal (1988) p. vii.
Coral Bell states: ‘The essence of true crisis in any given relationship is that the conflicts within it rise to a level which threatens to transform the nature of the relationship... The concept is of normal strain rising to the level of breaking strain.’ Coral Bell, The Conventions of Crisis: a Study in Diplomatic Management (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) p. 9.
Murray Edelman, Political Language: Words that Succeed and Policies that Fail (London: Academic Press, 1977) p. 44.
Lowi, ‘Foreword’, The Politics of Scandal (1988) p. x.
Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power: the Politics of Leadership from FDR to Carter (New York: John Wiley, 1980) p. vi.
Garment comments: ‘The absence of a real locus of power and the consequent escalation of the traditional quarrel between the executive and legislative branches in foreign affairs — common symptoms in post-Watergate Washington — are what led to Iran-contra.’ Garment, Scandal: the Crisis of Mistrust in American Politics (1991) p. 221.
Madison clearly believed that there were potent problems with both: ‘If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this; you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.’ Cited in, Philip B. Kurland, Watergate and the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) p. 6.
Kenneth E. Sharpe, ‘The Real Cause of Irangate’ Foreign Policy no. 68 (Fall 1987) p. 34.
Joel Brinkley and Stephen Engelberg. ed. (Daniel K. Inouye and Lee H. Hamilton) Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair. With the Minority Views. Abridged edition (New York: Times Books, 1988) p. 362
Lawrence E. Walsh, Iran-Contra: the Final Report (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1994) p. 562
Eisenstadt remarks: ‘It is fair to say that American parties and politics have expressed a contest not over ideologies but over alternatives, not between classes but between blocs of interests. The system itself has not been called into question, but only the corrupt way it is said to have been run. Thus the system is safeguarded, put beyond discussion. The system has not been called corrupt; instead the accusation is shifted onto those entrusted with conduct of the system...’, Abraham S. Eisenstadt, ‘Political Corruption in American History’ in Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Michael Johnston, Victor T. Levine, eds, Political Corruption: a Handbook (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1989) pp. 538–9.
Andrei S. Markovits and Mark Silverstein, ‘Introduction: Power and Process in Liberal Democracies’ in Markovits and Silverstein, eds, The Politics of Scandal (1988) p. 2.
Over the issue of the Boland amendments and the different legal interpretations advanced by the Reagan White House, Boland himself argued: ‘... You know, they’ve got the whole Department of Justice to ask for legal opinions. If they thought it was unconstitutional that would have been a good time to question it.’ Cited in Sidney Blumenthal, Our Long National Daydream (New York: Harper & Row, 1988) p. 267.
Michael Johnston, ‘Right and Wrong in American Politics: Popular Conceptions of Corruption’ in Heidenheimer et al., Political Corruption: A Handbook (1989) p. 747.
Vice-President Bush explained: ‘Our administration has been the victim of individuals who haven’t had the judgment or integrity to put the public’s business above their own selfish interest.’ Shelley Ross, Fall from Grace: Sex, Scandal and Corruption in American Politics from 1702 to the Present (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988) p. 269.
Cited in, Garment, Scandal: the Crisis of Mistrust in American Politics (1991) p. 6.
Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (London: Pluto Press, 1988) p. 11.
‘Revelation of scandal is healthy, and parties have incentives to reveal the indiscretions of the opposition party or parties.’ Lowi, ‘Foreword’, The Politics of Scandal (1988) p. x.
Edelman, Political Language (1977) p. 46.
Public Opinion 10 no. 3 (September/October 1987) p. 7.
Ross, Fall from Grace (1988) p. 270.
John M. Orman, Presidential Secrecy and Deception: Beyond the Power to Persuade (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980) p. xiv.
Thomas Cronin, ‘Everybody Believes in Democracy Until He Gets to the White House: an Examination of White House Departmental Relations’ Law and Contemporary Problems 35 no. 3 (Summer 1970) p. 573.
See, George C. Edwards III, The Public Presidency: the Pursuit of Popular Support (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983) p. 191.
Lee Sigelman and Kathleen Knight, ‘Why Does Presidential Popularity Decline? A Test of the Expectation/Disillusion Theory’ Public Opinion Quarterly 47 no. 3 (Fall 1983) p. 312.
Of Watergate and Iran-Contra, Koh states: ‘Both incidents ultimately stemmed from executive efforts to sustain a war in a Third World country by bypassing established channels of command.’ Harold Hongju Koh, The National Security Constitution: Sharing Power after the Iran-Contra Affair (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990) p. 11.
For a discussion on the Cold War and the avoidance of conventional policy procedure, see Theodore Sorensen, Watchmen in the Night: Presidential Accountability after Watergate (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975) p. 19.
Edwards, The Public Presidency (1983) p. 156.
Barry B. Hughes, The Domestic Context of American Foreign Policy (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1978) p. 5.
Lee Sigelman and Pamela Johnston Conover, ‘The Dynamics of Presidential Support During International Conflict Situations: the Iranian Hostage Crisis’ Political Behavior 3 no. 4 1981, p. 306.
Robert Y. Shapiro and Benjamin I. Page, ‘Foreign Policy and the Rational Public’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 32 no. 2 (June 1988) p. 243.
Hughes, The Domestic Context of American Foreign Policy (1978) p. 108.
Richard Brody, ‘International Crises: a Rallying Point for the President?’ Public Opinion 6 no. 6 (December/January 1984) p. 41.
Lee Sigelman, ‘Rallying to the President’s ‘Support: a Reappraisal of the Evidence’ Polity 11 no. 4 (Summer 1979) p. 559
See table 2.1 in Edwards, Presidential Approval (1990) p. 147.
Lowi, ‘Foreword’, The Politics of Scandal (1988) p. viii.
Arthur H. Miller and Stephen A. Borrelli, ‘Confidence In Government During the 1980s’ American Politics Quarterly 19 no. 2 April 1991, 169.
‘So why not play it like Watergate?’ Columbia Journalism Review Jan/Feb 1987, p. 15.
W. Lance Bennett, News: the Politics of Illusion 2nd edn (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1988) p. 24.
David L. Paletz and Robert M. Entman, Media-Power-Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1981) p. 150.
‘Will There Be a Backlash?’ Newsweek December 15 1986, p. 40.
Lawrence Walsh, Firewall: the Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997) pp. 490–508.
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© 1999 Robert Busby
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Busby, R. (1999). Political Scandal in the United States. In: Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14726-7_2
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