Abstract
A number of significant crises in American government and scandalous incidents involving the President of the United States preceded the Iran-Contra scandal. In modern times these have included the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs crisis and the Watergate affair. These events provide valuable information about damage control strategies invoked by the Executive branch of government. They also place the Iran-Contra scandal in context, its substantive and procedural aspects cast against a background of past indiscretions by Presidents determined to avoid the conventional policy-making process and act unilaterally. This chapter not only considers political episodes which can be described as scandalous in nature, it also examines the damage control strategies used by a number of Presidents to address political concerns during times of crisis. Presidential credibility and the maintenance of presidential power are central to the functioning of the Executive branch of government. In the aftermath of crises and scandals, particularly those with the potential to cast negative aspersions on the Chief Executive, damage control strategies are important in convincing the American public that the national interest and the principle of democratic accountability has been protected and, if possible, advanced. An examination of modern political crisis and scandal permits comparative analysis of damage control efforts, and an evaluation of successful attempts to assuage public opinion, or alternatively, failed efforts which resulted in a loss of presidential credibility.
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Notes
George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years As Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993) p. 783.
C. Vann Woodward, ed. Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct (New York: Delacorte Press, 1974) p. xiv.
David Wise, The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy and Power (New York: Random House, 1973) p. 14.
Figure from Richard Brody, ‘International Crises: a Rallying Point for The President’ Public Opinion 6 no. 6 (December/January 1984) pp. 41, 43.
George C. Edwards III (with Alec M. Gallup), Presidential Approval: a Sourcebook (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990) p. 148.
Townsend Hoopes, The Devil & John Foster Dulles (London: André Deutsch, 1973) p. 500.
Charles C. Alexander, Holding the Line: the Eisenhower Era, 1952–1961 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975) pp. 264–6.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace 1956–1961 (New York: Doubleday, 1965) p. 548.
David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The U-2 Affair (New York: Random House, 1962) pp. 79–80.
Leonard Mosley, Dulles: a Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and their Family Network (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978) p. 455.
Wise and Ross, The U-2 Affair (1962) p. 108.
Eisenhower, Waging Peace 1956–1961 (1965) pp. 546–7.
Wise and Ross, The U-2 Affair (1962) p. 101.
Cited in, Hoopes, The Devil & John Foster Dulles (1973) p. 502.
Wise and Ross, The U-2 Affair (1962) p. 265.
See, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House 5th edn (London: André Deutch, 1967) p. 246.
Haynes Johnson, Manuel Artime, Jose Perez San Roman, Erneido Olivis and Enrique Ruiz-Williams, The Bay of Pigs: the Leaders’ Story of Brigade 2506 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964) p. 350.
Richard H. Shultz, ‘Covert Action and Executive-Legislative Relations: the Iran-Contra Crisis and Its Aftermath’ Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 12, 1989, p. 466.
Wise, The Politics of Lying (1973) p. 14.
Identified as Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. See, Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Bantam, 1966) p. 359.
Cited in, Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (1967) p. 263.
William W. Lammers, ‘Presidential Press-Conference Schedules: Who Hides, and When?’ Political Science Quarterly 96 no. 2 (Summer 1981) p. 262.
For example, the Taylor Report declared: ‘Top level direction was given through ad hoc meetings of senior officials without consideration of operational plans in writing, and with no arrangement for recording conclusions and decisions reached.’ Cited in Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: the Untold Story (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1980) p. 317.
Johnson et al., The Bay of Pigs (1964) p. 350.
Wise, The Politics of Lying (1973) p. 22n.
Richard Nixon ironically declared: ‘I think the credibility gap will rapidly disappear. It is events that cause the credibility gap... not the fact that a President deliberately lies or misleads the people. That is my opinion.’ Cited in ibid., p. 52.
Watergate break-in June 1972, first concrete linkage to the White House, 23 March 1973. See, L.H. LaRue, Political Discourse: a Case Study of the Watergate Affair (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 1988) p. 14.
Cited in Ernest R. May and Janet Fraser, eds Campaign ’72: the Managers Speak (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1973) p. 193.
Robert E. Denton Jr. and Dan F. Hahn, Presidential Communication: Description and Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1986) p. 75.
Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, The Battle for Public Opinion: the President, the Press and the Polls during Watergate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983) p. 43.
Denton and Hahn, Presidential Communication (1986) p. 78.
J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: the Underside of the Nixon Years (New York: Penguin Books, 1988) p. 303.
Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton Jr, Stonewall: the Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977) p. 56.
See Table 5–11. ‘The Public’s Most Important Problem, 1935–1994’, Lyn Ragsdale, Vital Statistics on the Presidency: Washington to Clinton (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1996) p. 239.
For example, a Harris poll conducted on 1–3 May 1973, to measure public reaction to President Nixon’s 30 April television address, asked: Do you think Nixon ‘has lost so much credibility that it will be hard for him to be an effective President again?’: yes 54%, no 37%. Adapted from, ‘Poll Report’ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 31 no. 19, 12 May 1973, p. 1122.
Ben Veniste and Frampton, Stonewall (1977) p. 87.
For example: ‘Mr President, I wonder sir, how much personal blame, to what degree of personal blame do you accept for the climate in the White House, and at the Re-Election Committee, for the abuses of Watergate? The President: I accept it all.’ (Introduced by) Helen Thomas, The Nixon Presidential Press Conferences (London: Heyden, 1978) p. 336.
Extracted from, ‘Question and Answer Text’ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 31 no. 48, 1 December 1973, pp. 3115–16.
‘Nixon’s Fifth Year: From Triumph to National Doubt’ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 32 no. 1, 5 January 1974, p. 3.
Lang and Lang, The Battle for Public Opinion (1983) p. 123.
Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978) p. 996.
‘Poll Report’ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 32 no. 19, 11 May 1974, p. 1163.
‘Resignation Statement Text’ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 32 no. 32, 10 August 1974, p. 2193.
See, Dennis S. Gouran, ‘The Watergate Cover-Up: Its Dynamics and Its Implications’ Communication Monographs 43 no. 3 (August 1976) p. 176.
Jeb Stuart Magruder, An American Life: One Man’s Road to Watergate (New York: Atheneum, 1974) p. 260.
Nixon, Memoirs (1978) pp. 628–9.
See, Lukas, Nightmare (1988) p. 339.
Thomas, The Nixon Presidential Press Conferences (1978) p. 281.
John Dean III, The White House Years: Blind Ambition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976) pp. 131, 194.
‘Text of White House Memo’ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 31 no. 26, 30 June 1973, p. 1721.
See TV discussion in Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon. What Happened and Why (New York: Vintage Books, 1978) p. 151.
Nixon, Memoirs (1978) pp. 225, 245.
Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1972 (New York: Atheneum, 1973) p. 283.
Lou Cannon, ‘The Press and the Nixon Presidency’ in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The Nixon Presidency: Twenty-Two Intimate Perspectives of Richard M. Nixon (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1987) p. 198.
Joseph C. Spear, Presidents and the Press: the Nixon Legacy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984) p. 179.
Hodgson, America in Our Time (1978) p. 382.
Nixon, Memoirs (1978) p. 762.
‘The Long Trail of Denials to Credibility Gap’ Newsweek 30 April 1973, p. 20.
‘Presidents Always Win’ Newsweek 3 September 1973, p. 66.
Spear, Presidents and the Press (1984) p. 234.
‘Interview: Dan Rather Interviews President Jimmy Carter and Wife Rosalyn, CBS 60 Minutes 8/8/80’ [CF, O/A 746] Box 63, Jody Powell’s Files, Jimmy Carter Library, p. 15.
‘Interview: CBS Face the Nation 6/1/80 (Taped 5/31/80)’ [CF, O/A 746] Box 63, Jody Powell’s Files, Jimmy Carter Library, p. 10.
See, Gary Sick, ‘Military Options and Constraints’ in Paul H. Kreisberg, American Hostages in Iran: the Conduct of a Crisis (London: Yale University Press, 1985) pp. 144–72.
This analysis also stated: ‘People have simply run out of patience and will accept nearly any condition in order to get the hostages back alive.’ ‘ABC News-Harris survey, Hostages in U.S. Embassy in Iran 1979–1980, 1/7/80’ [CF, O/A 746] Box 63, Jody Powell’s Files, Jimmy Carter Library, pp. 1–3.
‘Hertzberg Draft, A-1 News conference opening statement, Hostages in U.S. Embassy in Iran, 4/28/80, no. 2’ [CF, O/A 749] Box 62 Jody Powell’s Files, Jimmy Carter Library, p. 1.
Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983) pp. 407–13.
John Dumbrell, The Carter Presidency: a Re-Evaluation 2nd edn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995) p. 172.
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Busby, R. (1999). Damage Limitation: the Modern Experience. In: Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14726-7_3
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