Online NewsHour: Larry Sabato and Dirty Little Secrets -- October 14, 1996

CYCLE OF CORRUPTION

OCTOBER 14, 1996

TRANSCRIPT

David Gergen chats with Larry Sabato, author of Dirty Little Secrets, about the fifty year cycle of corruption in American politics.

DAVID GERGEN: In your book, you and Glen Simpson paint a portrait of corruption in American politics that stretches back for well over a century. You say there’s been a persistent pattern of corruption, stretching all the way back to Grant, if not earlier, and that you see a rising tide of corruption today across the American landscape. Let’s talk first about the pattern, the persistent pattern over our--over our history.
LARRY SABATO, Author, “Dirty Little Secrets”: Well, David, that’s right. There really is a cycle of corruption and reform throughout all of American history. We found an odd 50-year pattern. We’ve had three great scandals in American life: Kraite Mobilier in the early 1870's.
DAVID GERGEN: During the Grant administration.
LARRY SABATO: During the Grant administration, then exactly 50 years later, Teapot Dome during the Harding administration in the early 20's, and then Watergate in the early 70's in the Nixon administration. And after each of these great mega scandals, there was an attempt, a national attempt at reform of some sort which succeeded at least for a few years. But after a generation had passed, the press goes on to other subjects, the public loses interest, and the political system returns to stasis, which unfortunately is a corrupt stasis.
DAVID GERGEN: Well, we have to look out, as you say, for the year 2023.
LARRY SABATO: Right.
DAVID GERGEN: That’s for the next 50 year big scandal--
LARRY SABATO: That’s the next 50 years--
DAVID GERGEN: --the mega scandal.
LARRY SABATO: Although we have a society that’s very sped up with all the technological wonders that we have and new techniques and politics, I suspect the corrupt practice will arrive much faster.
DAVID GERGEN: Well, politics ain’t bean baggin’, so it’s--as Mr. Duly told us some years ago--so it’s understandable that people compete and take advantage of whatever loopholes they see out there, but you also point out that our constitutional framework actually permits more corruption than one might imagine.
LARRY SABATO: Well, as the courts have interpreted the First Amendment over the years, it’s made very clear that political speech is the highest form and most protected of all speech, and I think that’s as it should be, but because that’s true, it’s very difficult to restrict or to regulate the types of activities that candidates and parties undertake in elections.
DAVID GERGEN: So that the reforms that we undertook after Watergate, especially campaign finance reforms, those have basically been gutted by court decisions based on the First Amendment.
LARRY SABATO: They’ve absolutely been gutted. What the court decisions have effectively said is you cannot dam the flow of political money in a democracy. That money, which is really the equivalent of speech, the court has said, will find a way around the dam. Maybe it’ll have to go underground so that it’ll be totally undisclosed, but it’s going to find a way, and, indeed, it has.
DAVID GERGEN: Now, I was struck in your book about the fact that you thought--especially with regard to Congress--that the corruption you describe has been very bipartisan. And there was a time where the Democrats became very entrenched and especially in the House of Representatives, because of the kind of money they were able to draw in. And then the Republicans were able to grab some of those same techniques. Tell us a little bit more about that.
LARRY SABATO: Well, that’s exactly right. You know, only blind partisans believe that corruption is centered in one party. It’s a very, very bipartisan thing if you look through American history. What the Democrats did for the 40 years that they controlled the House up until early 1995, they created subcommittee government. Just about every significant member of the House of Representatives who was a Democrat had a subcommittee all his or her own. And with that subcommittee, he or she was able to build a little empire with interest groups, with individuals with a lot of money. That member did those people and those interest groups favors and in return got lots of money for reelection, got junkets, got honoraria feedback when that was permitted, and they were well taken care of. So it was a great arrangement for everybody but the taxpayers. Now, the Republicans saw that, and I think quite correctly capitalized on it. Newt Gingrich was prominent among those seeing it first and made the Democratic Congress out to be a corrupt operation, and there was an awful lot of corruption there. Some of it has come out since 1994. The problem is that the Republicans used many of the same corrupt methods to gain power in 1994, and they’ve shown relatively little interest in correcting the underlying corruption during their two years in power.
DAVID GERGEN: Mm-hmm, because both parties are at the trough, it also makes it very difficult to pass significant campaign finance laws.
LARRY SABATO: That’s absolutely true. The only campaign finance law that’s really capable of being passed is a partisan one if you have one party controlling everything, the House, the Senate, and President, and probably in the Senate, they’d have to have more than 16 votes.
DAVID GERGEN: All right. I’m--we know, as has been abundantly shown, that money has a great deal to do with who runs, has a great deal to do with who wins. What is less obvious is what the influence of money is on legislation. How does it change the way government operates and the laws that have been passed by Congress over the years?
LARRY SABATO: Well, you’re right. Much of it’s invisible, and it’s invisible because the money doesn’t affect the big things, you know, immigration and tax cuts and whatever else is on the table and reaches the headlines in the big newspapers. Those things are determined by constituent opinion. It’s the tiny amendments that may give a tax subsidy here, a grant there, some additional money for a project over here, those are the things that the interest groups and what the individual groups want, and that’s what they expect for their money. They’re not giving for their health. They don’t give hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some cases millions of dollars, because they’re just good-hearted citizens. I’m not saying there are no good motives, but it’s a mix of motives, and I think self-interest is the predominant motive.
DAVID GERGEN: But is that costing the consumer money, in effect, if special legislation is passed, if protective legislation is passed, or I guess the most obvious example where it’s cost a lot of money is in the S&L debacle.
LARRY SABATO: Absolutely. And that’s the best example, but there are so many more, whether it was the HUD scandal or a thousand other little scandals, some of which haven’t even been uncovered. That money comes from somewhere. It’s going into the pockets of interest groups, or corporations, or unions or whatever. It’s coming from somebody, and obviously, it’s coming from the taxpayers.
DAVID GERGEN: This presidential election--Americans thought when we put into effect the payment system to the presidential candidates--and we’re now spending some $200 million in this election through taxpayer money on the candidates and their parties--that that would basically finance presidential elections. The “New York Times” pointed out the other day this presidential election, the actual spending on the presidential campaign is likely to be three times that much, as much as $600 million. Does that greatly concern you, as well as what you’ve said about these congressional races?
LARRY SABATO: Well, it concerns me. Actually, I think it’s an underestimate of what will actually be spent. If you add together the grassroots organizations in the states, I think it’s going to be a lot more than $600 million.
DAVID GERGEN: How corrupt is it?
LARRY SABATO: Is it corrupt that we’re spending $600 million. If you compare that to advertising for bubble gum and shampoo, it’s not all that obscene. What really concerns me is what are the motives of those giving? Is the money really put on the table? Is it disclosed so that voters can determine for themselves whether they think somebody is being improperly importuned to vote for a piece of legislation? What are people getting for the money that they’re giving? And those are the things that concern me much less than the amount of money, although I do believe it’s important to reduce the pressure on candidates to go out there and raise money, to spend all that time raising money. That’s where free TV time comes in. That’s where perhaps public subsidies could come in for direct mail, something like that.
DAVID GERGEN: Sure. Let’s turn a little bit more fully to the, to the remedies. You argue that more regulations will not work. In fact, we have 264 pages of the Federal Election Commission of legalese that nobody can figure out a lot of what they mean. But more regulation is not the answer. You argued, in effect, for deregulation and more disclosure.
LARRY SABATO: That’s absolutely right. I wish I could get my fellow reformers--and I am a reformer--I want to reform the system--to focus on what regulation has done to this election system. This is no longer a grassroots election system. In order to run for federal office in this country, you need a team of lawyers and accountants. There are no more successful mom and pop operations. That’s what regulation has done. That’s one problem with regulation. Another problem with regulation is it just doesn’t work. Again, because of those court decisions, the money is going to flow over ground, underground, in dark shadows, away from the public eye. We need to get to a system where we stress disclosure and disclosure early enough so that the press can put the money figures together in a way that the public can understand before election day. And then it’s up to the public. If they’re concerned that interest groups are getting too big a bit of their public officials, they can express that at the ballot box on election day.
DAVID GERGEN: But don’t most Americans know that the labor unions, trial lawyers are giving an enormous amount of money for the Democrats, and don’t they know that the Christian Coalition and the gun lobby and the Right to Life movements are giving great amounts of money to Republicans? And yet, I think that what I have found among Americans is they say, look, I know all that, what can I do about it? You know, they feel helpless in the face of all that, that flood of money.
LARRY SABATO: Well, of course, there are candidates in both parties who’ve been willing to speak out against the kind of auction that takes place at election time, and there are also third parties. I’m not advocating them, but I think they present alternatives as well. And there are ways to restructure the election system to get a better system, to get some public money into the process, to get some other changes that have to be made, so that the interest groups have less influence. It’s not hopeless.
DAVID GERGEN: Well, I know you wrote your book with the intention of bringing and exposing the problem so that we stir people to action. I wish you well on that. Thank you.
LARRY SABATO: Thanks very much.

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