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The American Scandal Machine

Think Tank Transcripts:The American Scandal Machine

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, arecipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen,bringing better, healthier lives to people worldwide throughbiotechnology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. Subpoenas are flyingaround the White House and the Clintons are in hot water overWhitewater. Meanwhile, the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, isunder investigation by a special counsel. Are these real scandals orjust the product of a scandal machine in Washington?

Joining us to sort through the conflict and the consensus are:Suzanne Garment, resident scholar at the American EnterpriseInstitute and author of 'Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in AmericanPolitics'; Michael Beschloss, author of 'The Crisis Years: Kennedyand Khrushchev'; Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Mediaand Public Affairs and author of 'Good Intentions Make Bad News: WhyAmericans Hate Campaign Journalism'; and Larry Sabato, professor ofgovernment at the University of Virginia and author of 'Dirty LittleSecrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics.'

The topic before this house: the American scandal machine. Thisweek on 'Think Tank.'

Scandals are nothing new in Washington. Some have been real andsome have not been real. The last 30 years have seen Bobby Baker,Chappaquidick, Tom Eagleton, Spiro Agnew, Watergate, Bert Lance,Billy Carter, Abscam, Senate pages, Wedtech, Jim Wright, Gary Hart,Iran-contra, Michael Deaver, Clarence Thomas, and Anita Hill.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: (From videotape.) I, William Jefferson Clinton--

MR. WATTENBERG: Since Bill Clinton was elected president, similarsorts of scandals, some real and some not real, have beset hisadministration. Here's a short list: Whitewater, Travelgate, WebHubbell, Vince Foster, David Watkins, Paula Jones, Ron Brown, RogerAltman, Castle Grande, and legal records that have disappeared andreappeared.

But are there really more scandals today than ever before, or arescandals no worse than in the past? Or have we just created a giantscandal-making machine that is hellbent on finding dirt even if thereisn't much to find?

MR. WATTENBERG: Suzanne Garment, your book lays out a thesis ofwhat has been going on. Why don't you drive this bus for us?

MS. GARMENT: Okay. The incidence of scandal is not the same as theincidence of corruption. You can have a lot of corruption, verysuccessful corruption, and no scandal because nobody finds out aboutit. But the incidence of scandal has risen in the past 30 yearsbecause over that time, opinion leaders have grown less trusting ofgovernment. One result is that we consider more things scandalous,and the other result is that we've developed much more elaboratemeans than we used to have for finding out about misdeeds andpublicizing them and punishing them.

MR. WATTENBERG: For example, what are some of those newinstrumentalities?

MS. GARMENT: For instance, we didn't have an independent counselbefore Watergate. Now today we have one. We have inspectors generalthat report not to their administrative chiefs alone, but to Congressdirectly as well. Within the agencies, we have officers that servethe same function. We have a press that's more investigative than itused to be, public interest groups devoted often precisely toexposing wrongdoing in their fields of interest, and a lot of playerswho have an interest in showing us as much as possible.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let's get some comment. Bob Lichter.

MR. LICHTER: Well, I'd like to pick up on one element of that,which is the more aggressive press that you talked about. A couple ofthings have changed. First is journalism has changed. Journalists arewilling to probe into areas, like sexual misbehavior, that they usedto turn a blind eye to. And the media have changed as well, not justthe way journalism is practiced, but now you have all sorts ofcompeting media outlets. You used to have an oligarchy of theprestige press, the networks. Basically, what 'The New York Times'and CBS said was news was news, and that was it -- 'all the newsthat's fit to print.' Now they try to ignore something, you've gotall of the 'Inside Editions' and 'Hard Copies' and 'The WashingtonTimes,' 'The New York Post,' that are willing to carry these storiesand force them out where the mainstream media eventually has to coverthem.

MR. WATTENBERG: Why did you pick two papers that syndicate mycolumn? (Laughter.) Larry Sabato.

MR. SABATO: Well, the press has changed, I agree entirely withwhat Bob and Suzie have said, but the people have also changed. TheAmerican people over the course of the last 35 to 40 years havebecome enormously more cynical. They are also more interested inprivate life. The line between public life and private life hasdissolved and not just because press coverage has grown more intense,but also because people are more interested in that. And I think thecoverage reflects what people are interested in and that relates tothe number and kinds of scandals that are covered.

MR. WATTENBERG: Michael Beschloss, you are a distinguishedhistorian. Why don't you give us a take looking back?

MR. BESCHLOSS: Well, I think this is all true, and I think thereis a historical reason for it. And that is that 30 or 40 years agoand before that through American history, it used to be the casethat, for instance, a president would be nominated in convention by aprocess dominated by party leaders. Those people would vet apotential president and usually when there was someone with financialscandal in his past or another kind of vulnerability, that person wasnot likely to be nominated. That process is no longer here. There'snot a party to do this vetting. Now that falls to the American pressand the American people. It has to be done all out in the open.

One other thing that I think has developed, has really changedthings is that before roughly 30 or 40 years ago, it used to be thecase that it was very rare that someone would be nominated forpresident without having been a national figure for a pretty longtime, a governor of New York or some other major figure ofprominence. Now that you have a situation where a Jimmy Carter, aBill Clinton can come in, win the New Hampshire primary, be nominatedvery quickly by people who 90 days ago or 6 months ago had neverheard of them, that means that there is a process by which we have tofind out things about these people that we otherwise would have knownhad they been in public life for 30 or 40 years.

MR. WATTENBERG: So does that mean that the American people arereally getting the wrong story, that they believe because of allthese factors that you have talked about that there is morecorruption and more scandal than there actually is? Is that --

MR. SABATO: No, it's a question of balance and proportion, Ben.All of these stories and I don't know whether Suzie agrees with this,but I think all of the stories have some merit to them, or at leastthe vast majority do. There is some grain of truth in most of thesecontroversies, but it's a question of balance and proportion. Do youreally get a picture of the whole person, the whole candidate whenthe news media coverage focuses so completely sometimes on thenegative aspects and the scandals that have dogged a candidate in thepast?

MR. WATTENBERG: They go into what you have called the feedingfrenzy mode.

MR. SABATO: They go into the feeding frenzy mode, they focusalmost entirely on the negative motives and the vices. And thesepeople are very complicated human beings. They have virtues writlarge and vices writ large to match, and it's wrong, as the press did40 years ago, to focus just on the virtues, but it's equally wrong tofocus just on the vices.

MR. LICHTER: I just want to make the point that, although Godforbid that I should defend the press, it isn't as if there is thisrogue media out there that is stampeding and destroying the wholesystem. Michael's point was very important, which is that politicalcareers are made through the media much more than they used to be,and so there is this system that has worked out that people in thepress are fed rumors and fed scandals by opponents of politicians,and whereas a generation ago, they would have reveled in knowing thisgossip and being the only ones to know it, now they gain professionalstatus by being the one to break the story. And so there's a systemof incentives that's built in. I mean, this is a way, in effect, fora politician to get a free negative ad running against an opponent.

MR. WATTENBERG: And that dovetails exactly with the structuralpoint that Suzie was making. There are all these additional sourcesand infrastructures that are designed to just churn out scandal, andthat sort of plays right into what you are talking about.

MR. LICHTER: Yeah, when you have a media-driven system and a mediathat is driven by entertainment values, scandal is almost a naturalto burble up in public discourse.

MR. SABATO: And of course, many of these sources are politicalconsultants. You know, let's be direct about it. They're a permanentpart of the system, they're the permanent sources for the press, andof course they're involved in dozens of major campaigns in a givenyear, and over the course of their careers probably in hundreds ofcampaigns. And they're supplying a lot of this gossip. They know howto play the press like a fiddle.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask a question. Until fairly recently,there was a point of view that said because the major media wastilted to the left, most of the scandals revealed were on the right.Now, of course, you have the whole phenomenon of the Clintonsituation. Was that valid then? Is it valid now?

MR. BESCHLOSS: I think it's really hard to say that there havebeen, at least through recent history, the period during which thesescandals have really become something of an industry, that it'seither more left or right. And I think the thing that -- and thisthreads through everything that we've been talking. Now since thereis this structure that does ferret these things out, I think it wouldbe very hard to confine it to one side or the other for ideologicalreasons.

MS. GARMENT: Also, there is this great imitative capacity ofAmerican politics. After Watergate, Democrats did take this moralsissue up with great enthusiasm and used it against officials in theReagan administration with great frequency, but it was really notvery long at all before Republicans, Newt Gingrich especially,figured out how to turn it around.

MR. WATTENBERG: Larry, let me ask you something. I know you havelooked at the current situation with the eye of a scholar. Youinvestigated the Clintons' situation. We are hearing, well, even ifit's true, there's nothing there. How do you come out on that? Isthere a there there?

MR. SABATO: Which scandals are you referring to now? (Laughter.)

MR. LICHTER: There's a tough question.

MR. WATTENBERG: I don't have to say. You tell me which scandal. Imean, is there a there anywhere?

MR. SABATO: On Whitewater, the jury's out and I can't tell you.We're going to have to depend on the independent counsel for that. Asfar as women are concerned, I don't think that anyone who has taken aclose look at President Clinton's past in Arkansas could concludeotherwise than that many women were very close to the governor ofArkansas, who's our president right now. Whether it should matter isanother question entirely, and you could debate that endlessly.

But I'll tell you one thing. It's going to be very difficult forconservatives after the Clinton administration is over to say thatthe press just harps on the scandals of the right because the Clintonadministration has had many high points, but it's also been a longseries of scandals. And you enumerated some of them, and there areothers beyond those. There are an awful lot of scandals connected tothe Clinton administration, and I don't think the press has held backparticularly on most of them. They may have gone too far on certainaspects of Whitewater, for example.

MR. WATTENBERG: How did it come to be that at the same time thatthere was allegedly, and probably realistically, a sexual revolutionin the United States, where people are a lot looser about these kindof things, that at exactly that time, the microscope started going inon politicians and saying, ooh, shame, shame on you, you did an XYZ?That seems to be a contradiction.

MR. LICHTER: What happened is that sex became politicized, and youhad forces from both the left and the right, you know, traditionalforces that were very much against the social -- the sexualrevolution and the looser sexual behavior and were scandalized tofind political leaders behaving this way -- (laughter) -- and you hadfeminists who were scandalized not by sex, but by a patriarchy inwhich men got away with this kind of thing. So there are politicalinterests feeding into this machine.

And this -- I mean this is something that I want to really pushwhen you talk about the media going after the right or the left orwhatever. A lot of it is this is happening in an era of dividedgovernment in which you have hearings, in which news is being made,in which one party can gin-up the scandal machine and give reportersa chance.

MR. WATTENBERG: Well, I mean, the Democratic Congress went afterNixon, now you have the Republican Congress going after Clinton. Onegets the feeling that is not an accident, that it is not just thatthey -- in either case that they have, oh, my God, just uncovered aterrible crime. I mean, there is a lot of straight hardball politicsgoing on. I mean --

MR. BESCHLOSS: I think, and I think one thing that can be said isthat in recent years, politics has to some extent become criminalizedso that you get in a situation where if you want to make war againsta political opponent or a set of opponents, one way of doing it isinvestigating very fiercely and hoping that something will eitherbecome a scandal or something that becomes grounds for -- I mean toput it in the most extreme way -- impeachment.

MS. GARMENT: And there's another contrary trend that takes place.There has been a kind of grade inflation in this area.

MR. SABATO: Absolutely.

MS. GARMENT: If there's nothing to indict for, these days we tendto say, oh, well, then it's okay, because we're so used to -- we'reused to indictment being the natural end of each of these scandals.

MR. WATTENBERG: There's a book out called 'Primary Colors,' thatis a novel apparently -- by an anonymous author, apparently based notso loosely on the Clinton primary campaigns in 1992, and it paints aportrait of the president, the president-to-be, then governor of asmall Southern state unnamed in the book, who has gargantuanappetites, let us say, in everything. (Laughter.) This is now thetopic du jour among Washington players.

There is another book I think coming out about President Clintonby David Brock, who is a pretty hard hitter on these kind of things,and I think there's one other, at least one other. Is all this goingto set up another round of who-is-this-man?

MR. SABATO: Well, I'm not sure that's the question that will beasked, but it will certainly --

MR. WATTENBERG: What's the question?

MR. SABATO: It will -- well, the question will be, what is thisman's private character and how does it relate to his publiccharacter? You can be absolutely certain that between now andNovember, probably in September and October, there will be a newround of character questions about President Clinton. It isabsolutely inevitable. And I think you're right to focus on 'PrimaryColors.' It may be a novel, but it is very thinly disguised. It isclearly President Clinton. Governor Stanton is clearly PresidentClinton, and frankly, I don't think it paints a very favorablepicture of President Clinton. Whoever the author is, I understand whyhe or she went anonymous, particularly if it's somebody in theClinton entourage.

MR. WATTENBERG: The character, though, authentically feels yourpain. I mean, there is sort of a good side to that portrait. I readit. It's a very interesting book, it's a lot of fun to read.

MR. SABATO: There's a good side to it, but there's also a lot ofcompulsive sexuality, and clearly there are character problemsattached to this particular individual, very serious characterproblems that will be a subject for discussion. Maybe it's right,maybe it's wrong, but it's going to happen.

MR. BESCHLOSS: And I think maybe Bill Clinton's particularlyvulnerable to this because in early 1992, when he was running in theNew Hampshire primary, two of the first things that Americans learnedabout him were Jenifer Flowers and the draft business. That was veryearly in the curve. If this had been Hubert Humphrey running in 1968and something like this had come out -- no grounds for it, by theway, but if something damaging had, he would have been someone whohad been in national life for 20 years, people would have factoredthat in to everything else they knew.

And as a result, I think you can say that although Bill Clintonwas elected president in 1992, it wasn't because he had solved thischaracter issue, it was because he ran on the premise that perhaps Iam not traditionally everything that one looks for in a potentialpresident, but I am tougher than George Bush and I can deal withdomestic problems that he has ignored much better.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask you another question. I listen to youhere and it's kind of rancid, isn't it? I mean this whole -- not youall --

MR. BESCHLOSS: Thanks a lot, Ben.

MR. WATTENBERG: No, that's okay.

MS. GARMENT: What?

MR. SABATO: I've been called worse.

MR. WATTENBERG: No, no. I mean, is this demeaning and hurtingAmerican politics? I mean, I think most of you would feel, as I do,that beyond this American politicians in some ways get a bum deal.They're trying hard, they're patriots, they do what they think isright most of the time, blah, blah, blah. And yet this rotten, rancidportrait comes out. Is this bad for America? Is it good for America?

MR. BESCHLOSS: I think it's horrible but necessary because as longas we've got a system in which, at least on the presidential level,presidents are nominated in public primaries as opposed to inconventions with a lot of influence by party leaders, someone isgoing to have to vet these people. And unfortunately, because theparties have given up that responsibility, it has to be done out inpublic in this sort of free-for-all, also by the press.

If that is not done, especially because presidents now can getnominated in a very short period of time, you could find someone onthe railroad track to a nomination who later on we find out has linksto certain secret groups that we wouldn't want to see, certain verybad financial scandal that will shadow his or her administration. Soin a way, as distasteful as this process is and as much as it keepsmany good people from wanting to go through it, I think there's noother solution unless you change the system to what it used to be,which in many ways I'd very much prefer.

MR. SABATO: I agree with what Michael said. It's also true,though, that character matters fundamentally, particularly in thepresidency, and while there are excesses in coverage, and I'vecriticized them and Bob has and Suzie has, and so on, while wecriticize them, it's also important to note that they do serve afunction. It is important for people to understand the character ofpeople who are running for president. They have to.

MS. GARMENT: Some of the worst damage that's done to the system bythis new tendency is not done at the presidential level at all. It'sdone at lower levels of government, where the justification forknowing about character is less strong. So that personnel directorsin the White House, for instance, ever since Watergate have had moretrouble than they ever did getting people into government.

MR. WATTENBERG: That's a good area. Is this whole situationdriving good people out of government?

MR. LICHTER: I can't imagine why anybody would want to subjectthemselves to this. I mean, I really can't imagine. When Colin Powellsaid no, I thought, why would somebody like that ever considersleazing themselves up unless they absolutely had to? Does it leaveonly the people who are driven by a desperate need for power?

MR. WATTENBERG: Suppose somebody asked you to be president. Wouldyou -- you would say no?

MR. LICHTER: Knowing what -- if somebody said, you know, I canguarantee, the way with Charlton Heston in 'Ben Hur,' they said,'Just get in the chariot and I guarantee you'll win,' I'd say nobecause I'd know how old I would look in four years from how oldeverybody else has.

MR. WATTENBERG: 'President Sabato' -- does that sound nice? Wouldyou run for office?

MR. SABATO: Yes, and I was going to say, the reason why Bob won'trun is of course because of all the scandals in his background.(Laughter.) You know, we don't want to talk about those here.

MR. WATTENBERG: Gotcha.

MS. GARMENT: But you're clean, you know.

MR. SABATO: No, if some -- I don't think there are very manypeople who would refuse the office were it handed on a silver platterand you didn't have to run. But there are very few --

MR. WATTENBERG: But would you go through the process if youthought you had a good chance of winning?

MR. SABATO: There are very few sane people who would undergo thisprocess, jump all over those barriers and obstacles put in the way. Imean, it's -- it takes a very special person. And that's importantfor us to remember, too, when we look at the field of presidentialcandidates. These are not normal people. Very few normal people wouldrun. These are people of enormous appetites in lots of differentways, appetites of power and ambition and maybe personal habits ofwhich we might not approve. Nonetheless, they're special people, andyou need to weigh their vices and virtues. You have to do that, and Idon't think we're doing that enough.

MR. WATTENBERG: 'President Beschloss' -- does that sound nice toyou? Would you run for office if somebody said you --

MR. BESCHLOSS: I think I would not for a lot of reasons. I thinkprobably the world maybe needs a few historians so I'll stay withthat. (Laughter.) You know, one thing that will -- MR. WATTENBERG: Alot. (Laughter.)

MR. WATTENBERG: Sorry.

MR. BESCHLOSS: Another program, Ben. One thing, not a badbellwether, John Kennedy the younger was asked, I think it was lastyear, how his father would fare in this new process with certain,needless to say, vulnerabilities in his background, and so on. Hesaid that in this new system, he's quite sure that his fatherprobably would not have run for president. And whether that's good orbad, I think we're now in 1996 seeing a lot of people who might haverun under the old system just completely out of the process.

MR. WATTENBERG: 'President Garment,' let's wrap it up with you.Would you -- given this situation, would you run for office?

MS. GARMENT: Me? (Laughter.) Are you kidding? Of course not. Noone can make it sure enough to promise to you that you won't gettotally ruined by it. MR. WATTENBERG: There is really a very tragicaspect to the Clinton situation now. I mean, her three closestcolleagues in the law, one has committed suicide, one is in theslammer and Kennedy went back to Arkansas in some disgrace; and she'sin the ditch as well. So I mean, you really have -- and a lot oftheir friends -- pretty ugly.

MS. GARMENT: And she wouldn't -- you wouldn't have called her aprime candidate for this kind of thing.

MR. BESCHLOSS: And you might say, if the two of them, theClintons, had been shown in 1992 what was going to befall them duringthe next four years, you wonder whether they would have made thedecision and actually had him run for president.

MR. SABATO: He would have run. (Laughter.) He would have run.

MR. WATTENBERG: That is a good topic perhaps for another program.Thank you, Suzanne Garment, Michael Beschloss, Robert Lichter, andLarry Sabato.

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