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« Back to Has Washington Gone Haywire? main page    Transcript for: Has Washington Gone Haywire?ANNOUNCER: Think Tank is made possible by AMGEN, recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. AMGEN, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology. Improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow.Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theLilly Endowment, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. The Cold War is over.The economy is booming. There's a balanced budget in the works.Things are looking pretty good in America. But Washington is in afever swamp of rumor, scandal, and character assassination. Joiningus to cut a trench through the inside-the-beltway muck are LeonardGarment, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, and author ofCrazy Rhythm; Larry Sabato, professor of political science at theUniversity of Virginia, and author of Dirty Little Secrets, ThePersistence of Corruption in American Politics; Elizabeth Drew,author of Whatever It Takes, The Real Struggle for Political Power inAmerica; and Herbert Stein, senior fellow at the American EnterpriseInstitute, and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors,and author of On the Other Hand, Essays on Economics, Economists andPolitics. The question before this house: Has Washington gone haywire? Thisweek on Think Tank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: James Madison once remarked that democracies havealways been spectacles of turbulence and contention. But isn't theresomething new and extra nasty to these spectacles of recent years?Prior to his suicide, Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster wrotethat in Washington ruining people is considered sport. More recently,Tony Lake, President Clinton's nominee for director of the CentralIntelligence Agency withdrew his name after bruising criticism, andparaphrasing Thomas Hobbs said that the confirmation process today isnasty and brutish without being short. He said Washington had gonehaywire. But has it? Hey, this is Washington, D.C., this is the majorleagues. What is so new about political hard ball? Okay, so far thereare three independent investigations of the Clinton administration.There are calls for Attorney General Janet Reno to select anotherspecial prosecutor, and the bloodhounds of the press are sniffingunder rock in town. Moreover, the Congress is getting into the Act. In June, both theHouse and the Senate are scheduled to hold hearings into the Clintonadministration's fundraising activities during the 1996 campaign.Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr seems to be saying these days, youain't seen nothing yet. This summer, Washington promises to onceagain become a Madisonian spectacle of turbulence and contention. The questions before us today are: Is this new? Is this serious?Is this the right way to go about it? And could it be, in a perverseway, that this might all be a good thing? First question, lady and gentlemen, let's go around the roomstarting with you, Larry Sabato, is this new? MR. SABATO: Not at all. MR. WATTENBERG: Not at all? MR. SABATO: Not at all. If you asked Eisenhower's chief of staff,Sherman Adams, were he alive, whether he thought it was new, he wouldcertainly tell you no. The difference is, there are more scandalsoperating simultaneously than ever before. But it's kind of likebackground music, it's elevator music, or musak. I don't thinkanybody is paying that much attention. MR. WATTENBERG: Leonard Garment, you were with Nixon when sort ofthis round of fire-storming and hyperventilation started. MR. GARMENT: Yeah, that was sort of a point of departure for thisgeneration of headaches. Obviously, it's not new. It goes back beforeNixon. Nixon and Watergate accelerated all of that. But I think it'squalitatively different now, and I'll wait until my turn comes toexplain that. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Herb Stein, as you pointed out to meyesterday, you've been here longer than all of these people. MR. STEIN: Longer than all of them combined, but I've -- MR. WATTENBERG: You started working in Washington when? MR. STEIN: 1938. MR. WATTENBERG: 1930, okay. Is this new and different? MR. STEIN: Well, I don't buy the 'this' in the first place, thatis that this is a fever swamp, or that something wild is going onhere in Washington, because, after all, we're all in Washington,except for Mr. Sabato. We're not going haywire. The thing is that I think this is going -- goes on at the highestand most superficial level. But, aside from that, the TreasuryDepartment is doing what it does, the Department of Agriculture isdoing what it does. And it really isn't -- doesn't have much effecton the way the government works or on the way the country works. Now, I was here when Leonard was here, when Mr. Nixon went throughhis greatest traumas and travails, and I was at the Council ofEconomic Advisors. We went out and gone on grinding out daily memosabout what happened to the CPI, or the unemployment rate, and so on,and so on, and Mr. Nixon was paying attention to those things. So I think this fever swamp that you envisage is a kind of in theheads and consciousness of a very small group of people who areinterested in that kind of thing. MR. WATTENBERG: Who trumpeted to the American people? And one ofthe sometimes trumpeters, what do you think, Elizabeth Drew? MS. DREW: I don't think that the idea of scandal and a big chaseto figure out who did what to whom is new. Obviously, we've had --we've had bigger ones before, as Len Garment. But I do think that theculture of Washington in the last decade or so has become more mean,more partisan, more impatient, and I guess I don't agree that it'sall here in some sort of contained bubble of a few people. It doesget transmitted out to the country. And I also don't agree with thewisdom that the country isn't listening and doesn't care. Opinionmoves, I think, and I also think you have to separate what's seriousand what's not serious. MR. WATTENBERG: We've all said that there has been scandal and allthis intensity in Washington over the years. But is it sort ofextra-charged now? Is there something new that came into the systemmaybe with Watergate? MR. GARMENT: That's what I meant when I said it's qualitativelydifferent. And this, I think, is a cultural matter, putting aside theparticular scandals. I think that there has been a growing distruston the part of the country generally with the language and words ofpoliticians. There is a kind of a vague sense of -- well, more thanvague sense of unease about all the money that's involved, and thecountry has turned more towards wanting to hear the secrets ofgovernment. They're wanting to hear more of what is beneath all theveneer of talk and of platforms and of political baloney. MR. WATTENBERG: But you said just a minute ago that people aren'tinterested. MR. GARMENT: Oh, I think they are interested. They're interestedin hearing secrets. They're interested in hearing scandals. They'reinterested in hearing what people say to each other in bedrooms andin private meetings on tape. MR. WATTENBERG: You wrote a book called Dirty Little Secrets,right? MR. SABATO: Sure. MR. WATTENBERG: Do you buy that? MR. SABATO: Well, partly. I mean, there are dirty little secretsout there that are serious that people care about. But it's also truethat people are increasingly hardened to the subject. Again, becausethere have been so many scandals involving so many people in so manydifferent circumstances. And after a while, I think the public doesturn off. But the reason why they're turning off is because ahardened cynicism is occurring. MR. STEIN: Well, on the -- of course, people are interested inthese dirty little secrets, but they're interested in these dirtylittle secrets about Donald Trump, and people in Hollywood, and allthat. There's a great interest in gossip, in personal gossip, andpersonal misbehavior. You can see that if you go out of the --through the grocery checkout line, you'll see all these magazinesthat have something to do with that. MR. WATTENBERG: And now have a lot of stories about politicalfigures, which they didn't really used to have in National Inquirer. MR. GARMENT: I think Elizabeth Drew can tell us about the -- Imean, just the very specific fertility of the culture now forscandal. MS. DREW: I think where we, at large, fall down is in makingdistinctions between what's serious and what's not really veryserious. Some -- there are scandals and then there are -- MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, great. This was our second topic. Is allthis stuff serious, or is it just kind of game playing? MS. DREW: Well, I don't know -- MR. WATTENBERG: What's your answer? MS. DREW: Well, my answer is that the campaign finance end of thescandals is very serious, it goes beyond the Clinton White House. Itis the whole system now has been corrupted again. That's veryserious. That's a very different thing from some of the one-shotstories. If Mr. Starr is going to come up with something big out ofWhitewater, I mean we don't know. But the campaign finance end ofthis, it's systemic. It has corrupted the system. MR. WATTENBERG: Herb, you think this campaign financing is goodtime stuff? MR. STEIN: Yeah, I think that is a serious aspect of this, and Ithink it's right to distinguish between that and the more personalthings. That is whatever we know about Mr. Clinton and Paula Jones,or any other person, and even about Whitewater. I think that -- thatis kind of peculiar to him, it will pass with him, and it is in mymind, not the main reason for judging him, which I do rather harshly.But, anyway, but I think that Elizabeth is right in saying that thecampaign business is something that will not go away when Mr. Clintongoes away. It's a problem that we have to face. MR. WATTENBERG: But the Clinton people say, well, everybody doesit. MR. STEIN: Yeah, well that's what makes it even worse, thateverybody does it. If only he did it, we wouldn't mind. MR. GARMENT: Let me be the contrarian on this. Lenny, Lenny, quitecontrarian. I think that not to say that one is in favor of financialcampaign money abuses, I'm not. But I think it's insoluble. It's beenwith us, it will be with us. I think the only thing that comes closeto helping abate it somewhat is complete disclosure, the fullestpossible disclosure. Nothing else, limits, all codification, baloney,that's not going to work. I think the most scandalous aspect of it, where there's real --there may be real danger is where it goes over the line where thefundraising involves trading foreign money for favors for foreigngovernments and foreign businesses. That gets into the area of LoganAct cubed. MR. SABATO: I think Len is absolutely right about the solution tothe problem, and for all of the discussion about campaign finance,there is no permanent solution unless we abolish the First Amendment.So, I think the campaign finance scandals, part of it is serious,part of it, as Elizabeth says, is silly. The Lincoln bedroomsleepovers, who cares. MS. DREW: I can't let it sit here with two of the people sayingyou can't do anything about the campaign finance scandal, so youcan't do anything about it. MR. GARMENT: I didn't say that. MR. SABATO: No, disclosure. Disclosure. MR. GARMENT: I talked about disclosure. MS. DREW: I know. And that's -- well, I don't want to characterizethat response. Let me just -- MR. GARMENT: Go ahead, have at us. MS. DREW: Well, it's what the Republicans say who don't reallywant to fix thing. And Larry, whom I admire, like and respect, saidthere's no permanent solution. Of course not. But the CampaignFinance Act of 1974 passed in the wake of Watergate worked throughthe 1976 election. What has happened is there was this crack in thedam put in there by, of all things, the Federal Election Commission,called soft money. Soft money is otherwise illegal, unlimitedcontributions by individuals, but direct contributions bycorporations and by labor unions. Under the '74 Act, very strictlimits were put on those kinds of contributions. That's where thescandal is. And, you know what, soft money can be eliminated withoutaltering anybody's rights. MR. GARMENT: The fixing -- I yield to no man in my respect forElizabeth, but the fixing language is the language of fadedliberalism that thinks you can codify morality, that you can fixthings. Because in order to fix something, you have to have a lot ofpeople doing the fixing, and those people themselves are either self-righteous, corrupt, have their own agendas. I mean, we are a frailpolity that depends upon the mystery of civility and interdependence,and there are no miracles. It's a cultural thing. It goes back to thewhole family, and everything else. MR. SABATO: I've got to interject just one thing about soft moneybecause, look, Elizabeth's history lesson is absolutely correct, andher conclusion that soft money could be abolished is also correct.But, you see, I take it one step beyond that. What will happen ifsoft money is abolished? All of that money will go to issueadvertising, to independent expenditures, to 'grassroots organizing,'much of which is undisclosable. So, in the end, the same money isgoing to be spent because interested money always finds an outlet. MR. WATTENBERG: You folks are talking about changing what's legal.These scandals, and one of the reasons I asked how serious it is,deals for the moment with what may have been illegal. MS. DREW: Right. MR. WATTENBERG: And I want to make -- ask this question, againgetting how serious is this, if, as most people agree, more moneygets you more votes, and Clinton a year before the election wasrunning behind Dole actually, at a certain point, they needed themoney. Let us stipulate for the moment that they raised it illegally,and they got more votes because they raised it illegally. Does thatmean that they stole the election? And that goes to undermining thelegitimacy -- MR. GARMENT: Well, both sides do that. MS. DREW: Yeah. MR. WATTENBERG: Well, Elizabeth says one side did it much morethan the other. MS. DREW: No, I'm not. I'm precisely not saying that. I was eagerto say that we've been focusing on the Clinton- Gore campaign, andthe Clinton White House. The Dole campaign and the Republicans domuch the same thing. They're out there for soft money just asstrenuously as the Democrats. I can't remember now -- MR. WATTENBERG: We're not talking now soft and hard, we're talkinglegal and illegal. MS. DREW: Here's the problem, Janet Reno and her advisors havesaid that soft money is not illegal. They say it is not covered bythe law. I think it is a perfectly loony position, and doesn't holdup either legally or in terms of policy. This is why she keepssaying, she doesn't have specific and credible evidence, becauseshe's saying -- of course it isn't covered by the law. It's aloophole. So you go in circles about this. MR. WATTENBERG: But the other money -- MS. DREW: The other place I also found that the congressionalcampaign committees were doing the same thing, using soft money forfederal campaigns. MR. GARMENT: But the question is how it's used. MS. DREW: No. MR. GARMENT: It's a neutral thing. Money is neutral. MR. WATTENBERG: Herb, will you make some sense out of this? MR. STEIN: I'm not sure that I can, and it's a little bit over myhead. But I think that there is an aspect of it that seems to meparticularly important. I'm not really so concerned about whether alot of people gave money to get Clinton elected rather than to getGore (sic) elected. I am concerned about whether a lot of people thatgave money to get the FDA to do something or not to do somethingabout tobacco, or whether to do something or not do something aboutthe regulation of banks. MR. GARMENT: Well, that's heinous. But what about the laborunions? MR. STEIN: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. MR. GARMENT: What about the petition for the address ofgrievances, isn't that a constitutional right? MR. WATTENBERG: Wait a minute. No one seems to want to listen tome here. Look, wait a minute. MR. GARMENT: No, I just think it's kind of simple- witted todiscuss these things in this framework. MR. WATTENBERG: You are talking -- you are talking about legalcontributions through a loophole, which we may or may not want to fixwith a policy fix, as you pointed out. MR. GARMENT: That's what people get paid a lot of money for is tofind loopholes. MR. WATTENBERG: I understand. But there has been substantialevidence not about legal loophole money, but illegal money that camein from foreign countries, illegal. MR. GARMENT: That's bad stuff. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. MS. DREW: Number one, Ben, is that Ms. Reno says it's not illegalunder this very strange interpretation of what -- MR. WATTENBERG: That foreign money is not illegal? MS. DREW: She says that soft money isn't covered, period. And thateven some of these, what certainly you and I and most people wouldthink is illegal -- MR. WATTENBERG: The DNC is returning the money. MS. DREW: Well, that's out of embarrassment more than a concessionthat it is illegal. I think Herb has gotten to the very importantpoint that there were serious problems with the campaign financesystem before this whole thing blew up. MR. GARMENT: Mrs. Reno is saying no to everything that mightthreaten the legal security of her president. That is, I think, atleast to me, is a clear, patent manifesto political fact. She's doingher duty to a point which would be embarrassing, I think, to somebodywho had any degree of legal sophistication, which is lacking in theattorney general's case. MR. WATTENBERG: Is it illegal, what she's doing? MR. GARMENT: Well, a lot of these things are hard to identify inthose terms. I think that it is irresponsible. I think that carriedto a certain point, depending on what knowledge she has, and whatkind of instructions she has, it could be -- it could be illegal. Itcould be. I have no evidence of that at this point. I just say on theface of it, it is manifestly insupportable. The positions she'staking are embarrassing to anybody who tries to look at thisindependently. And I am not -- I am not a member of one of the largepolitical parties. I'm still with the old gang. MS. DREW: Len, do you then discount the stories that keep sayingthat she's getting this opinion, and they name names, from careerpeople in Justice? You think that's all a farce? MR. GARMENT: Well, I think she may be getting it from careerpeople in Justice, or getting it from temporary people in the WhiteHouse. It's circulating around. I mean, she doesn't -- sheunderstands certain concrete facts of political life, which is whenthe boss says jump, you jump even higher. MR. SABATO: Well, but, you know, what, she has a case to make. Youmay not agree with that, and I happen not to agree with it either,that soft money is not included in the prohibited activities. And Idon't happen to agree with that, but it is a case that some people,some neutral observers, buy. What's much more important to me is -- MR. GARMENT: Larry. MR. SABATO: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. MR. GARMENT: All right. Go ahead. MR. SABATO: What's much more important to me is that certainactivities of the Clinton administration went way beyond those ofprior administrations, at least to my knowledge. For example, havingthe comptroller of the currency essentially ordered to appear at anevent where high level bankers were pressing for changes in policy.That is an outrage. MR. GARMENT: That's happened over and over again through theyears. MR. SABATO: Give me another concrete example. MR. WATTENBERG: Now, wait a minute. Herb, you're a chairman, aformer chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. Has thathappened before, that sort of thing? MR. STEIN: Nobody ever pressed me to meet with anybody. But whenwe had the -- say we had the price controls, we had a lot ofinfluence over a lot of people, and they would come in and they wouldmeet with us, and we would talk with them. They would make theircase. But -- MS. DREW: But did they pay $50,000 to do it? MR. STEIN: They didn't pay me anything. (Laughter.) MR. GARMENT: He didn't know. Nobody told Herb. It was a breakfast.It was a Starbuck's breakfast. MS. DREW: This is the problem. MR. WATTENBERG: Is it possible that this ugly scandal machine andthis change in the culture that we're talking about can bebeneficial? And here's what I'm talking about. You have a presidentnow who is being confronted with an inexorable scandal-makingmachine. Prosecutors and journalists, and committee chairmen, andjust, you know, slash, slash, slash, drip, drip, drip. It wears youdown. His only defense in real life is going to be if the Americanpeople say, why don't they get off his back, he's really doing such agood job, and lo and behold, we have this, I think, rather brilliantbudget deal, that puts everybody together. And Republicans, by theway, have the same -- have the same fix. They behaved, a lot ofpeople think, like jerks after the 1994 election. They have to provethat they can make a deal. Newt Gingrich also had a round of scandalmaking. So all of this, and I think all these people are greatpatriots, and they're doing things because they believe it's best forthe country, and blah, blah, blah, but they are also being driven inthe right direction by an ugly phenomenon. Does that make sense to you, Herb? MR. STEIN: No. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, next person. Why not? MR. STEIN: Well, I think the -- MR. GARMENT: Don't go on. That's a very good answer. MR. STEIN: That's enough. But, of course, there was great need.Everybody had agreed that they needed a budget deal. June O'Neill,the head of the CBO, found $200 billion that made it all very easy,much easier than it would have been. And, you know, the implicationsof this, that we should have everybody deeply involved in scandal inorder to get some good, decent policy out of the government doesn'tmake any -- MR. WATTENBERG: I did not use the word 'ought,' I'm not sayingthat -- MR. STEIN: But the implication is that it -- MR. WATTENBERG: I'm not saying that. I'm not for it, but is ithaving that effect? MR. STEIN: I don't believe it. I think that there's a lot ofindependent pressures in the system, in the economy and the economicoutlook that led to this budget deal, and I don't think that. MR. SABATO: I would say, you know, you make an argument for thatin the sense that there are positive effects to any scandal if itleads to reform. I mean, there were good effects to Watergate. Butlook what the country had to endure to get there. So, on the whole,I'd rather not. MR. STEIN: Let me interject something else, because a scandal, ifa president is exposed and in danger because of a scandal, it leadshim to want to do something startlingly good, but it may not reallybe a good thing. That is, I can remember in our case, in our scandalin 1973, when the president was -- MR. GARMENT: That's when we throw our arms around each other. MR. WATTENBERG: With President Nixon. MR. STEIN: And President Nixon, but he wanted to go back and dothe freeze, the price control freeze over again. It had been a bigsuccess in 1971, he thought it would be a great success in thecountry in 1973, and it would help to, you know, establish him,reestablish him. It was a disaster. So, you know, I don't -- MR. GARMENT: I think now there is a sense of kind of an executiveparalysis, and into that opening there was a natural movement by theleaders in the Congress and other influential people to get somethingdone, and to exercise some leadership. Even the Colin Powellphenomenon is an aspect of that. People are prepared to go for anunelected president than have no president at all. And, in a sense,we do not have a real president. MR. WATTENBERG: Let's end it right there, if we might. Thank you,Elizabeth Drew, Leonard Garment, Herb Stein, and Larry Sabato. And thank you. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our showbetter. Please send your questions and comments to: New River Media,1150 Seventeenth Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036; or e-mailus at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank visit PBSOn-line at www.pbs.org. And please let us know where you watch ThinkTank. (Musical break.) ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content. Think Tank is made possible by AMGEN, recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. AMGEN, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology. Improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theLilly Endowment, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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