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« Back to Corruption, Then and Now main page    Transcript for: Corruption, Then and NowTHINK TANK WITH BEN WATTENBERG#1402 Corruption, Then and Now. FEED DATE: January 19, 2006 Norman Ornstein Opening Billboard: Funding for Think Tank is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. WATTENBERG: Bribery, graft, extortion, cronyism, money laundering. Political corruption has a lot of names but whatever it’s called there seems to be more of it than ever. American political scandals pre-date the founding of the country, but has their essential character changed? Will politics always be tainted by money or can we help clean it up by looking at America’s own history? To find out, Think Tank is joined by Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of ’The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track’. The topic before the house: corruption, then and now, this week on Think Tank! WATTENBERG: Norman Ornstein. Old friend, old colleague at the American Enterprise Institute about a hundred years worth. Welcome back to Think Tank. ORNSTEIN: It’s always a pleasure, Ben. WATTENBERG: Okay. Norman, tell us a little bit about what you do at the American Enterprise Institute. ORNSTEIN: I’ve been here starting in 1978, actually, as a part-time adjunct scholar... WATTENBERG: That’s when I came on. ORNSTEIN: Yes, we came at the same time. I was teaching political science at that point at Catholic University full-time in 1984, and I study American politics. WATTENBERG: And you got your PhD when you were how old? ORNSTEIN: I was 18 when I graduated from college and 22 when I got my PhD. I write a lot about Congress, the Presidency, elections, the American institutions. WATTENBERG: Okay. Historical question. Did the Founding Fathers envision that this great country of ours would have plenty of corruption? ORNSTEIN: Of course. And if you look through the federalist papers, when the founders talked about ambition, they wanted to channel ambition in appropriate and functional directions, understanding that you bring power, money, ambition together in government and the idea that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely wasn’t just seizing power... WATTENBERG: That was Lord Acton? ORNSTEIN: That was Lord Acton. But it wasn’t just something that revolved around an abuse of power - the police power, for example, or now as we think of it in terms of wiretaps or areas of that sort - it was also corruption. That there was always going to be the temptation to for gain do something that would thwart the popular will. WATTENBERG: Alright. I just sat down and started thinking to myself about some incidents that are well known. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about them? Duck it completely if you’d like; add some new ones if you’d like. The first one I remember is Aaron Burr. ORNSTEIN: Of course, we had a number of scandals involving Aaron Burr, not the least of which was murdering Alexander Hamilton in the duel, which wasn’t too bad. But back then we had enormous conflicts between Burr, Jefferson, Hamilton, all a part of this framing group. A lot of them focused around who was going to hold power and when they were going to hold power. WATTENBERG: But was there corrupt behavior? ORNSTEIN: There was some corrupt behavior involving Aaron Burr as well, and you know, that was a time when while the framers were sensitive to issues of corruption, the standards that we use to judge corruption were different at that point. WATTENBERG: And of course, the story on Daniel Webster, Senator Daniel Webster, regarded as one of the great American political heroes. What did he do? ORNSTEIN: A great American political hero. Daniel Webster was on the payroll of the Bank of New York. And... WATTENBERG: While he was in the Senate? ORNSTEIN: While he was in the Senate, and wrote a famous letter to the bank that basically said, “you haven’t sent me my retainer, and unless you send me my retainer, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to do things that will make your position and your charter in the bank something that you aren’t going to like very much.” WATTENBERG: Okay. Skipping way ahead very quickly, Teapot Dome was real corruption. Tell us a little bit about that and what the years were. ORNSTEIN: Teapot Dome was around 1920. It was the administration of Warren Harding and it’s one of the main reasons that Warren Harding, a very popular figure at the time, went down as a weak president from a corruption riddled administration. This really was lands with oil on them in the west. WATTENBERG: Out west, right. ORNSTEIN: And it basically was a corrupt scheme for public officials to get benefit from the leasing of those lands. It erupted into a major scandal, cost some cabinet members and lawmakers their jobs, and was the biggest scandal of the time. Let me take you a little bit further back in history because it’s relevant. And that’s an era around the 1870s. The biggest scandal of which was Credit Mobilier, but it was also followed by another very close on its heels called Whiskey Ring. This was an era that Mark Twain and a colleague in a novel called ‘the gilded age’. And basically what we had... WATTENBERG: Was that his phrase? ORNSTEIN: It was his phrase. It was the title of the novel. And basically what we had with Credit Mobilier it was lands that were leased and sold to the Union Pacific Railroad. A company set up for that purpose that ended up giving shares to members of Congress so that they could have laws written that would benefit them. Whiskey Ring was... WATTENBERG: Sounds familiar. ORNSTEIN: Yes, it certainly does, doesn’t it? And Whiskey Ring involved the revenues from whiskey at the time, and also a kind of a corrupt scheme involving the people who were collecting those revenues. The Gilded Age phrase was used by Twain because what he saw –- and this was an ironic phrase, of course -– was an era where special interest with huge sums of money, especially surrounding the railroads, the big thing at the time, began to pay that money in large amounts to lawmakers and other major public officials to get policy that they wanted. This was a case where some of that money was then kicked back to the politicians so that when they ran for office, they could ensure that they would have the same people and even more of their numbers in place, so you could get a self-perpetuating scheme. And, of course, they also made sure that for all the patronage positions, they had their people in place and all of this: money from interest coming through lobbyists to public officials, stacking the deck with their own people in office and around them, and then having some of that money not only go for their higher living, but go back to perpetuate them in office was a dominant, shocking scandal of the time and it’s one reason why many believe, me included, that we may be in the beginning of another gilded age. WATTENBERG: Who was president during that? ORNSTEIN: Most of this happened during the tenure of Ulysses S. Grant. WATTENBERG: Did it cost him his job? ORNSTEIN: It ultimately cost him in history. And Ulysses Grant was himself personally, it appears, an honest man. But his presidency is seen as one of the worst in history because he’s seen as a weak figure who let scandal dominate. WATTENBERG: Alright. We have to move right along. World War II erupts. There’s a Senator named Harry Truman, who later becomes president, and he establishes something called the Truman Committee. Give us a little background on that. ORNSTEIN: Well, of course, as we began to mobilize for the Second World War, after a long period when our defenses had been run down to almost nothing... WATTENBERG: We’re talking the late ‘30s or early ‘40s. ORNSTEIN: In the late 1930s and into the early 1940s. We saw immobilization that was unlike anything we’d ever had in this country. The number of planes being produced and ships being produced and equipment as we moved into this major war. And of course, it meant that in this frantic effort to get all of these things built, huge sums of money were spent, the normal controls weren’t in place. This was less a scandal involving interests going to members of Congress and getting them to do things than it was all kinds of industrial interests taking advantage of a situation where they knew their country’s government needed to have things done and wasn’t going to look at it as closely as otherwise. WATTENBERG: And there were famous stories that went with it that they were producing shoddy goods that American boys would have to fight with and there were some plays written about that and so on. ORNSTEIN: It was shocking to people because, of course, this was a time of immense patriotic fervor - understandably so, the nation mobilizing for a war - that people would take advantage of it and put American boys at risk for their profits. WATTENBERG: And it made Harry Truman sufficiently well known and heroic, this plain-spoken man that came 1944. Roosevelt felt confident enough to name his as his vice president and he later became, I think, a great president. ORNSTEIN: It’s interesting. One of the things that’s happened throughout American history: there are periodic scandals, naturally. People who are involved in uncovering those scandals are moving for reform, often use that as a pivot point to prominence or dominance in American politics. Harry Truman, who was not at that point considered to be one of the stars of the Senate, used that venue as his springboard, ultimately to the presidency. WATTENBERG: And in point of fact, he was closely aligned with a Missouri operator and thought-to-be-crook, Tom Pendergast. ORNSTEIN: Yes. The Pendergast machine in Missouri had supported Truman and he was plagued throughout his career with charges that he had a bunch of people around him, his cronies, who were not exactly on the up and up. But it was fighting against war-profiteering and scandal that gave him his start in politics. WATTENBERG: Okay. It is, at least on the part of the corruptor, it is idealistic or patriotic and there are people who make the case -– I’ll mention the magic word, Watergate. Why don’t you give us the one-minute version of Watergate? ORNSTEIN: Watergate in the end was a breakdown at the Democratic Party’s headquarters, which happened to be at the Watergate office building. This is the spring of 1972 heading into the reelection campaign of Richard Nixon, which he won in a landslide, ultimately. But as it began to unravel, around the time of the election just as it’s beginnings and then after the 1972 election, it turned out to be more than just a simple attempt at a petty robbery and more an attempt to look at files that might be in the Democratic National Committee that could be used to embarrass Nixon’s democratic opponents. Now, this is -– what’s most interesting about this, Ben is that the seeds of the scandal were set before the reelection. The disaster and the scandal occurred afterwards. WATTENBERG: The cover-up. ORNSTEIN: And because often what happens is that presidents are successful - if they are successful at winning a second term - of seeing a scandal emerge and suppressing it so they can get through the election. But in the process of suppressing it, they create the seeds of their own destruction because it becomes what’s now the watchword, the cover-up’s worse than the crime. WATTENBERG: That’s right. And the early polls in 1972, ‘cause there was the war in Vietnam, there was a lot – the economy was a little flat – showed the putative democratic frontrunner Ed Muskie running a few points ahead of Nixon and, so it is said, that’s what ginned up this Watergate thing. They really thought they might lose. ORNSTEIN: They thought they might lose, but even beyond that President Nixon really had a thing for his opponents and wanted to be sure that he could follow what they were doing and make them suffer if they did things he didn’t like. So, we went beyond just “I’ve got to make sure I can win”, to something else. And Nixon believed right up until his dying day that everything that he did had been done by many others before. But it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. WATTENBERG: Alright. Let’s go on to - there was a woman lobbyist named Paula Parkinson. ORNSTEIN: The relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists goes back to early stages of the republic and those relationships included meals and other gratuities, but they also included close relationships that might even include sexual relationships. WATTENBERG: And the funny line on that one was she took, or some of her people took some senators down to some resort in Florida. One of them was Dan Quayle who then ran as Bush Senior’s vice president and Marilyn Quayle was asked about it - it was a golfing vacation - and she said, “If it comes to a choice for Dan between golf and women, golf is going to win every time.” Was it something like that? ORNSTEIN: Yes. It turned out that Paula Parkinson had had an affair with a member of Congress from Delaware. His career was ruined. But others who were along on that trip, whether they’d had a relationship with Paula Parkinson or not, including Dan Quayle, got caught up in it. And just the whole idea of a woman lobbyist consorting with members of Congress... WATTENBERG: And a good-looking one. ORNSTEIN: ...outside of town, and a very good-looking one, captured public imagination, shall we say, and it got blown up into a much bigger scandal than it actually was. WATTENBERG: Alright. Now, technology rears its ugly head and we have, as I recall, at least a pretty big one called Abscam. ORNSTEIN: Yes. WATTENBERG: What is that about? ORNSTEIN: Abscam was a classic bribery case and it was a sting. The FBI set itself up with a group of people who were presumably very rich oil sheikhs looking to get small pieces of legislation done in return for sizable sums of cash. Made it known around the capitol that they were in business to do that and then ended up ensnaring a sizable number of members of Congress, all caught on videotape taking money in return for official actions. One member of Congress, Michael Ozzie Myers of Pennsylvania, was expelled. Several others including a former judge, Richard Kelly of Florida, who was caught on film putting the money in his pockets and then looking around saying, “This doesn’t show, does it?”, ended up jailed. WATTENBERG: The so-called Iran Contra affair had an ideological component to it. Would you explain what’s the deal? ORNSTEIN: With Iran Contra it clearly arrayed democrats against republicans. We had a republican president wanting very much to pursue a policy of... WATTENBERG: Ronald Reagan. ORNSTEIN: Ronald Reagan providing aid to the contras in Nicaragua, a democratic Congress that didn’t want it to happen. Frustrated by the refusal of Congress to do what he wanted, President Reagan made a little bit of an end-run around Congress and also involved in a circuitous fashion, Iran and... WATTENBERG: In other words what he did - and he denied and he didn’t deny it - was get money to the so-called moderates in Iran, that’s part one; and part two was Oliver North, his aide, funneling that money to the contras. ORNSTEIN: Yes. The best way to handle Iran Contra is simply to say this was a scandal not of personal financial gain in return for favors. It was not a sexual scandal. This was a case of what was seen as an abuse of power. A presidential end-run around power, which does often happen in a second term. WATTENBERG: I got two other fast ones. Jim Wright from Texas was the Democratic Majority Leader and Newt Gingrich went after him - was a House member at the time - went after him with a vengeance. I forget exactly on what -– this was not House -– oh, this was the book that he wrote. And Jim Wright ended up resigning. How did that work? ORNSTEIN: When Jim Wright became Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich at the time, a rank and file member, said we’ve got to worry about this guy because he is tough, aggressive and smart; he could be the strongest speaker and bedevil us for a long time. WATTENBERG: Jim Wright? ORNSTEIN: Jim Wright. Newt Gingrich used ethics issues as a major way of trying to highlight the corruption of the long term democrats in power and focused on Jim Wright. Wright got caught up in another set of petty matters. Some questions about money that may have gone for work done by his wife, but in particular a book where bulk sales had been achieved by lobbyists or other interests, money going back to him seen as a way of kind of circumventing... WATTENBERG: And instead of getting ten or fifteen percent of the royalty, he got fifty percent or something like that. I mean, he ended up with real cash in his pocket. ORNSTEIN: Yes. By most standards, this was petty stuff, more misdemeanor than felony variety. But in the context of the times, especially for a Speaker of the House, the allegations were strong enough and the antipathy was great enough that Wright was forced to resign. At the time he resigned making a cry against what he said was mindless cannibalism in the House. WATTENBERG: Alright. Last one is Monica Lewinsky. ORNSTEIN: Monica Lewinsky started, of course, simply as a case of adultery of a president with an intern, which has its own twist to it. Sexually activity in the White House and in and around the Oval Office. But in the end, it became an impeachment case for another set of reasons that revolved once again around cover-up. As the President Clinton was undergoing another civil lawsuit over allegations of sexual impropriety... WATTENBERG: Whitewater... ORNSTEIN: ...with Paula Jones, he came up before a grand jury. The independent counsel, who was handling a series of matters learned about Monica Lewinsky, asked him questions, those were seen as answers that weren’t adequate enough and so he got brought up on charges that he had lied, basically. WATTENBERG: The republicans claim -– I happen to think there was some merit on that one, here was Bill Clinton the former lawyer, a former professor of law, the chief law enforcement officer of the nation, committing perjury and that, so they said - as they used to say, it wasn’t sex; it was perjury. That was the argument. ORNSTEIN: Yes. Of course... WATTENBERG: And perjury’s a serious crime as we’re going to find out in a minute. ORNSTEIN: No question, it is. What’s been kind of amusing in the last year as we’ve seen the most recent scandal that brought the White House into it, which was over the so-called Valerie Plame case, that with the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, indicted on charges of perjury because he didn’t tell FBI agents everything about his contacts... WATTENBERG: Obstruction of justice. I don’t know if they got him on perjury. ORNSTEIN: Well, obstruction of justice... WATTENBERG: There’s a lot of big words that go with these minor matters. ORNSTEIN: All of the same things that republicans in the House and Senate said could not be tolerated because of the fundamental basis of the legal system became “well it doesn’t really matter; it’s petty stuff now”. It’s all in the eye of the beholder in many cases when you’re dealing with scandal at this level. WATTENBERG: Okay. Now, so you have this several hundred year history and somebody always says, “Well, we’re going to clean house and we’re going to fix it.” What’s the record? Do they fix it? ORNSTEIN: There’s no such thing as fixing it, Ben. I mean, there’s no such thing as finding a permanent solution. It is always going to be the reality, given human beings and power, that when you bring together in one place, enormous sums of money, enormous power over people’s lives, and human beings, you’re going to have corruption. One of the things that’s happened in recent years is we have an ever more powerful federal government and an ever larger budget; 2.4 trillion dollars sloshing around out there. How can you not find, no matter what the rules you set up happen to be, somebody who’s going to say, “You know, if I can give this member of Congress a million dollars, he can steer me a contract worth a hundred million dollars. What a great deal.” WATTENBERG: Alright. ORNSTEIN: At some point you’re going to find somebody who says, “I’ll take it.” WATTENBERG: We’re going to move on right away to the current situation, but there is one other item I want to bring up, where the Justice Department establishes an attorney typically, I guess, good old Ornstein, and they say, “Ornstein, here’s this case. We’re going to give you an unlimited amount of money; we are going to give you an unlimited amount of time”, and this happened on a number of cases, “See what you can find out about Mr. Jones.” And Mr. Jones frequently –- and there’s a lot of examples of that -– has neither an unlimited amount of money, nor an unlimited amount of time and this tends to create an imbalance which creates ever greater publicity about something that would not normally... Is that a fair assessment? I mean, I don’t want to... ORNSTEIN: It is. It’s a fair assessment. There’s always a problem when you have somebody investigating himself or the people around him, whether you can do it appropriately and honestly. So we’ve always had this urge to have somebody independent. It got out of hand with the independent council statute, where you had rogue prosecutors in effect with unlimited resources ranging over the place for years and years. Now we’ve taken that back a notch, but it’s still there and a part of the problem is if somebody gets investigated, everybody around them ends up having to go to a grand jury. It could wipe out all your savings where you might have done nothing except be sitting in an office down the hall. WATTENBERG: There was this secretary of labor, Donovan, and after it was all done he was acquitted and he asked that haunting question which is “how do I get my good name back?” ORNSTEIN: Yes. WATTENBERG: And it’s... Okay. The magic word of the moment, “Jack Abrahamoff”. Start us out, and I got about a hundred questions. Let’s... ORNSTEIN: Well, Jack Abrahamoff now has become a household word. He wanted to become a household word, but not in this fashion. This is a man, a brash man, who had a small career as a movie producer but had always been active in conservative republican politics going back to young republican days. ORNSTEIN: What Abrahamoff decided he could do with the help of republicans in Congress, was once again to create a self-perpetuating machine, get our people placed in lobbying organizations; they can make large sums of money from clients; they can give back nick perks and benefits to members of Congress, staffers, and others in government, and in turn they will also give large amounts of money and campaign contributions to make sure that they can stay in office. It is the gilded age in some ways all over again, except now we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars, not just thousands. WATTENBERG: Norman Ornstein, thank you very much for joining us on Think Tank. And thank you. Please, join us for a future episode where we will continue or discussion on corruption in America, and please send us your comments via email. We think it helps make our program better. For Think Tank I’m Ben Wattenberg. Announcer: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 4455 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite C-100, Washington, DC 20008 or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS online at pbs.org and please let us know where you watch Think Tank. Funding for Think Tank is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, 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. 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