Presidential Scandals – Oh My!

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Robert Brescia
September 9, 2024

You may have heard the old expression, “You have to break some eggs to make an omelet,” or “You don’t want to see how the sausage is made!” With respect to presidential administrations, the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court, it may seem to many that they are engaged in organized chaos to get their jobs done. For example, in 2009 House Speaker Pelosi said of the impending Obamacare legislation, “Well, you’ve got to pass it first before you can know what’s inside of it.” Thousands of pages of proposed law were never read by most representatives and senators before the Affordable Care Act became law. Regular Americans hung on desperately while this law that would affect them in a major way, made its way from start to finish. That’s scandalous.

When I teach Government & Politics to my high school seniors, I usually tell them on the first day that learning the “nuts and bolts” of government is somewhat straightforward and clean. You will learn and appreciate how the government is structured, how the three branches interact with each other, how we have a Constitutional Republic, and you will examine our founding documents. But, politics, by contrast, is often not clean and can be the dirty, seedy side of our political system. Few presidential administrations make it through without some type of scandal. In this article, we will do a little exercise. I will describe a scandal related to a particular presidential administration and you can guess which one it is. Here we go:

1. When commenting on the state of ethics in politics, this president said, “Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.”
2. This president appointed his friend and advisor, Bert Lance, to head up the Office of Management & Budget (OMB). Lance was eventually charged with multiple counts of bank fraud and resigned his position.
3. Several members of this president’s cabinet found themselves under investigation over corrupt dealings with the Galphin Affair land scandal. Secretary of War George Crawford resigned from office.
4. This president was usually considered “clean as a hound’s tooth”, but you couldn’t say the same for members of his administration who were accused of receiving major expensive gifts. The biggest offender was his VP, accused of taking $18,000 from supporters.
5. Under this president, there was an investigation of homosexual activities at the Naval base in Newport, RI. Nothing was concluded or found but the scandal caught the attention of Americans for quite some time.
6. Chief Forrester Gifford Pinchot roundly criticized this president and his Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger for selling out Alaska’s coal lands. The president fired Pinchot.
7. This president appointed Oregon U.S. Federal District Attorney John Hall to investigate land fraud. Instead of prosecuting the offending land companies, Hall blackmailed them, subsequently being found guilty of doing so.
8. Several controversies were connected to this president’s administration, such as White House officials receiving gifts of deep freezers and fur coats.
9. The biggest scandal of this president’s administration involved granting clemency to several officials implicated in his predecessor’s administration—the Iran-Contra Affair. He also claimed ignorance of the Iran-Contra’s goings-on but entries in his diary say otherwise.
10. This highly revered president was accused of fathering children with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello. His own foundation investigated and concluded that indeed the president was the father of all six of Sally Hemings’ children.
11. His run for president was threatened when he was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock during his affair with Maria Halpin. He admitted everything and was subsequently elected.
12. We discovered during this president’s second term that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans.

To what degree does a president need to be “pure as the driven snow” anymore? They and their administrators are human beings, subject to the same frailties and weaknesses as the general population. Perhaps the important thing is when transgressions are identified that there is accountability applied and carried out. It’s one thing to say, “I accept full responsibility for this” but then keep on administering as if nothing happened. It should be, “I accept full responsibility for what happened and therefore I am submitting my resignation effective immediately.” We don’t see too much of that nowadays.

Former 1950s Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd proclaimed when he took on his duties, “I agree to live in a glass house with the curtains open.” We could certainly use more people of character in presidential administrations who do the right things, especially when no one is watching.

Answers below. Your scoring table:

8-12 correct: You are an ethical and historical marvel of an American!

4-7 correct: Nice going, better than most!

0-3 correct: Don’t join a presidential administration until you study up some more!

Answers: 

1. Richard Nixon
2. Jimmy Carter
3. Zachary Taylor
4. Dwight Eisenhower
5. Woodrow Wilson
6. William Howard Taft
7. William McKinley
8. Harry Truman
9. George H. W. Bush
10. Thomas Jefferson
11. Grover Cleveland
12. Barack Obama

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Author: Dr. Robert Brescia is a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT), serving as Social Studies Department Head at Permian High School in Odessa, TX. The Governor of Texas re-appointed him to the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) for a six-year term. Bob has a doctoral degree with distinction in Executive Leadership from The George Washington University. He also teaches ethics to university students and leadership to organizations. Contact him at [email protected].

 

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