Politics by Other Means: The Use and Abuse of Scandal

The great difficulty of interpreting political scandals was summarized by a newspaper editor in the western film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Deciding not to publish the truth of an explosive political story, the editor justifies it by saying, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” We have certainly had many legends regarding political scandals foisted on us, especially since Watergate.

Nearly every political administration has potential scandal lying just below the surface. There are always those in government who seek to profit privately from public service, and there are always those who will abuse their power. All governments provide the occasion for scoundrels of both kinds. But the scandals they precipitate rarely erupt into full-blown crises of the political order. What differentiates the scandals that do?

To understand a political scandal fully, one must take into account all of the interests of those involved. The problem is that these interests are rarely revealed—which is precisely why it is so tempting for partisans, particularly if they are at a political disadvantage, to resort to scandal to attack their opponents. Many great scandals arise not as a means of exposing corruption, but as a means of attacking political foes while obscuring the political differences that are at issue. This is especially likely to occur in the aftermath of elections that threaten the authority of an established order. In such circumstances, scandal provides a way for defenders of the status quo to undermine the legitimacy of those who have been elected on a platform of challenging the status quo—diluting, as a consequence, the authority of the electorate.

Thanks for the ping. The article makes some good points about Watergate being used for partisan purposes. However, it takes at face value Woodward's questionable identification of Felt as the sole source for Deep Throat's leaks; and there are some other relevant items. Probably the most relevant to the article's theme is the role Ted Kennedy played in manipulating the investigation, highlighted in Geoff Shepard's books on the topic. In relation to this, the Nedzi Committee investigation of the CIA's role in Watergate found that not only did Kennedy have advance knowledge the break-ins through a tip from a Democrat-friendly PI firm, but that Watergate burglar James McCord knew that Kennedy knew, yet proceeded with the break-ins anyway. McCord's other behavior, such as taping the door open a second time after the night watchman had already removed the tape the first time, along with other pecularities of the crime scene suggest that McCord and Hunt intended to get caught, and had a different agenda/s for being there than their ostensible one. Also relevant to the article's point on how no one mounted a strong defense of Nixon is the fact that prominent Republicans also helped bring Nixon down. (Probably not coincidentally, some of the same also played a role in getting Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller in position for their ascents--prior to a curious series of concentrated assassination attempts on Ford in September 1975.) The Get Nixon Squad was a bipartisan effort.

But Nixon’s second term was not going to be a continuation of the first. Even The New York Times noted that the transformation of government demanded by Nixon after his 1972 re-election—his stated intention was to rein in the executive bureaucracy—was as extreme as if an opposition party had won.

Of course they did. They always say that about Republicans. Whether it's true or not is hard to say. Nixon was definitely a political warrior, whether he was really going to be tough on budgets and deficits is another matter.

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