Presidential Scandals Top 10 Presidential Scandals

Presidential Scandals

Top 10 Presidential Scandals

With all the rhetoric that has been tossed around about voter turnout in the wake of Watergate, it might seem that presidential scandals were something new in the 1970s. In fact, this is inaccurate. There have been major and minor scandals during the administration of many if not most of the presidents. Here is a list of ten of these scandals that rocked the presidency. The following is listed in order from oldest to newest. 

1. Andrew Jackson's Marriage

Here is the official White House portrait of Andrew Jackson.

Source: White House. President of the United States.

Before Andrew Jackson was president, he married a woman named Rachel Donelson in 1791. She had previously been married and believed that she was legally divorced. However, after marrying Jackson, Rachel found out this was not the case. Her first husband charged her with adultery. Jackson would have to wait until 1794 to legally marry Rachel. Even though this happened over thirty years previously, it was used against Jackson in the election of 1828. Jackson blamed Rachel's untimely death two months before he took office on these personal attacks against him and his wife.  

2. Black Friday - 1869

Ulysses S Grant, Seventeenth President of the United States

Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-13018 DLC

Ulysses S. Grant's administration was rife with scandal. The first major scandal dealt with speculation in the gold market. Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner the market. They drove up the price of gold but Grant found out and quickly had the Treasury add gold to the economy. This in turn resulted in the lowering of gold prices on Friday, September 24, 1869 which adversely affected all those who had bought gold.

3. Credit Mobilier

The Credit Mobilier company was found to be stealing from the Union Pacific Railroad. However, they tried to cover this up by selling stocks in their company at a large discount to government officials and Congress members including Vice President Schuyler Colfax. When this was discovered, it hurt many reputations including that of Ulysses S. Grant's VP.

4. Whiskey Ring

Another scandal that occurred during Grant's presidency was the Whiskey Ring. In 1875, it was revealed that many government employees were pocketing whiskey taxes. Grant called for swift punishment but caused further scandal when he moved to protect his personal secretary who had been implicated in the affair

5. Star Route Scandal

James Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States

Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-BH82601-1484-B DLC

While not implicating the president himself, James Garfield. had to deal with the Star Route Scandal in 1881 during his six months as president before his assassination. This scandal dealt with corruption in the postal service. Private organizations at the time were handling postal routes out west. They would give postal officials a low bid but when the officials would present these bids to Congress they would ask for higher payments. Obviously, they were profiting from this state of affairs. Garfield dealt with this head on even though many members of his own party were benefiting from the corruption.

6. Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa?

Grover Cleveland - Twenty-Second and Twenty-Fourth President of the United States

Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-7618 DLC

Grover Cleveland had to deal head on with a scandal while he was running for president in 1884. It was revealed that he had previously had an affair with a widow named Maria C. Halpin who had given birth to a son. She claimed that Cleveland was the father and named him Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Cleveland agreed to pay child support and then paid to put the child in an orphanage when she was no longer fit to raise him. When this issue was brought forth in the campaign and even became a chant "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!," Cleveland was honest about the entire affair. This helped rather than hurt him, and he won the election.

7. Teapot Dome

Warren G Harding, Twenty-Ninth President of the United States

Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-13029 DLC

Warren G. Harding's presidency was struck by many scandals. The Teapot Dome scandal was the most significant. In this, Albert Fall, Harding's Secretary of the Interior, sold the right to the oil reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming and other locations in exchange for personal profit and cattle. He was eventually caught, convicted and sentenced to jail.

8. Watergate

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States

Library of Congress

Watergate has become synonymous with presidential scandal. In 1972, five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters located at the Watergate business complex. As the investigation into this and the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office (Ellsberg had published the secret Pentagon Papers) developed, Richard Nixon and his advisors worked to cover-up the crimes. He would have surely been impeached but resigned instead on August 9, 1974. 

9. Iran-Contra

Ronald Reagan, Fortieth President of the United States

Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library

Several individuals in Ronald Reagan's administration were implicated in the Iran-Contra Scandal. Basically, money that had been obtained through selling arms to Iran was given secretly to the revolutionary Contras in Nicaragua. Other than helping the Contras, the hope was that by selling the weapons to Iran, terrorists would be more willing to give up hostages. This scandal resulted in major Congressional hearings.

10. Monica Lewinsky Affair

Bill Clinton, Forty-Second President of the United States

Public Domain Image from NARA

Bill Clinton was implicated in a couple of scandals, the most significant for his presidency was the Monica Lewinsky affair. Lewinsky was a White House staffer with whom Clinton had an intimate relationship, or as he later put it, an "improper physical relationship." He had previously denied this while giving a deposition in another case which resulted in a vote to impeach him by the House of Representatives in 1998. The Senate did not vote to remove him from office but the event did mar his presidency as he joined Andrew Johnson as only the second president to be impeached.

By Martin Kelly

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A TURNING POINT FOR DR. KING, AND OUR NATION

A TURNING POINT FOR DR. KING, AND OUR NATION

In 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., sat amid a flurry of changes that would radically alter the nation. In July, President Lyndon Baines Johnson would sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law and begin The War on Poverty. With little time to rest from the victory for African-Americans that would eventually expand opportunities to all marginalized groups in the nation – King received a call that would not only significantly change his view for the struggle for full citizenship but expand his struggle from domestic to international and from American to a world view.

The day before he received the call that would change his vision on civil rights, Martin Luther King was, in the words of his wife Coretta, “completely exhausted, tired and empty.” His doctor found him suffering from high blood pressure, a virus and being overweight by 20 pounds. King was in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, Ga., in early October 1964 trying to rest.

His schedule hadn’t decreased since the signing of the Civil Rights Act, but had increased. The nonviolent, direct action campaign waged in 1963 by the King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (with added support from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League) had borne fruit. King was in great demand in 1964—in St. Augustine, Florida, for example, where the SCLC was lending support to local activists fighting racial segregation and the white mob violence that almost always accompanied resistance to Jim Crow.

So when the call from Norway came to the King house, Coretta had to wake him up on the hospital phone with the news. King's biographer David Garrow wrote that the Nobel Peace Prize announcement both disturbed his rest and buoyed his spirits. The Nobel Peace Prize creates world leaders for peace out of activists of obscurity. The awarding of it—even the publicly whispered nomination of it—draws attention to groups and individuals seemingly on the margins of their societies. With the one call, they join the world community as public figures. And so it was with Martin Luther King. “It was a great tribute, but an even more awesome burden,” Coretta recalled. King said to reporters at the hospital: “History has thrust me into this position. It would be both immoral and a sign of ingratitude if I did not face my moral responsibility to do what I can in the struggle.”

******

King accepted the award in Oslo in December 1964. The year began with King being named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year,” but this honor was much more than a world bookend to that national honor.

“I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death,” he said. “I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.”

He said he thought the award was the ultimate validation of nonviolence as a “powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.” That nonviolent movement, narrated King in his speech, “led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.”

King always identified three evils—racism, militarism and economic exploitation, so it comes as no surprise that he said in his acceptance speech what would echo, just three years later, into his view on Vietnam: “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction.”

******

The prize thrust him into many new decisions, new priorities. To Coretta’s consternation, he gave up the $54,000 that came with the award, dividing it up between SCLC, SNCC, NAACP and the National Urban League. (This is one of the reasons that King died with no savings for his family.) His calls for economic justice were beginning to be heard.

King had to shift his responsibility from being a leader of a domestic American civil rights movement of racial minorities to being a world leader. This meant he had to apply his evil triplicate to the rights of the people in Vietnam. He criticized America, calling it the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

These kinds of statements made King enemies in both President Lyndon Johnson and among his civil rights allies. King died a very maligned and unpopular man when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968.

When he heard he had received the Nobel Peace Prize, King finally had to give up his post-Movement dreams. All of King’s biographers mention that King never wanted to be a civil rights leader. His original goal was to be a pastor at his church in Montgomery, Ala., for a few years, then join his undergraduate alma mater, Morehouse College, as a professor and, ultimately, work his way up to becoming Morehouse’s president. In the meantime, he would quietly raise his family, enjoying his roles of husband and father. First the Movement, and then the Nobel, had destroyed all of those plans, the Nobel being, almost literally, the final nail on his forthcoming coffin four years later. Garrow wrote: “The prize might mean there would never be any respite, never any retreat to a quiet pastorship or seminary professorship.” In the end that’s exactly what it did mean.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, were the beginning of the end of blatant, legalized racism. While other movements would challenge inequities in the following decades, America has yet to end racism or any other “ism.”

Fifty years later, as Everyday Democracy celebrates its 25th year of existence, the urgency for eliminating the smear of racism from our American democracy remains a worthy challenge.

It’s a challenge that Everyday Democracy and countless others working in their communities to create positive change are committed to overcoming.  

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Tha American dream

The term “American dream” is used in many Dimensions, but it basicaly is an idea that suggests that anyone in the US can succeed through hard work and has the potential to lead a happy, successful life. Many people have expanded upon or refined the definition to include things such as freedom, fulfillment and meaningful relationships. Someone who manages to achieve his or her version of the American dream is often said to be “living the dream.” This concept has been subject to criticism, because some people believe that the structure of society in the US prevents such an idealistic goal for everyone. Critics often point to examples of inequality rooted in class, race, religion and ethnicity that suggest that the American dream is not attainable for everyone. 

History

The idea of an American dream is older than the US, dating to the 1600s, when people began to have all sorts of hopes and aspirations for what was a new and largely unexplored continent to European immigrants. Many of these dreams focused on owning land and establishing a prosperous business that — theoretically, at least — would increase one's happiness. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, authors often wrote about the idealistic American dream, somewhat codifying the concept and entrenching it in American society.

Stereotypical Dream

The dream for Americans is often portrayed as being perfectly average. For example, some people might say that it is being married, having two children and living in a three-bedroom home with a white picket fence . Rather than being based on great wealth or success, this version of the dream might be based more on avoiding things such as poverty  and loneliness.

Improving Upon the Past

Some people say that the American dream represents the desire to live a better life than the previous generation did — and that there is a legitimate opportunity for this to happen. The desire among many parents is for their children to lead happy lives. This is especially true among immigrants, because many of them fled extremely difficult circumstances in their native countries.

Criticisms

The idealistic vision of the American dream often disregards discrimination based on a person's race, religion, gender and national origin, which might inhibit his or her ability to achieve specific goals. Critics also point out that many versions of the dream equate prosperity with happiness, and that happiness is possible without wealth or even in poverty. To some people, the American dream might be more about personal fulfillment than about economic success or owning property.

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