Talk:Political scandals of the United States

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The Pentagon Papers Case seems part of the larger scandal that was the Nixon Administration. What this article lacks is a definition that would allow distinction between scandals and crises of different sorts and between major and minor scandals. Where are the thresholds? Unless that can be determined anything politically controversial falls within the ambit of the article.

The Pentagon Papers Case was a constitutional crisis and not a political scandal.

I removed Panic of 1873 because there was no indication in the linked article that it was a scandal. Sure it was an unhappy time for the US - mistakes even may have been made, but that does not make it a scandal. DJ Clayworth 16:16, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I also removed an entry alleging that the FBI was investigating teddy bears with Anti-Bush slogans on, and an unexplained entry about Gorge W Bush (sic). The teddy bears is mentioned only by one website, which means that even if it is true then it isn't much of a scandal. The other one is just plain incomprehensible. DJ Clayworth 19:59, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Will whoever put back the Panic of 1873 please explain why they think this is a Federal scandal rather than just an economic downturn. DJ Clayworth 20:09, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To the anon who keeps changing the article without discussing:

You write, in the edit summary, that there is no standard for deciding what is a scandal and what is not. You are right in saying that there is not hard and fast rule about what constitutes a scandal large enough to be reported here. Also please remember that what we mean here is a nationally recognised scandal. There are some guidelines about how we should judege these: I would suggest

• If nobody has heard of the matter, it's not a scandal
• If no mainstream press has reported the matter, it's not a scandal
• If coverage appears to be limited to only a few websites, it's not a scandal

Your teddy bear, which appears to be reported only by one web site, doesn't meet these criteria. May I suggest contemplating the magnitude of this teddy bear by comparison with the other items mentioned, most of which came close to bringing down a government.

Opinions of others are also welcome, fellow Wikipedians. DJ Clayworth 13:36, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC) ____________________________________________

Hello DJ Clayworth. I fear that your suggested criteria are too vague and too subjective to of any use.

• Who is this "nobody" that you refer to? Perhaps you mean yourself? I have heard of the dangerous Teddy Bear investigation.
• Would mainstream press include Fox News or The Sun? They are both big but suffer from rather obvious problems of journalistic quality. Remember the risible Geraldo Rivera?
• News coverage can't be used as a practical criterion unless there is some systematic quantitative analysis of relative its frequency and depth intensity.
• What is the threshold for identifying when a government is "almost" "brought down"? Please be more specific.

These are matters of judgment. As free women and men we ought not be blinded by what the corporate news media tell us is important. We are capable of critical thought and some of us but not all of us also have a will to be free. We can make judgments that the likes of Rupert Murdoch might not approve.

To Anon:

First, it is good Wikipedia etiquette to sign your posts on talk pages. It helps everybody reading this to know who is talking. You can do this by putting four tilde characters at the end of what you write, like this ~~~~ .

You are right in saying that just because mainstream news carry something doesn't mean its important. However what we are looking for here is significant scandal - the sort of thing that might bring down a government or cause politicians to resign. Watergate, Lewinski, all these are the sort of things we are looking for. This teddy bear you insist on re-inserting looks extremely unlikely to have this effect. The fact that the mainstream news media are ignoring it - and not even Fox News or the Sun are carrying it - means basicly that it is insignificant. If the unexpected happens, and this teddy bear causes the downfall of the Bush administration feel free to add it back. But not until then please. However, let's also hear what other Wikipedians think. For now I'm going to leave it in, just until somemore people have been given a chance to speak. DJ Clayworth 13:10, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just read the Smoking Gun article. There's no scandal here. Not even a hint of one. The FBI investigated not because of the anti-Bush slogan, but because a bear with the message "Bush Kills Arabs Dead" was delivered to an Arab-American lawyer. It turned out to be a gag gift from some friends, but it would have looked like a possible death threat. I will remove this quite ridiculous listing now. Isomorphic 13:33, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Kay Summersby, "wartime mistress" of Dwight D. Eisenhower 2 organizing the list 3 Kerik 4 Organizing this material 5 Cleaning up edits= 6 "Nixon Jewelry" 7 Bolding of "D." and Removal of Enron/Lay and Karl Rove 8 The Perspective of History?

[edit] Kay Summersby, "wartime mistress" of Dwight D. Eisenhower

Who wiped the Kay Summersby article?

Not sure what you mean by "wiped". The article's still there, although it's in need of attention. Whether Summersby had an "affair" with Eisenhower is disputed. Summersby herself conceded that there was no "sex" -- i.e. not even in the sense that Clinton did not have sex with Monica -- although she attributed this to Ike's being impotent. Those close to Eisenhower have maintained that the platonic love affair took place only in Summersby's mind. Ellsworth 15:46, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The more research I do, the more I am convinced that this does not fit the definition of a "scandal". I am dropping it from the list of scandals but obviously it's open to discussion and possible putting back in. Ellsworth 21:29, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] organizing the list

I tried writing an introduction to, and some scope notes for, the organization (and classification) of this list of major American political scandals. I think the introductory discussion helps and hope others agree. Even though it isn't the final word, it might suggest some improvements. [As a quick comment on the discussion above, I would emphasize, as you probably already know, that although the Pentagon Papers business SURFACED during the Nixon administration (with its paranoid insistence on secrecy), the events actually chronicled in the scandalous Pentagon Papers took place mostly during the administrations of JFK and LBJ.] 65.223.141.108 17:22, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Kerik

Considering that Kerik was an announced nominee for a cabinet post for only about one week, do the revelations about his past really count as a federal-level scandal? It seems to me that whatever he did that was scandalous was at the local level. Also, Zoe Baird isn't there, so I'm not sure if it is a federal scandal every time a cabinet nominee drops out quickly due to a troublesome past. Kerik was dropped like a hot potato by Bush when the news came out, and no sign of a coverup. There is a possibility that the Kerik affair may develop other angles in the future, but so far it has reflected more on the administration of Giuliani than of Bush. -Willmcw 07:18, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Zoe Baird is in fact listed, which is what made me think of Kerik. "Nannygate (1993) President Clinton's Attorney General nomination of Zoe Baird and near-nomination of Kimba Wood were derailed by information about the illegal hiring of aliens"

Also, there has been quite a storm of criticism in major newspapers about the failure to vet the Homeland Security Secretary nominee. Allegations of violation of immigration laws, corruption, incompetence, mob ties, abuse of authority, bigamy, multiple simultaneous extramarital affairs etc have all come out in the newspapers last week. Now whether there is much to it, who knows? There doesn't actually have to be much substance to make it a scandal, see Whitewater. But Bush has undeniably taken a lot of heat over this nomination in the last week or so.

That said, I don't much care one way or the other. Just seemed at least as noteworthy as Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. Michael Ward 07:37, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My mistake. I see that Baird is there, under Nannygate. I agree that the federal aspect now appears to be the lack of vetting, but that's not reflected in the existing text. It's kind of long already, so maybe I'll just say the Bush was criticized for nominating Kerik without knowing that Kerik had been accused of various improprieties. -Willmcw 07:44, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Some consistent standards need to be applied here. An anon just restored mention of Kimba Wood, who was never even nominated because a nanny problem was discovered during the vetting. Maybe Wood was a scandal, but if so we can't also argue that Kerik was only a federal scandal because of poor vetting. Also, I applied Willmcw's same wording for Kerik to Baird. Wolfman 16:29, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here are a few thoughts: Although Kimba Wood's nomination hadn't been formally transmitted to the Senate before her illegal conduct was revealed, she had been publicly announced and was all-but-nominated, so her "Nannygate" problem was perceived as compounding the Baird scandal so I think Kimba Wood should definitely not be ignored or removed from the list. In the press coverage at the time, the Clinton administration wasn't given credit for imrpoved vetting in the case of Kimba Wood; even if this news coverage wasn't fair, the typical "vetting" aspect of the story was not "kudos to Clinton for having caught an error in time," but was instead, "How could this candidate have gotten so far in the process? Why are scofflaws being considered for the nation's top law enforcement job?" The Kerik nomination seems clearly an example of Federal-level scandal (if we want to keep this category); part of his underlying problems go beyond Nannygate and involve actions in connection with improprieties in his earlier work, including his work for the federal government (and not just his NYC work). The problem with this particular high-profile appointment scandal does go a bit deeper than simply a vetting flaw. But in any case, I would think the appointment (or intended appointment) to high federal office automatically puts a case within the "federal" realm, even if the underlying scandal is not necessarily based on actions in connection with federal office-holding. As a longer range project, we might want to discuss developing a new set of categories.68.239.118.207 16:57, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't particularly disagree. However, we should treat the Kerik & Baird scandals with some even-handedness. In my opinion, restoring both the original description of both scandals would be suitable. If these had come up after confirmation, they clearly would have been considered federal scandals in their own right. Nomination is really the crucial step, and Kerik/Baird had passed that hurdle.

Point of order on Wood: she was not publicly announced [1]. I don't think she belongs here. Wolfman 17:20, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think Wolfman is mistaken, about Kimba Wood not having been publicly announced at the time her own Nannygate scandal broke. She was certainly being treated as the nominee for AG, regardless of whether confirmation hearings had begun the Senate. The LA Times (MIT-site) news report cited by Wolfman does not establish that Kimba Wood had not been publicly announced (indeed, it says that she is the front-runner at the time the story was published), but there'sa problem with the timing of the story because that early story appeared BEFORE the controversy came to light. For example, the 1993 report by FAIR (which aims to counter right-wing bias in the media) discusses the Wood nomination this way: "The controversy over attorney general nominees Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, both of whom had to withdraw after acknowledging that they had hired undocumented immigrants to care for their children, elicited a wide response in the media, particularly in the pages of the New York Times." http://www.fair.org/extra/9304/nyt-immigration.html (The FAIR report deems it "scandalous" that female nominees were being scrutinized in a discriminatory way on this type of domestic issue, and this point is not without merit.)

I suppose Kimba Wood's Nanny problem was a federal-level concern in any case (without regard to the stage of nomination she reached), also because Kimba Wood was a sitting federal court judge. I think it's important to keep in mind that being listed on the Wikipedia "scandal" list does not necessarily imply any special degree of legal or moral culpability, on the part of an appointing administration or anyone else. 68.239.118.207 14:30, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

By the way, in her role as a federal judge, Kimba Wood was a Reagan appointee. President Clinton wanted her for AG because she would be embraced by the Republicans in the Senate and because of her publicized "toughness" on the bench against white-collar criminals, and because women's groups were complaining that he was falling short on appointing women. The fact that she was a Reagan appointee shouldn't matter to a neutral report, but it might help put things in perspective.

---

Look this is all off track. Kimba Wood is simply not important. In fact, she never was nominated, but that is only relevant if you buy into Willmcw's hypertechnical definition of a scandal. All these cases, including Baird, Wood, Kerik were "scandals" because they were treated as such by the mainstream press. That ought to be a working definition. And the exact improprieties were important parts of the scandalousness of it all. So, Nannygate ought to mention nannies. And Kerik ought to mention nannies, plus allegations of corruption, harrassment, abuse etc. The original writeup for both entries was quite appropriate, brief, on-point, and not a whitewash. By the way, we are missing Linda Chavez, Bush's labor secretary nominee who also had a nanny problem. Wolfman 18:52, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hypertechnical? I am not saying it isn't a scandal. I'm saying it really isn't a federal-level scandal, except for the lack of vetting. The scandalous activity occured at the city-level. If you look through the section on State and Local-Level Scandals you will see others which have a federal connection more substantials than that of Kerik. As for how long to make the descriptions, this is just a list and the text should be as short as possible, and reasonably consistent from entry to entry. Anyway, not a big deal. -Willmcw 01:06, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Organizing this material

Because these lists are getting rather long, and especially if we create some new categories, it might be useful to consider preparing an Alphabetical Index that lists hyperlinked personal names, as another access point.

[edit] Cleaning up edits=

Please try to show some restraint when editing an article. Editing in itself is fine, but try to be sure you are done before saving the page. We have 10-15 consecutive edits with only a comma or wikilink difference, this is ridiculous and its wasting space.--63.167.255.30 20:16, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

SaNtO DoMiNgO

I removed an undated entry

• Santo Domingo

It could be that this entry intended to refer to the 1937 Trujillo massacre of Haitians, but there was no way to tell, the entry was not chronologically in that order, and the link to Santo Domingo provided no information about a scandal.

If some event concerning Santo Domingo actually belongs in the list of U.S. FEDERAL SCANDALS, I hope someone will restore it, with explanation.

Now I think this probably refers to controversy when the Senate rejected a treaty of annexation with Santo Domingo, in Grant's administration.

Can someone research this and add it back in?160.253.0.248 7 July 2005 15:37 (UTC)

[edit] "Nixon Jewelry"

Can someone supply a source for a 1974 "Nixon Jewelry" scandal?

I remember Jack Brooks (I think it was Rep. Brooks) using the word "emolluments" during the committee hearings looking into the impeachment of Nixon, in connection with "gifts" Nixon received (possibly as head of state, but maybe domestic gifts also) and I see that a much earlier Nixon "gifts" event from 1952 in connection with the "Checkers" speech is already included on the list of scandals.

But I'm not sure what the "Nixon Jewelry" scandal in this article's list refers to. After looking far and wide for a source, and finding none, I would recommend deleting the "Nixon Jewelry" reference.

[edit] Bolding of "D." and Removal of Enron/Lay and Karl Rove

A user 70.218.125.50 the other day decided to make "D." (for "Democrat") BOLD, and to remove information about Kenneth Lay and about Karl Rove. It might make sense to delete from the list the party affiliation(s) of all of those mentioned, but in any case it doesn't seem NPOV or helpful to bold only the Democrats. I will probably remove the bold marks and restore the deleted information about Lay and about Rove.160.253.0.248 20:31, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Perspective of History?

I was noticing how many of the scandals of the previous two administrations were left out, probably because they've simply been forgotten over time, or perhaps sometimes because they aren't on par with those worth mentioning, in hindsight.

This makes me wonder...though I'm no defender of either Clinton or Bush...how we should plan on dealing with similar perspective in the future.

The 2000+ category, for example, is filling not solely with big -gate scandals, but with almost everything the Republicans or Democrats appear to do wrong, right when it happens.

The difference between the really long 2000+ list, the mediocre 1975-2000 list, and the relatively sparse preceeding lists is NOT that there is more wrongdoing now, nor even solely that more is reported.

It's simply that we have FORGOTTEN most of the earlier scandals. And, even if someone reminded us of the whole Billy Carter thing, or other stuff of that kind, it would no longer seem worth padding the list with, now.

But it will be VERY hard to, in five or ten years, go back and remove the minute scandals which honestly seem like such a big deal today.

How can we plan ahead to deal with perspective, with the way that, were we to START this article in 2015, most of what we're adding now on a day-to-day basis would not bear worth mentioning...yet removing it once it's already here will be harder than not adding it 10 years later would be? Kaz 21:33, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

"International Court of Justice" Does not count for anything at all, they have Absolutely No legitimately other than a bunch of cronies. Anything and everything they say has Absolutely NO meaning to anyone with half a brain, as far as I am concerned, their just a propaganda outlet. There is No Such thing as Justice form that court, anymore than you would get justice form a Saddam’s former court system, its just a political tool.

And as far as I am concerned it add nothing to this article beyond take even more credibility away from it, in just referring to that so called “justice court.”

The above comment seems very much not based on any knowledge. The International Court of Justice is constituted according to its "Statute," an attachment to the United Nations Charter. The legitimacy of the ICJ is accepted around the world (including by the United States, which took Iran to court there about 27 years ago and won the Diplomatic Hostages case). So, it's not clear what the above gripe is getting at, with charges of "bunch of cronies" and "propaganda outlet".