Somebody’s been had
From my columns someone might surmise I’m a Democrat. But I have never been a Democrat — or a Republican either, for that matter. In fact, until the 2016 election I had voted for exactly the same number of Republicans for president as Democrats. And I was prepared to support Jeb Bush in ’16 if he had been the GOP candidate.
I am a true independent whose basic political philosophy has always been “throw the rascals out!” I believe our ship of state is best kept on course by both parties pulling against one another in a competitive, vector-like effect. The two political extremes, in a sense, create that illusive, sane middle ground so many of us claim to cherish. And if it means anything, almost 75% of my candidates have won since 1956. But I’m not even batting .500 in this century.
Since our earliest days the Washington scene has been one turmoil and scandal after another no matter which party held the White House and Congress. In the days before civil rights became an issue the Democrats’ power base lay in the northern bigcity political machines based on ethnicity and the southern rural-county oligarchies based on racial segregation, a strange combination indeed. Both party organizations were eminently powerful, but also exceedingly corrupt.
Founded as the party of freedom in the early 1850s, through the graft and corruption during and after the Civil War the Republicans quickly became the party of wealth and privilege in the post-war era. And this arrangement is essentially unchanged today.
While both parties have been historically corrupt, there is a difference. The Democrats’ scandals have usually involved sexual indiscretions. On the other hand, the GOP wrong-doings have been centered more on money and power. But while the Washing- ton scene is perpetually one of corruption, scandal and outrage no matter who controls things, since the Civil War our nation has experienced only four major scandals that have literally shaken the very foundations of our republic.
Shortly after the Civil War the American press exposed the Credit Mobilier conspiracy that involved the Union Pacific Railroad, the U. S. vice president, the Secretary of the Treasury, four senators and the Speaker of the House.
In the 1920s the Teapot Dome affair resulted in the conviction and sentencing of President Harding’s secretary of the interior Albert Falls. There was also the related suicide of an Interior Department official.
Fifty years later the Watergate scandal resulted in President Richard Nixon’s resignation to avoid impeachment. And this was following the resignation of his Vice President Spiro Agnew on multiple corruption charges.
And finally there was the Iran-contra affair in which both President Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush were engaged against the sound advice of Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger. Although both denied any direct knowledge of the illegal goings on, Reagan finally sheepishly admitted some technical complicity when confronted with irrefutable evidence. But he still denied any intent to deceive on his part.
What am I trying to say here? These four really major scandals in our nation’s history were not uncovered by congressional investigations, but by the free and independent American press. And even more important, I think, all four occurred under Republican administrations, the party of conservatism, honesty, integrity and “family values.” Somebody’s been had. I wonder who?
George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@bellsouth.net.