[Mb-civic] Lessons of Scandals Past - Lou Cannon - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Lessons of Scandals Past

By Lou Cannon
Monday, October 31, 2005; Page A19

Presidents and their staffs resemble the families described by Tolstoy: 
All happy ones are alike while each unhappy one is unhappy in its own 
way. Scandals have a particular capacity for focusing this unhappiness. 
Richard Nixon's White House during the Watergate scandal was invested 
with the conspiratorial attitude that was an attribute of this 
distrustful president. Ronald Reagan's White House, more trusting, was 
bewildered by the Iran-contra scandal. Bill Clinton's aides were 
embarrassed by their president's insistence that his affair with Monica 
Lewinsky had nothing to do with the conduct of his presidency, but 
nearly all of them adopted this argument as their own.

George W. Bush and his team, reeling from the miscalculations and hubris 
that so often attend second-term presidencies, have reason to be 
unhappy. Neither the Iraq war nor the president's domestic agenda 
command widespread support. Bush's approval rating is lower than 
Reagan's or Clinton's at the depth of their scandals. Roughly two-thirds 
of Americans say the nation is on the wrong track.

Administration defenders searching for a silver lining in the White 
House gloom have observed that Bush -- unlike Nixon, Reagan or Clinton 
-- is not a suspect in the scandal that resulted in the indictment of 
his vice president's chief of staff. Assuming this is true, it's not 
entirely an advantage. Yes, Nixon's central role in the Watergate 
coverup forced him from office, but only because he persistently lied 
about it. Reagan created the Iran-contra scandal, in which several of 
his national security aides participated, by authorizing secret arms 
sales to Iran in defiance of his public policy and the counsel of his 
secretaries of state and defense. Clinton's involvement with Lewinsky 
was the scandal.

But the very centrality of Reagan and Clinton to their predicaments 
enabled them to do what Bush cannot: acknowledge responsibility and seek 
forgiveness. In Reagan's case, it took some prodding, much of it from 
his wife. Nancy Reagan brought into the White House a diverse array of 
people, including Democratic power Robert Strauss, whose message was to 
level with the American people. Reagan did. "A few months ago I told the 
American people I did not trade arms for hostages," Reagan said in a 
nationally televised address on March 4, 1987. "My heart and my best 
intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence 
tell me it is not."

That wasn't all. Again under prodding from his wife, he replaced Donald 
Regan, his besieged chief of staff, with former Republican Senate leader 
Howard Baker and named Frank Carlucci to replace a disgraced national 
security adviser as part of a general housecleaning. Baker and his 
successor, Kenneth Duberstein, ran the White House smoothly for the rest 
of the presidency.

Mindful that President Bush has tried to model his presidency after 
Reagan's, some Republicans have urged him to broaden a circle of 
advisers that has not notably widened in his second term. Relying 
exclusively on a small cadre of loyalists can be a problem in any line 
of work, but it is particularly a recipe for disaster in the White 
House. During the years I covered the presidency for this newspaper, I 
knew many capable White House aides who found their jobs exhilarating 
but who burned out under the heavy workload and unrelenting pressure. 
The strain of working in the hothouse environment of the White House is 
especially acute during a scandal. Bringing in new people in such 
circumstances can be an act of kindness as well as a political necessity.

Whether Bush can easily dispense with his embattled political adviser, 
Karl Rove, and other loyalists isn't clear. Bush is more devoted to the 
advisers who have been with him since Texas than Reagan was to his core 
group of Californians, and more dependent on them, too. Reagan had been 
used to new directors and cast members since his Hollywood acting days, 
and he did not regard anyone except his wife as indispensable. Martin 
Anderson, an observant economic adviser, once described his boss as 
"warmly ruthless." Although Reagan had stubbornly defended Don Regan, he 
didn't miss him when he was gone. Soon he acted as if Howard Baker had 
been his chief of staff all along.

Changing the guard cannot by itself solve Bush's problems. The nation 
was not at war when scandals struck the Reagan and Clinton 
administrations, and the policies of these presidents were, on the 
whole, more popular than Bush's policies. Bush is in large measure 
hostage to the war he began. But Reagan's success in the last years of 
his presidency, when he pursued a fundamental change in U.S.-Soviet 
relations, would not have been possible with the tired and discredited 
team he replaced because of the Iran-contra scandal. Reagan's example 
could be a useful guidepost for George W. Bush.

Lou Cannon covered the White House for The Post during the Nixon, Ford 
and Reagan presidencies and is the author of "Ronald Reagan: A Life in 
Politics."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103001411.html?nav=hcmodule
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