SCANDALS AT THE TOP
PART II
Last entry I began my dig into our national scandals at the presidential level; my aim was to explode the die-hard myth that the Republican Party is the guardian of the nation’s morals. We have long been told by the GOP to trust them to obey the law and to govern us relatively free of vices. When election time comes around, we are advised to look for the candidate with the “R” (for rule-abiding) next to his or her name, and put our marks there.
Should we trust them? You be the judge. Here are scandals-at-the-top numbers six through eight of our Dirty Baker’s Dozen.
In Part Two we continue to name the president presiding over each scandal, and identify him by party, with an “R” for Republican and a “D” for Democrat. We start with one probably well known to all you readers, Bill Clinton’s amours.
6. The Flowers-Lewinsky-Clinton Threesome (D)
Republicans, stern guardians of the nation’s sexual morals at the time, pursued a lengthy Senate investigation in the 1990s; it actually began with a probe into a suspect Arkansas real estate deal in which President Bill Clinton was involved. It was known as Whitewater, and Clinton first got involved in the development project back in 1978; after years of Senate committee probing in the 1990s, nothing amiss was found in Clinton’s conduct in the failed development deal.
Persistent always in their mission to root out immorality and vice, the frustrated Republican investigators logically strayed into President Bill Clinton’s active love life, first with Jennifer Flowers, then with intern Monica Lewinski, with whom he brought fellatio to the oval office. A shocked GOP, ever on the alert for sexual transgressions on the part of Democrats, believed nine counts of oral copulation were grounds for removal from office—impeachment in a word. The House of Representatives charged him with him lying under oath, but failed to get a conviction in the Senate.
To date, no lives have been reported lost and no animal was hurt in the scandalous affair. But the Republicans then made “character” a major issue against Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore in his presidential election of 2000. True, Al Gore was innocent of Clinton’s terrible crimes. Nevertheless, the GOP’s guilt-by-association drumbeat split the Dems and vitiated the Democratic party, sending the final decision on who won the 2000 presidential election to the Supreme Court. There a crime greater than nine blow jobs from a young intern in the Oval Office was committed. The rest is history…an unfavorable one for the nation from which we still have not recovered
7. Iran-Contra Affair under Ronald Reagan (R)
A secret and complicated scheme in which missiles were sent by the U.S. to enemy Iran as ransom for seven Americans held hostage, in contravention of our pledge to never negotiate with terrorists. Some of the profits of the sale were diverted to the anti-communist “Contras” in Nicaragua to overthrow the Socialist government, an action that violated a Congressional ban. The extent of President Reagan’s knowledge of the “deal” is still debated, but several members of his Administration—including Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Vice Admiral John Poindexter—were indicted and convicted. North and Poindexter had their convictions overturned on appeal; the rest received pardons from Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, who some say was himself part of the conspiracy.
8. The Wall Street Putsch of 1933 (R)
Some (Republicans mostly) claim the “Business Plot” never happened; but Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, a two-time winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor and a Republican, said he had been approached by representatives of the nation’s corporate heavyweights to lead a fascist army of military veterans to overthrow FDR’s presidency. Butler, author of the tell-all booklet, War Is a Racket (1935), immediately and gladly told all.
The plot was apparently smothered in its crib, and it never got the public airing it would seem to have deserved. Why? The corporate powers’ pressure for an early burial, perhaps…the strain of the Great Depression on all, maybe…the early death (March, 1935) of crucial witness bond salesman Gerald MacGuire, the conduit through which General Butler was approached, most likely…the relatively early death of Butler himself (June, 1940), perhaps…the ominous approach of World War II, for sure…or a combination of all those reasons.
Scholars might want to exhume the case and shed some much-needed light on that murky matter of corporate conspiracy and a possible intended overthrow of the U.S. government.
We halt here to give you time to ponder the question. Our depressive quest will end with the third and final installment in the coming days. In the meantime, stand back, but stand by.