The Book of Bastards

by Brian Thornton

  And after eight years of earning a name for herself in the Senate, Clinton emerged as the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in the election of 2008. In a bruising primary fight, Clinton took eventual nominee Barack Obama to the wire. She so impressed him that he named her his secretary of state after he won the 2008 election.

  Now that is one successful bastard, regardless of gender!

  “In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive, and he said 70 times 7. Well, I want you all to know that I'm keeping a chart.”

  — Hillary Clinton

  83

  CONGRESS, PART II

  The House Banking Scandal (1775– )

  “Most people think members of Congress — all members of Congress — have their hands in the till.”

  — Former Indiana Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton

  When it comes to representative government behaving badly, Congress knows how to do it with style. And what the Salary Grab Act was to the nineteenth century, Rubbergate (also known as the House Banking Scandal) was to the twentieth. Both scandals revolved not around the abuse of power so much as the appearance of abuse and the arrogance of those wielding it. Because you've got to be pretty damned conceited to think it's okay to publicly, repeatedly, systematically and with perceived impunity flout rules that govern almost everyone's personal finances. Okay, so it takes more than arrogance. It also takes an ungodly amount of stupidity!

  The House Banking Scandal hit the news early in 1992. House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich used the scandal for his own purposes; he pointed to it as an example of “systematic, institutional corruption” that he said was running rampant through the House at the time. Rubbergate was one of the principal scandals that led to seventy-seven Democratic House members being voted out of office in the Republican Revolution of 1994.

  It is worth noting that the House Bank was run nothing at all like a normal bank. While computerized systems were the norm for banks in 1992, the House Bank still used paper-and-ink ledgers. Regular statements were not rendered to account holders, nor were they notified when their accounts were overdrawn. Members' deposits were not posted in a timely manner; it could take nearly two months for money to be credited to an account. Further, members of Congress were allowed to over-draw their accounts up to the amount of their next paycheck. The bank still never bounced checks written against insufficient funds. It essentially allowed members to overdraw their accounts ad infinitum. For this reason, it is inaccurate to say members' nonsufficient funds (NSF) checks were never returned because the bank invariably covered them. The bank also failed to assess fees against members' accounts for the overdrafts.

  These loose rules invited abuse. Members of Congress began writing checks they couldn't cash with something resembling absolute freedom from punishment. The worst offender, Democratic Congressman Tommy F. Robinson of Arkansas, wrote 996 NSF checks; his House Bank account was overdrawn for sixteen months. Other members began kiting checks between their House Bank accounts and their personal bank accounts.

  The scandal came to public light when the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on the House Bank late in 1991. At that point, a group of freshman congressional Republicans demanded an investigation. These men later became known as the “Gang of Seven” or the “Young Turks”: Scott Klug (Wis.), Rick Santorum (Pa.), Jim Nussle (Iowa), John Doolittle (Calif.), Frank Riggs (Calif.), Charles Taylor (N.C.), and John Boehner (Ohio).

  When the House Ethics Committee conducted an inquiry, Gingrich smelled blood in the water. Many more Democrats than Republicans were implicated; of the top twenty-two check-kiters identified by the committee, nineteen were Democrats. Gingrich then pressured House Speaker Tom Foley to publicly release the names of all members who had written bad checks. Foley, who only wanted to identify the top twenty-two, capitulated and released the entire list. In an early sign of things to come, it was revealed that Gingrich had written twenty bad checks against his own account.

  In the end, eleven of the twenty-two worst offenders were defeated in the 1994 election; all but one were Democrats. A later investigation resulted in criminal convictions or guilty pleas for five ex-members, and for the former House Sergeant-at-Arms, Jack Russ.

  So there you have it: the United States Congress literally writing checks it can't cash!

  84

  KENNETH STAR

  The Grand Inquisitor (1946– )

  “The President inserted a cigar into Ms. Lewinsky's vagina, then put the cigar in his mouth and said: ‘It tastes good.’”

  — Kenneth Starr

  Former U.S. Solicitor-General Kenneth Starr built a long career in both private practice and public service. Unfortunately for the morally upright Texas-born son of a small town minister, he may be best known for spouting a line about cigars and vaginas. And Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, of course. A former judge, Starr abused federal independent counsel law in such a way that he got a sitting president impeached for lying about a private matter.

  It's hard to forget the maelstrom Starr released in October 1997. Acting as independent counsel Starr recommended that Clinton be impeached for committing perjury in the Paula Jones case and before the Starr grand jury.

  The Republican-dominated House of Representatives held off on a vote until after the November 1998 mid-term elections. Even so, impeachment was a major issue that fall; only about a third of the electorate supported Clinton's demise. In fact, the mid-terms that year defied conventional wisdom. The president's party typically loses big in second-term Congressional elections, but just the opposite happened in 1994. The Republicans lost six seats to the Democrats. House Speaker Newt Gingrich's multiple divorces spoke to his own problems with marital fidelity; he resigned.

  Despite the mid-term losses and the lack of popular support, House Republicans pressed forward. On December 19, 1998, Congress approved two Articles of Impeachment against Clinton: perjury before the grand jury and obstruction of justice. Two other articles — abuse of power and perjury in the Jones case — failed to pass. Nevertheless, Clinton became only the second president in U.S. history to face impeachment.

  On January 7, 1999, the trial opened in the Senate with U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding. Thirteen Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee served as prosecutors during the trial. Among them was the committee chairman, Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, who dismissed his own four-year-long extramarital affair as a “youthful indiscretion.”

  Only four witnesses testified at the trial and all did so by videotape: Clinton; Lewinsky; Clinton's friend Vernon Jordan, who got Lewinsky a job working for Revlon Cosmetics at Clinton's request; and Sidney Blumenthal, a senior aide to Clinton.

  In the end, the vote fell far short of the two-thirds majority necessary to remove Clinton from office. No Democrats voted to convict on either charge. Ten Republicans voted to acquit for perjury, and five supported release from the obstruction charge. The thirteen House prosecutors paid a heavy price. Only three remained in office after the next round of elections; the rest either lost their individual races or declined to seek reelection.

  Even so, Clinton's trial served a longer-term political Republican goal by bringing the “character issue” to the forefront in the next presidential election. Clinton's Vice President Al Gore found himself saddled with much of Clinton's ethical baggage, even though Gore shared none of the blame. Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush ran heavily on this “character,” promising to “restore honor and dignity to the White House.” And without Clinton's problems with truth under oath, Bush was unlikely to have ever entered the Oval Office as anything other than a visitor.

  As for Starr, he currently serves as dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law. He still argues cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also a major player in the 2008 grassroots movement to overturn California's gay marriage law.

  “Given Kenneth Starr's track record, should we
suspect that he's trying to do with innuendo that which he has been unable to do with evidence?”

  — Bryant Gumbel

  85

  NEWT GINGRICH

  The Wages of Karma (1943– )

  “[Gingrich] told a room full of reporters that he forced the [federal government] shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One … Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the shut-down had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child. The revolution, I can tell you, was never the same.”

  — Tom DeLay

  A Pennsylvania-born military brat, Newt Gingrich earned his PhD in 1971; before entering politics he taught history at the University of West Georgia. He ran for Congress twice before finally winning a seat in 1978. He developed a reputation as a partisan “bomb-thrower.” This strategy worked: within eleven years he had become the number-two Republican in the House.

  By 1994, Democrats were marred by many recent scandals — from Rostenkowski's stamps to Clinton's affairs; the public wanted something to change. Gingrich tapped into this angst by promoting the “Contract with America” to give his party an edge in the mid-term elections. The contract proposed eight specific reforms the Republicans would enact on the first day of their Congressional mandate if they gained the majority. It worked: the Republicans were swept to power in the House for the first time since 1952.

  The Republicans' takeover positioned Gingrich to assume the Speaker's chair at the start of the 104th Congress. But the road was anything but clear. Gingrich and Clinton would have several bruising legislative battles, culminating in Gingrich's attempt to have Clinton impeached.

  Throughout 1995, Gingrich's Congress went to war with the executive branch trying to undo the latter's first-term legislative wins. The mêlée came to a head when the fiscal year ended. Normally, if a federal budget has not been passed by the end of the fiscal year, the government does what it can to keep working. It is customary for the House to pass and for the president to sign various continuing resolutions to keep everything running until the budget is finally approved. Not this time though: Gingrich forced a showdown when he refused to continue talks. The U.S. government ground to a halt and stopped offering all nonessential services for several weeks.

  Under pressure from Senate majority leader Bob Dole, who was running for president, Clinton and the Republicans came to an agreement and a budget was passed.

  This failed game of chicken stopped the 1994 Republican Revolution dead in its tracks. It also propelled Clinton to reelection in 1996; come 1998, the Republicans would lose precious Congressional seats in the mid-term election. Gingrich later admitted that he shut the government down because he felt slighted over an Air Force One seating arrangement.

  SERIAL BASTARD

  Gingrich married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, in 1962. He later admitted to several affairs before the couple separated in 1980. Gingrich came to Battley's hospital bed while she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. Instead of offering support and comfort, he demanded that she agree to discuss the terms of their upcoming divorce right then and there. He also refused to pay child support to Battley for their two daughters; he forced his ex-wife to rely instead on charitable donations from parishioners at her church. Both Gingrich's second and third wives were women with whom he had affairs while still married to their predecessor.

  In 1998 (shortly after his failed attempt to impeach Clinton), Gingrich became embroiled in his own ethical scandal. Gingrich had claimed tax-exempt status for the Progress and Freedom Foundation, an organization he set up to pitch his college course “Renewing American Civilization.” Gingrich also admitted to lying to the House Ethics Committee when it was investigating the matter; he was ordered to pay a $300,000 fine. For the first time in U.S. history, the House disciplined a sitting speaker. He resigned as Speaker within a year, two years before his nemesis Clinton left office as one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century.

  “You can't trust anyone with power.”

  — Newt Gingrich

  86

  KATHERINE HARIS

  Lipstick and the Pig (1957– )

  “God is the one who chooses our rulers.”

  — Katherine Harris

  At first blush, former U.S. Congresswoman Katherine Harris seems like too much of a small fry to make the cut of the top 101 bastards in American history. But infamy, like greatness, is all about impact. Through a single dastardly act as Florida Secretary of State in 2000 the otherwise inconsequential Harris cemented her place of dishonor in the Halls of Bastardry.

  The hotly contested 2000 election pitted Texas Governor George W. Bush against sitting Vice President Al Gore. It split the country along partisan lines. While outgoing Democratic President Bill Clinton still enjoyed great personal popularity, many voters had grown weary of his scandal-plagued administration. The Republican Party leadership believed that this fatigue, their control of both houses of Congress, and the far-left candidacy of consumer advocate and Green-Party gadfly Ralph Nader would give them an opportunity to win the White House.

  On election night, Gore swept most of the Northeast and the Pacific Coast; Bush took the Deep South, the Sunbelt, Mountain West, and Rust-Belt states. Neither side had achieved the 270 electoral votes required to win. And so it all came down to a closely divided Florida. The Sunshine State's election was the responsibility of one woman: one-time corporate vice president and scandal-tinged Republican Florida Secretary of State Harris.

  According to exit polls, Florida voters initially favored Gore. As the vote tallies began rolling in, however, things didn't look so clear. At 2:16 a.m. est, Fox News called the state and the presidency for Bush with only eighty-five percent of the votes counted; Fox's election desk, incidentally, was run by Bush's cousin John Ellis. Bush's margin of “victory” in the final count shrank to only 1,784, triggering an automatic recount under Florida election law. The recount further reduced Bush's margin of victory to 327 with one county still outstanding. Gore requested a manual recount in four disputed counties.

  Partisan hack Harris announced that she was going to certify the results by the mandated November 15 deadline, well before any hand recounts could have been completed. Gore's camp sued to extend the deadline; the recounts continued.

  Harris confirmed Bush as the winner on November 15, but refused to consider the numbers from the recounts then underway. Two days later, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the hand recount results must be included in the totals; November 26 became the new certification deadline.

  SMALL-TIME BASTARD

  Before the 2000 election thrust her into the national spotlight, Harris was best known for her involvement with Mitchell Wade. Wade, a military contractor, poured thousands of dollars worth of illegal contributions into Harris's campaign for the state senate. In return Harris requested legislation blatantly favorable to Wade's company.

  Harris again declared Bush the winner on November 26, this time by 537 votes. The final decision, though, went to the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 9, all manual recounts terminated pending the court's decision. Three days later, in a highly controversial decision, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped all recounts in Florida, effectively finishing what Harris started and handing the election to Bush.

  Harris was rewarded with election to a congressional seat in a safely Republican district; she served two terms before the Republican Party abandoned her when she ran for the Senate in 2006. Eleven people on her staff also resigned shortly after she announced her candidacy, citing her ever more erratic behavior. She got creamed in the general election and is currently out of office.

  “People get nervous when they're thrust into the public eye. There was a rumor that someone told Harris that when you're on TV, your makeup washes out so don't be shy with those eyelashes and with that lip color.”

  — Jay Roach


  87

  MARC RICH

  How to Buy a Presidential Pardon (1934– )

  “Clinton's pardoning of Marc Rich was off the wall.”

  — Morley Safer

  He was born into a Belgian Jewish family that fled the Nazis and raised him in Brooklyn. Today Marc Rich is an international businessman best known for receiving a suspiciously timed pardon from President Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

  Under the U.S. Constitution, the president of the United States has the power of pardons in all federal cases except those of impeachment. This power is absolute, with its roots in the Royal Prerogative of Mercy under English Common Law. The president's decisions regarding whom to pardon and for what are not subject to any review by any court; it is one of the few presidential powers not subject to the system of checks and balances set out in the Constitution. As such it is one of the chief executive's most powerful tools.

  Some pardon decisions, of course, have proven controversial. The most famous example is President Gerald Ford's decision to pardon President Richard Nixon after the latter resigned. Similarly, in what was to become known as “Pardongate,” Clinton issued 140 pardons and commuted 36 sentences on January 19, 2001, his last full day in office.

  Commodities trader Rich received what was probably Clinton's most controversial pardon. Rich became a high profile fugitive after New York U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani indicted him on charges of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran in 1983. The charges stemmed from accusations that he traded crude oil with Iran during the late 1970s hostage crisis. Rich avoided trial by staying in Switzerland, a country which does not recognize tax evasion as an extraditable offense. An attempt to lure Rich to a country that would hand him over failed. He continued to run a multibillion-dollar business empire from Europe; at one point he was even rated the 242nd richest man in America, though he hadn't lived here in decades.