Are Democrats more corrupt than Republicans?

There has been corruption on both sides, but if you think Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans, you’re crazy.

In the past hundred years, which presidents had the worst scandals resulting in prison time? There are 4 standouts, see if you notice a pattern with the parties…

• Richard Nixon — Republican. Ever heard of Watergate? The scandal that became so synonymous with scandal that “gate” is now affixed to anything remotely scandal like. Nixon had to resign and was only saved from prison by a pardon from his hand picked successor. 69 government officials were charged with crimes. This includes his Chief of Staff and multiple members of his cabinet — as high level as it gets.[1] Of course, this was only after his original Vice President was convicted for an unrelated crime (tax evasion — but it was a settlement related to allegedly “accepting more than $100,000 in bribes”).[2] All Republicans.
• Ronald Reagan — Republican. Ever heard of Iran-Contra? Many high level indictments, including the Secretary of Defense, the Assistant Secretary of State, and two National Security Advisors. Presidents Reagan and Bush claimed they didn’t know anything, though people involved said they did.[3] I only say indictments because Bush pardoned 6 of them before the trials were done. “The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over 138 administration officials, the largest number for any U.S. president.”[4]
• George W. Bush — Republican. Too many scandals to name. More than a dozen members of the Bush administration pleaded guilty to federal crimes. Dozens more resigned under dishonorable circumstances, including his Attorney General, White House Counsel, and other senior members of the administration.[5]
• Warren G. Harding — Republican. Ever hear of the Teapot Dome Scandal? Before Watergate, Teapot Dome was regarded as the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics."[6] It was a bribery scandal that sent the Attorney General and Interior Secretary to prison. Other Harding corruption scandals were also the stuff of legend, including one where senior officials got caught defrauding the government, fled the country, resigned, and committed suicide.[7]

In case you didn’t notice, all of the above were Republican.

In fact, it’s also every two term Republican to serve in the past 50 years.

If you think I’m glossing over Democrats, I’m not. What Democratic administration even came close to one of the above?

The truth is that Democratic presidents barely merit a mention. For example, some of Obama’s people have resigned, but not many over ethics issues. Here’s a quick run through of convictions under Democratic presidents: Under Obama, there was one official convicted: David Petraeus, who is not even a Democrat. Under Clinton, there were two, one of which was unrelated to their government duties. Under Carter, there weren’t any. We’ve now gone back nearly 50 years on the Dem side and can still count them on one hand, with fingers to spare.

And as long as we’re doing [dis]honorable mentions here, let’s flip back to Republicans: Bush Sr’s Treasurer went to jail[8], as did Ford’s Secretary of Agriculture[9].

But hey, that’s just the Executive Branch, what about Congress?

Well, there has been a lot, on both sides. Too many to name. We had a Louisiana Democrat with $90k hidden in his freezer[10] and we had a Republican Congressman who practically had a bribery menu of services he would provide for each level of bribe[11]. At the individual member level, it’s very mixed.

But what about the top people in Congressional leadership?

If we look at Speakers of the House over the last 100 years, Democrats held the post for ~67 years and Republicans for ~33 years[12], so Dems had twice as much opportunity to get into trouble. What does the record show? Well of the Republicans’ 33 years, they had 2 Speakers resign over an ethics scandal—both within the last 15 years actually (not to mention a majority leader[13]). How did the Dems compare? Over twice as much time, Democrats had half as many resignations (and no impeachments). So that’s 2 in 33 years for the Republicans vs. 1 in 67 years for the Dems.

They say a year is an eternity in politics, so maybe we ought narrow it to more recent times, say, the past 20 years? In that case it’s 2 for Republicans and 0 for Dems. For good measure, in 2015 we learned that one of those two, Denny Hastert, the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House in history, also became "one of the highest-ranking politicians in American history to be sentenced to prison."[14]

The widest reaching corruption scandal involving Congress in the 2000s was probably the 2006 Jack Abramoff scandal, which led to the convictions of 16 Republicans, including Congressional staff, administration officials, lobbyists, and a Congressman.[15] This, combined[16] with[17] four[18] other[19] Republican scandals from the same year, helped flip the Congress to Democrats in the 2006 elections.

When the Dems got there, ethics reform was high on their agenda and one of the steps they took was the creation of the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent congressional oversight office that would actually do the job, unlike the partisan House Ethics Committee that’s run by the members themselves and often just swept things under the rug rather than doing anything to stop unethical behaviors.

If that ethics office rings a bell, it’s because just a few days ago Republicans tried to gut the ethics office[20] that had been set up as a result of their corruption, secretly voting to remove the office’s independence, essentially killing it. The move came out of the blue and they hoped it would go unnoticed, but the news got out, there was a backlash, and they’ve since backed off, at least for now.

This has all been a long way of saying that both parties have had embarrassing episodes of corruption, but if you think Democrats have been worse, you’re out of your mind.

Footnotes

[1] Watergate scandal - Wikipedia

[2] Spiro Agnew - Wikipedia

[3] Iran–Contra affair - Wikipedia

[4] Reagan administration scandals - Wikipedia

[5] List of federal political scandals in the United States - Wikipedia

[6] Teapot Dome scandal - Wikipedia

[7] Warren G. Harding - Wikipedia

[8] Catalina Vasquez Villalpando - Wikipedia

[9] Earl Butz - Wikipedia

[10] William J. Jefferson - Wikipedia

[11] Duke Cunningham - Wikipedia

[12] List of Speakers of the United States House of Representatives - Wikipedia

[13] Tom DeLay - Wikipedia

[14] Dennis Hastert - Wikipedia

[15] Jack Abramoff - Wikipedia

[16] Tom DeLay campaign finance trial - Wikipedia

[17] Cunningham scandal - Wikipedia

[18] Mark Foley scandal - Wikipedia

[19] Jerry Lewis – Lowery lobbying firm controversy - Wikipedia

[20] Log In - New York Times