The Corrupt Bargain

PETER: It’s tough to find anyone who will actually go to bat for political corruption. But what exactly constitutes corruption is a question that has bedeviled many generations of Americans, going all the way back to the very beginning.

ED: And so today on the show, we’re holding our noses and doing a deep dive on corruption. How have people defined it over the years, and why has the spectre of corruption always seemed to loom so large in our politics? Have things gotten any less corrupt or more corrupt over the course of our history?

PETER: We’ll start, as we often do, in the founding period. This was a time when fears of corruption loomed extremely large. After all, the Revolution itself had been a kind of mass mobilization against corruption in England. American patriots believed that evil government ministers and royal advisers with selfish intentions were warping the way the system was supposed to work. The United States was going to be a fresh start.

This was the context for a dinner party that took place in April of 1791 at Thomas Jefferson’s house in Philadelphia. Jefferson was the Secretary of State, and his guests were Vice President John Adams and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Yale historian Joanne Freeman is going to pick up the story from here.

JOANNE FREEMAN: They’re chatting, I guess, as founders are wont to do, about the British constitution, casually. And Adams says, purge the British constitution of its corruption and give its popular branch equality of representation and it would be the most perfect government on the face of the earth.

PETER: Ooh, well now Jefferson wouldn’t like that, would he?

JOANNE FREEMAN: Jefferson is not going to like that. Jefferson is not going to think that the British monarchy is the most perfect government on the face of the Earth.

PETER: We did have a revolution.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Yeah.

PETER: Yeah, OK.

JOANNE FREEMAN: We kind of went against the monarchy thing.

PETER: Right, but that’s not the worst of it, because then Hamilton opens his mouth–

JOANNE FREEMAN: Yeah–

PETER: –which he does often.

JOANNE FREEMAN: –Hamilton’s good at opening his mouth. So Hamilton then says, oh, no, no no, keep the corruption and introduce some equality into that popular branch and it would be the most perfect government on the face of the Earth.

PETER: Now hold it, he says hooray for corruption?

JOANNE FREEMAN: He at least says we need corruption.

PETER: Yeah, OK. Explain that, Joanne.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well to Hamilton, corruption equals practical politics. I mean, to Hamilton, it’s one thing to talk about ideals, it’s another thing to get politics done. And so in a way, what Hamilton is talking about is what, in his mind, he would conceive of as the reality of wheeling and dealing in politics, the fact that stuff happens behind the scenes, people give and take, and that that’s the real world, Jefferson, and that’s how politics works.

PETER: OK, so corruption is good because it means dealmaking.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Yeah. Well, it means sort of removing the brakes of the public government and allowing things to happen behind the scenes.

PETER: Now of course, you’re casting Jefferson as totally shocked. What’s troubling Jefferson? Is it that he thinks that corruption somehow is going to interfere with representative government, that government won’t represent the people if it’s corrupted?

JOANNE FREEMAN: Yeah, I think that’s what he thinks. And I think he actually then thinks that that’s what happens, that congressmen have been corrupted by Hamilton, that they’re going to use insider knowledge somehow and run around collecting IOUs from war veterans because they know the government is going to actually function and pay them back.

PETER: Right.

JOANNE FREEMAN: And these veterans are selling them at a really reduced rate. And so basically, he thinks that what Hamilton is really trying to do is corrupt, in a way, I guess, the government itself. By making the government into what he wants it to be, that he’s going to make it more powerful, more centralized, more nationalized than it’s ever intended to be. And he’ll do that by finding ways to corrupt officials.

PETER: Right. So this is really a debate about the nature of power itself in the new republic, and what have we done, what’s the real constitution going to be like. It’s not just the thing that’s written on paper, it’s the way power is actually exercised.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Exactly. I mean, one of the great things about studying this period is that they don’t just worry about that sort of stuff, they worry about it really consciously. Like, on paper. Like, what do you think about the use of power in the government?

PETER: Yeah, exactly.

JOANNE FREEMAN: And you know, one of the ways in which that plays out, which seems ridiculous to us but seemed important to them, is they’re worried about procedures. Who talks to who, and where, and when. And so it’s not, in a way, surprising that European diplomats often say that they’d rather chat with Hamilton because he’s willing to just go into a room and do whatever needs to be done, whereas Jefferson very much wants to be following the proper channel out in the open.

Actually, Washington, who’s being very careful as first president, does the same thing. A French minister comes up to him and says he wants to talk in private with him, and Washington says, well, no, you’re supposed to first talk to the Secretary of State. And when this minister says, no, you don’t understand, I just want to talk with you, Washington basically says no. You know, that’s not the way the system works. They’re trying very hard to be accountable as to who has power and where the power is.

PETER: OK. So Jefferson is really concerned about what Hamilton is doing to the government. He has suspicions about how he might be pulling the strings, and really subverting the independence of the representatives of the people. And he launches a campaign to try to, in effect, expose the scandal of corruption. Tell us how that works out, Joanne.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Right. Well, he wants to sort of figure out where all of the corruption is, but he does not do this himself.

PETER: No, he wouldn’t, of course. That would be corrupt.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Of course he wouldn’t. He And this is right. Well, this is what Hamilton accuses Jefferson of being sort of sneaky and corrupt because he’s always doing everything behind the scenes, and he doesn’t ever step up and do it in public. So Hamilton would say, yeah, see, there he goes again.

PETER: Right, he’s corrupt, too.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Yeah.

PETER: OK, so this is one of the first big efforts to expose corruption in American history. And it’s not the last.

JOANNE FREEMAN: No.

PETER: Tell us about this.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well, Jefferson gets an ally of his from Virginia named William Branch Giles to propose a series– basically, a series of resolutions in Congress querying certain things about Hamilton’s behavior, about what he’s done in the Treasury Department and where the money has gone and who’s been moving it. And essentially, it’s a series of resolutions that’s going to force Hamilton to come out in the open and absolutely declare where the money is going, and why and how it’s gone there.

PETER: So what happens? This must be sensational. It’s like the Watergate of its era.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well right, it is a big deal. And Hamilton is really crotchety. There’s all these letters from him in which he’s like, you know, I could be doing Treasury work, but no, I’m writing reports showing how I didn’t do things that I didn’t do. In the end, Hamilton is very happy to report that there’s no proof of anything. He comes out crystal clear, having written a bazillion reports and shown, in his mind, where all the money’s gone.

There isn’t corruption proven. I don’t think that that persuades Jefferson and his friends for a moment that there isn’t corruption. He just thinks they haven’t managed to put their finger on it.

PETER: Yeah. So the failure of this campaign to expose corruption in the Washington administration doesn’t put an end to these concerns about corruption. What’s the upshot of this failure to expose the bad guys?

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well, I mean, ironically, the inability to find corruption ups the idea that it really must be there.

PETER: It’s really corrupt.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Exactly. It’s so corrupt, we can’t see it.

PETER: Yeah. Well, I mean, eventually, isn’t it true that Republicans in Congress in Washington’s second administration have concluded that Washington himself is a dupe of the corrupters?

JOANNE FREEMAN: Well, that’s true, people begin to suspect that– not that he’s corrupt, but that– just as you put it, that he’s been duped by sneaky ministers like Hamilton.

PETER: And this is the great irony of the American founding, the American Revolution and experiment in Republican government, is that the people get their government, but they don’t believe it’s their government. So the big party division emerges between the governors, the people who are trying to make things happen, and then those who suspect their motives. So Republican self-government doesn’t lead to this era of enlightenment and moral progress, it leads to a new kind of profound division over the very nature of power.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Right. So one of the many ironies of this period is they want to launch this wonderful new thing, but because it’s wonderful and new, it’s scary, it’s upsetting, they’re not sure it works, and it sort of spirals into this environment of charges and countercharges and accusations and fear of corruption and proof of corruption. And Hamilton might even say that people like Jefferson and his ilk are corrupting the public by pandering to them, by being demagogues, by promising them things that they can’t have, and thus getting their power and then doing whatever the heck they want.

PETER: So this is the unthinkable conclusion that Hamilton is suggesting, and that is ultimately the problem with Republican government is the people themselves who are subject to manipulation and corruption. So there’s no pure source of good government in the people. And that would be the most deeply troubling thing to Jefferson, wouldn’t it?

JOANNE FREEMAN: That would be. The Hamilton draws that conclusion after the presidential election of 1800, when the presidency goes to Jefferson and Hamilton I think in 1802 is trying to figure out, what the heck did we do wrong. And one of the things he says is we should have pandered to the people, because the people are vain and they’ll always respond to that, and the Republicans are great at that kind of, essentially, corruption.

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PETER: Joanne Freeman is a professor of history at Yale University.

BRIAN: It’s time for a short break. When we get back, how one man’s routine meeting is another man’s shady backroom deal.

ED: You’re listening to BackStory. Don’t go away.

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