The commonplace of referring to the pardon of Nixon as a corrupt bargain has not yet been fully established even 40 years later, yet we may be onto the fifth of such historical bad bargains which reminds us of the unenumerated nature of US political discourse. #TrumpRussia is the latest of those potentially devastating corrupt bargains.
The various antics of the GOP Congress and the Trump regime make the outlook for a corrupt bargain ever more certain.
What makes it worse is that aspects of both the executive and legislative branches have been deeply compromised by external influences including international oligarchs and former superpowers. Making it more heinous is the use of racist appeals, xenophobia, and abuse of police power. The nomination of the latest SCOTUS justice only shows how deep and continuous the corruption extends.
The term corrupt bargain refers to three historic incidents in American history in which political agreement was determined by congressional or presidential actions that many viewed to be corrupt from different standpoints.
- In the 1824 election, without an absolute majority in the Electoral College, the 12th Amendment dictated that the Presidential election be sent to the House of Representatives, whose Speaker and candidate in his own right, Henry Clay, gave his support to John Quincy Adams, and was then selected to be his Secretary of State.
- In the 1876 election, accusations of corruption stemmed from officials involved in counting the necessary and hotly contested electoral votes of both sides, in which Rutherford B. Hayes was elected by a congressional commission.
- The most recent incident widely described as a "corrupt bargain" was Gerald Ford's 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon, following the resignation of the disgraced former president. The critics claim that Ford's pardon was a quid pro quo for Nixon's resignation, which elevated Ford to the presidency.
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The 1876 election (and its structural resemblance to the election of 2000) gave us the Compromise of 1877, and subsequently brought the murky politics of Jim Crow among other shameful aspects of US democracy that we continue to endure. Similarly the corrupt bargain of 2000 gave us the failure of the GW Bush regime and much of the same entanglements that persist.
Through the Compromise, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The compromise involved Democrats who controlled the House of Representatives allowing the decision of the Electoral Commission to take effect. The outgoing president, Republican Ulysses S. Grant, removed the soldiers from Florida. As president, Hayes removed the remaining troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the troops left, many white Republicans also left, and the "Redeemer" Democrats took control. They already dominated other state governments in the South. What was exactly agreed is somewhat contested as the documentation is insufficient.[1]
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It may be the case the the US suffers from a fourth corrupt bargain in the 2000 election with Bush v. Gore, even if it is not labeled as such.
There may even be a fifth one with the 2016 election and its aftermath considering the possibility of 45*’s indictment and the Russian meddling that has kleptocratic features. As interesting as these times are the history is precarious as the farcical continues to pretend it leads yet gives the reins to others.
Writing in 2005, the influential Reconstruction historian Eric Foner analyzed the Dunning School as follows:
- Their account of the era rested, as one member of the Dunning school put it, on the assumption of "negro incapacity." Finding it impossible to believe that blacks could ever be independent actors on the stage of history, with their own aspirations and motivations, Dunning, et al. portrayed African Americans either as "children", ignorant dupes manipulated by unscrupulous whites, or as savages, their primal passions unleashed by the end of slavery.[17]
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