Presidential Misdeeds

George Washington: “The Tyrant, Instead of the Savior, of his Country"

Lance Banning | February/March 2021

Fierce debate among early political factions led to many allegations of misdeeds and abuse of power in Washington's administration, but there was no serious misconduct.

Historians have reached no consensus in their interpretations of the administrations of George Washington and John Adams, but two statements can be made with little fear of contradiction.

JFK's Fighter-Bombers

Mark I. Gelfand | February/March 2021

The Senate's inquiry into a Kennedy Administration defense contract is considered one of the longest and most extensive congressional investigations ever undertaken.

The Kennedy administration took office under a small political cloud. Allegations of fraud and vote-stealing filled the air in the days following John F.

Truman Dogged by Charges of “Favoritism and Influence”

James Boylan | February/March 2021

There was widespread misconduct in Harry Truman’s administration, but historians discount the president's responsibility.

Harry S. Truman became president of a country much changed from the pre-war America of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Relative prosperity born of war had replaced depression, and government had turned its attention from combatting hardship to underwriting an immense military enterprise.

Eisenhower’s Gifts

Mark I. Gelfand | February/March 2021

Though no scandals touched Eisenhower personally, the media showed occasional interest in the number of gifts he received.

Because of the heavy barrage of criticism the Republicans had directed at the scandals in the Truman administration during the 1952 campaign, both the executive and legislative branches were particularly sensitive to the issue of corruption in government for the duration of Dwight D.

Did Hayes Steal the Election from Tilden?

John G. Sproat | February/March 2021

To many voters—some Republicans, as well as most Democrats—Hayes' title to the presidency was a fraudulent one.

Rutherford B. Hayes entered the White House under the cloud of the disputed election of 1876 and the ensuing electoral crisis, and the cloud did not dissipate during his four years in office.

Ulysses S. Grant and the Whisky Frauds

William S. McFeely | February/March 2021

Ulysses S. Grant had to respond to more charges of financial misconduct than any other president.

In additi

Corruption and Treason in the Buchanan Cabinet

Michael F. Holt | February/March 2021

Did James Buchanan know that his Secretary of War, a future Confederate general, sent 110,000 muskets to armories in the South in 1860?

Many historians point to the presidency of James Buchanan as the nadir of antebellum public ethics. All of the trends of corruption at the lower ranks of the government seemed to culminate in three years, and the rate of exposure increased dramatically.

James Monroe’s “Furniture Fund”

James M. Banner Jr. | February/March 2021

President Monroe was considered guilty of impropriety, not wrongdoing. But his reputation suffered.

President Monroe twice diverted public funds for private use (probably to cover expenses for his travel to try to reunite the country after the War of 1812.)

Harding and Teapot Dome

Robert P. Ingalls | February/March 2021

Prior to Watergate, Harding's bribery ring was regarded as the greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics.

Ultimately, three of Harding's appointees, including a cabinet officer, went to jail. Two other officials committed suicide.

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Featured Authors

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Atkinson, Rick

Rick Atkinson is the author of dozens of best-selling books on American military history, including The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with General David H. Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has also written a three-part narrative history of the U.S.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brands, H. W.

H. W. Brands is a best-selling author, historian, and the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written thirty books, including The Zealot and the Emancipator, a dual biography of the abolitionist John Brown and President Abraham Lincoln, as well as The First American and Traitor to His Class, both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize.