Presidential Scandal Speeches: Rhetoric and Responsibility

Introduction: The Scandal Speech as Discourse

Presidential scandal speeches should be considered a unique form of discourse that follows a common pattern and contains similar elements. While not every element appears in every speech, most certainly will be found in Richard Nixon's Second Watergate Speech (1973), Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra Speech (1987), and Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky Speech (1998). All three presidents used strong, direct, and active voice when delivering these addresses, with Clinton showing a particularly pronounced tendency toward narcissism and the use of first-person singular pronouns.

A standard feature of all such speeches is for the president to take responsibility for what went wrong, express regret, and then call on the country to move forward so the government can return to addressing the nation's "real" business. Both Nixon and Clinton demonstrated a strong tendency to blame their political enemies for their predicament, and with good reason in some respects, although in Nixon's case this paranoia and suspicion reached pathological levels.

Scandal speeches always contain bombshells and shocking admissions—such as Clinton's acknowledgment of his relationship with Lewinsky—but these admissions are inevitably placed in the most favorable context possible. As politicians who had achieved the highest office, all three presidents wished to avoid impeachment or resignation, which is why they carefully avoided mentioning their involvement in any possible illegal actions, though Nixon ultimately did not finish his term.

Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky Speech

In all of these speeches, the presidents were dishonest and mendacious, omitting or denying important facts. Reagan denied prior knowledge of the illegal funding of the Contras; Nixon denied ordering the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Finally, these addresses almost always contain references to God, family, and patriotism, usually near the end, reinforcing traditional values as a rhetorical counterweight to scandal.

President Bill Clinton delivered his infamous televised address admitting his affair with Monica Lewinsky on August 17, 1998. Republicans had attacked Clinton about his personal life and sexual behavior from the time of the first primaries in 1992, even before his nomination. During his presidency, he was continuously under investigation by independent counsel Ken Starr, who began by examining his personal finances and later expanded into his extramarital affairs with Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and other women. Clinton became the second president to be impeached, though like Andrew Johnson in 1868, he was acquitted.

Like all presidents caught in scandals, Clinton initially claimed he had been completely truthful with the independent counsel and the grand jury when questioned about his sex life. He correctly asserted that these questions about private affairs were ones that "no American citizen would ever want to answer." No president had ever been questioned about such matters before, and certainly not under oath, although John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower had all committed adultery.

Before Watergate, the media and public simply did not question presidents about personal conduct, though it had occasionally been an issue in elections for figures like Thomas Jefferson and Grover Cleveland. Almost immediately, Clinton claimed to take "complete responsibility for all my actions, both public and private"—the standard move in such speeches. Even Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had taken full responsibility for their respective scandals, though neither revealed every detail about what had actually occurred. Clinton had been equally reluctant to "volunteer information" about his affair with Lewinsky, but in this humiliating speech he was forced to admit that it occurred. He then reached the bombshell portion by admitting that he did "have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible."

Clinton's remarks followed the pattern of other presidents embroiled in personal or political scandals by denying any violations of law, perjury, or obstruction of justice. For Republicans, the key goal was to have Clinton lie to the grand jury under oath so he could be impeached and potentially face criminal charges. After pursuing him for six years, they insisted he must have committed some illegality, but he maintained that "at no time did I ask anyone to lie, to hide or destroy evidence or to take any other unlawful action." As usual in such addresses, he expressed deep regret for his actions, especially for giving a "false impression" to the public and hurting his wife and daughter. His primary desire, he claimed, had been to "protect myself from the embarrassment of my own conduct" and his family's wellbeing.

Throughout his political career, Clinton recognized that these attacks by Republicans were politically motivated, and the majority of the public agreed. Kenneth Starr had pursued him for years with a zealousness and partisanship that brought the office of independent counsel into disrepute. Indeed, since Clinton's impeachment, that office has been abolished and no new special counsel has been appointed at the federal level. No investigation ever revealed financial wrongdoing by Bill or Hillary Clinton, despite accusations from political opponents of numerous crimes, including the murder of witnesses to maintain silence.

In concluding his speech, Clinton made the standard points of other scandal addresses, particularly that the time had come to move on to other issues. He stated that "this has gone on too long, cost too much and hurt too many innocent people." Like other American political leaders, Clinton referenced God, saying "this matter is between me, the two people I love most—my wife and our daughter—and our God. I must put it right, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to do so." He expressed a desire to make amends to his wife and family and seek their forgiveness, which was "nobody's business but ours." He denounced the politics of personal destruction inflicted on him for six years, which he believed was partly designed to discourage future candidates from seeking office.

Ironically, not long after his impeachment, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of Clinton's chief persecutors, was forced to resign due to his own adultery and financial impropriety. His successor, Robert Livingston, also stepped down almost immediately when exposed for an extramarital affair. Both sides of the political spectrum had learned to employ personal destruction as a political tool, and it has continued since. One of its more recent victims was former Democratic presidential candidate Jonathan Edwards, exposed for infidelity and tried for giving campaign contributions to his mistress.

Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Scandal

Clinton insisted that even presidents deserved the right to a private life and that there were limits no politician should be forced to endure. He pleaded for an end to scandal coverage so he could return to the nation's business, stating that the "country has been distracted by this matter for too long, and I take my responsibility for my part in all of this." It was time to move forward to address "real problems" in foreign and domestic policy and end "the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century."

When President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation from the White House concerning Iran-Contra on March 4, 1987, he understood he faced a scandal with potential to destroy his presidency or force his resignation or impeachment. He claimed innocence, asserting he was unaware of what had been occurring in the White House and National Security Council under Col. Oliver North, Admiral John Poindexter, and Vice President George Bush. The two military officials took all blame and shielded the president. Reagan was lying blatantly about this, particularly regarding his claimed lack of memory about events such as the diversion of money to the Contras. Reagan and many others had been soliciting funds for the Contras from private sources in the U.S. and internationally, even though Congress had made it illegal.

Nevertheless, Reagan truly was the Great Communicator, far more so than Nixon. As a former actor, he knew how to play the part and project the appearance of a president, seeming "authentic" in every utterance. Nixon's image was always one of deceit and insincerity, while Reagan was experienced at projecting a façade of warmth, honesty, and sincerity that his disgraced predecessor could never have achieved. In both cases, the issue was not simply the words spoken but how they appeared on television.

He opened his speech attempting to establish trust and sincerity, telling his fellow Americans: "Your trust is what gives a president his powers of leadership and his personal strength, and it's what I want to talk to you about this evening." First, he had to manipulate his audience and the evidence by providing a partial and distorted version of his dealings with Iran over the previous seven years and possibly before his 1980 election.

At that time, fifty-three Americans remained hostage in Iran, and President Jimmy Carter had been humiliated by a failed rescue attempt. Carter was attempting to negotiate their release, and it is likely that some of Reagan's advisors made contact with Iranian officials to delay release until after the November election. The hostages landed in Washington at almost the exact hour Reagan was being sworn in 1981, and his secret contacts, negotiations, and arms sales to Iran continued for six years after that. Reagan informed his television audience of none of this, even as revelations about secret arms deals and Iranian negotiations had appeared in media for three months. He had been silent all this time and conceded that "I've paid a price for my silence in terms of your trust and confidence." Though this was true, he immediately transitioned into another lie by claiming that "but I've had to wait, as you have, for the complete story."

Reagan already knew far more of that story than the American public ever will, unless perhaps records are someday declassified. It suited his political needs to claim that his Special Counselor and Special Review Board under conservative Senator John Tower had been "pulling the truth together for me and getting to the bottom of things." This was completely false, as later Congressional investigations demonstrated in part. The Board found him truthful and eager for "the full story to be told," which it never has been. Reagan claimed he found the Board's report "honest, convincing, and highly critical; and I accept them." After taking "full responsibility" for his actions, he expressed disappointment in his officials, who had dutifully taken all blame themselves. He claimed that laundered money, secret bank accounts, and diverted funds were "personally distasteful," as if he had not ordered all of this.

He saved the most disturbing part of the speech for the middle section. He denied trading arms to Iranians to free hostages that their allies held in Lebanon—a criminal offense under federal law. Even after this claim was publicly proven false, he still said that "my heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." Although he admitted part of the truth—that the policy was to make high-level Iranian contacts hoping to improve relations—he conceded that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and the original strategy we had in mind."

Reagan had felt a "personal concern" for the hostages, generally believed to be CIA agents in Lebanon. He then covered himself against impeachment or indictment by asserting that "I didn't ask enough about the specifics of the total Iran plan." Supposedly, the Tower Board was unable to find what happened to money sent to the Contras, but in reality, Richard Secord and others used it to purchase weapons and supplies at high prices, taking large commissions. Reagan knew about this but never admitted it. Again, he lied about breaking federal law, saying "I didn't know about any diversion of funds to the Contras. But as president, I cannot escape responsibility."

For these illegal and unethical activities he had ordered, Reagan blamed his management style—setting overall policies and goals, then stepping back to let officials handle details. Yet he had indeed been very interested in assisting the Contras as much as possible, despite Congress cutting their funding with good reason, as the Contras regularly tortured and murdered civilians.

Having been caught in various lies and illegal actions, Reagan announced he would turn over a new leaf, informing the NSC that he "wanted a policy that reflected the will of the Congress as well as the White House. And I told them that there'll be no more freelancing by individuals when it comes to our national security." His claim that no NSC member "kept proper records of meetings or decisions" was not only untrue but ludicrous, given they had been caught destroying and shredding records and deliberately falsifying them. Col. North and others admitted destroying records because they did not intend to provide incriminating evidence to Congress and media. Most conveniently for Reagan, this absence of records "led to my failure to recollect whether I approved an arms shipment before or after the fact. I did approve it; I just can't say specifically when." Regardless, he assured the public that "rest assured, there's plenty of record-keeping now going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue." He replaced his Chief of Staff with Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, famous from Watergate hearings for asking "what did the president know and when did he know it?"

William Webster replaced the deceased William Casey as CIA director, who had died recently without revealing information about Reagan's covert wars. He announced a review of all covert operations, as if unaware of them despite having ordered them, and "directed that any covert activity be in support of clear policy objectives and in compliance with American values." Reagan had Vice President Bush, a long-time CIA officer and former Director, review terrorism policies—policies Reagan had completely violated in his secret Iranian dealings. Worse, Bush was actually in charge of most day-to-day covert operations, especially those in Central America, but neither he nor Reagan ever admitted this. Even when Bush was elected president in 1988, almost all his record of CIA involvement dating back at least to the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 remained secret from the public, Congress, and media.

Reagan had indeed been running the CIA, NSC, and other covert-operations agencies worldwide like a Cold War cowboy. It was later revealed that CIA Director William Casey had even run armed operations inside the Soviet Union that could have triggered world war, but Reagan mentioned none of this. Instead, he promised restraint and reforms. He appointed a legal advisor "to assure a greater sensitivity to matters of the law," which he had disregarded for the past six years, and was "also determined to make the congressional oversight process work," despite completely ignoring Congress and attempting to bypass its authority. Once out of office, his closest advisors admitted Reagan had nothing but contempt for Congress, but for now he promised that "proper procedures for consultation with the Congress will be followed, not only in letter but in spirit."

Richard Nixon and the Watergate Crisis

Like Nixon, he concluded by saying he had made mistakes, taken his punishment, and hoped everyone would move forward. Every political leader caught in major scandals tells his audience that the time has come to move on quickly. This is as inevitable as references to God, country, family, and the need to "change" and "go forward." Reagan was as mendacious and deceitful in this speech as Nixon and Clinton, but he remained the Teflon President, and this scandal did not stick. It certainly should have, but it did not, and he was not impeached. Instead, he remained in office to finish his second term, wanting to "accomplish a great deal with you and for you over the next two years. And the Lord willing, that's exactly what I intend to do. Good night and God bless you."

Nixon's Second Watergate Speech on August 15, 1973, was a televised address responding to Senate investigation of the scandal and was probably the most dishonest and mendacious scandal speech of the three examined here. Rarely has a president lied so frequently and blatantly in public, but Nixon did so continually for two years. When lies were finally revealed on White House tapes, he realized he would be impeached and removed from office, becoming the first U.S. president to lose his position in this way. He might even have been indicted and imprisoned, losing his pension benefits.

This was why he arranged with his new vice president, Gerald Ford, to resign in return for an unlimited pardon of a kind never issued before in U.S. history. Ford pardoned Nixon not for crimes of conviction but to prevent him from being brought to justice at all. This greatly increased public cynicism and distrust of government, politicians, and the political process, and the country has never fully recovered.

Characteristically, Nixon blamed the "liberal" media and political opponents for dwelling on Watergate and attempting to destroy him personally and politically, ignoring that he had been doing exactly that to them. He denied that Senate and media investigations were attempting to discover truth, claiming they only sought to "implicate the President personally in the illegal activities that took place." Nixon accepted full responsibility for Watergate events and expressed regret, following the usual pattern in scandal speeches. He concealed most real information about what he had done and denounced the "false charges" being levied against him—all of which turned out to be true.

In this speech, Nixon lied repeatedly in ways that would haunt him, stating categorically that "I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in; I neither took part in nor knew about any of the subsequent cover up activities; I neither authorized nor encouraged subordinates to engage in illegal or improper campaign tactics." All these statements were completely false, as was his claim that "from the time when the break-in occurred, I pressed repeatedly to know the facts, and particularly whether there was any involvement of anyone in the White House." Far from ordering a thorough investigation, he tried to bribe burglars to stay silent and ordered the CIA to intervene on alleged "national security" grounds to prevent truth from emerging.

Nixon claimed he had been told nothing except that only seven burglars were involved, even though some, like G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were White House employees. His speech was full of lies, distortions, and omissions. He told the public he knew nothing about Watergate and asked White House Counsel John Dean to investigate and provide a full report. In reality, he told Dean to cover it up and even arranged to pay E. Howard Hunt and other burglars a million dollars to buy their silence. He suspected Mark Felt was the Deep Throat source at the FBI, leaking to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at the Washington Post. Before his death, Felt confirmed this was true, motivated partly by anger at Nixon for not appointing him FBI Director after J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972. Instead, Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray as Acting Director—not to pursue investigation fully but to cover it up and destroy evidence.

Unlike his speech remarks, Gray could not have possibly told Nixon he was "proud" of the investigation for "its thoroughness" and could defend it before the committee. Nixon said only newspapers claimed his involvement in a cover-up, but he had in fact ordered and managed it daily. Then he lied again by asserting that Dean informed him only on March 9, 1973 that a cover-up existed, prompting him to order "an intensive effort of my own to get the facts and to get the facts out. Whatever the facts might be, I wanted the White House to be the first to make them public." Nothing could be further from the truth; the opposite was the case. He even tried to blame Dean for concealing information, when in reality Dean believed he was being set up as a scapegoat and agreed to testify to the Senate.

If possible, Nixon's next lie was even more outrageous. He claimed he had turned to John Ehrlichman for a full report "while also making independent inquiries of my own." Ehrlichman had not only been involved in the cover-up from the start but had organized the original break-in and financed other illegal operations by the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Though a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, had been appointed to investigate, Nixon continued lying and covering up with investigators from his office, finally ordering Cox fired in 1974 for getting too close to the truth about Nixon's role in Watergate and the entire cover-up. In this speech, though, he repeatedly asserted that "my effort throughout has been to discover the facts—and to lay those facts before the appropriate law enforcement authorities so that justice could be done and the guilty dealt with."

Nixon always refused to turn over White House tapes to Congress or the special prosecutor until ordered by a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1974. He did so very reluctantly and then resigned rather than face impeachment. For two years before that, he claimed they were classified and protected under executive privilege and the need to keep discussions confidential, particularly in foreign affairs. Nixon always insisted that a president had to "be able to talk openly and candidly with his advisers about issues and individuals. This kind of frank discussion is only possible when those who take part in it know that what they say is in strictest confidence." When some tapes became public in 1974, they revealed that Nixon had ordered the Watergate break-in and cover-up and many similar actions from his 1969 inauguration onward. They also revealed numerous racist and anti-Semitic remarks, though these were kept secret for decades after his resignation.

The rest of the speech fits the familiar pattern of Clinton and Reagan addresses. To most observers, Watergate has come to mean not just a burglary and bugging of party headquarters but a whole series of acts representing an abuse of trust. It stands for excessive partisanship, "enemy lists," and efforts to use government institutions for partisan political purposes. Nixon deplored the "abuses" in the 1972 election campaign, ignoring that he had ordered them all and had always conducted campaigns this way since the 1940s and 1950s. When he said that "practices of that kind do not represent what I believe government should be, or what I believe politics should be," he was lying because they characterized his entire career.

Nixon then played one of his favorite cards by stating he had committed ruthless acts against those he regarded as threats to internal security—"who would subvert or overthrow it by unlawful means." He criticized 1960s protests for violating law in the name of "higher morality" and again blamed media for encouraging them. In this atmosphere of violence, protests, and riots, some supporters may have become "overzealous," but they should not be jailed for it. Like Reagan and Clinton, he condemned the "backward-looking obsession" with scandal distracting the nation and causing "neglect of matters of far greater importance to all of the American people." Both foreign and domestic policy were being neglected because of Watergate, so the administration should be left alone and permitted "to get on with the jobs that need to be done for you." Unfortunately for Nixon, Congress and courts refused to drop the issue, and it finally ended his presidency.

Conclusion: Comparing Three Presidential Crises

Of all three scandals, Iran-Contra was probably the most serious, even though Ronald Reagan did not face the real threat of resignation or impeachment like Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. Reagan omitted or denied a great deal of information about real U.S. government policies in the Middle East and Central America and lied about his knowledge of these policies. Like Nixon, he based his appeal partly on national security grounds and claimed lack of knowledge about what had really been happening. Richard Nixon lied blatantly and repeatedly about Watergate and, like Reagan, tried to make lower-level officials take all blame. Indeed, his Second Watergate Speech was one of the most dishonest ever given by any American president. In his case, however, the White House taping system proved that the worst allegations were all true, and more than the public knew at the time.