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What is the History of US Presidential Scandals

16 bytes added, 12:02, 5 April 2019
From World War I to the Cold War
Herbert Hoover was President from 1929-1933. Unfortunately for him, this was perhaps some of the worst economic years in US history. The Great Depression was likely not caused by him, but the public needed someone to blame and the President often is the first to get blamed. However, what made it worse for him is that World War I veterans, who were made jobless by the Great Depression, conducted a protest, what became known as the Bonus Riot, because they were promised pay bonuses that they never received. Hoover sent a general, by the name of Douglas MacArthur, to break up the demonstration. Unfortunately, the general seemed to be informed that a group of socialists was protesting rather than former soldiers who were made jobless. This led him to be far harsher than he might have otherwise been in breaking up the protest. Once the public heard about this, the public became even more negative of Hoover and this easily paved the way for Franklin Roosevelt to become President.<ref>For more on Hoover and his handling of veteran protesters, see: Lisio, D. J. (1994). <i>The President and protest: Hoover, MacArthur, and the Bonus Riot</i> (2nd ed). New York: Fordham University Press. </ref>
During the years after World War II, Harry Truman faced allegations of corruption when an investigation discovered widespread impropriety at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Overall, this led to the firing of 166 employees at the IRS. While nothing directly implicated linked Trumanto this, this continued to haunt his administration. The next administration, that of Dwight D. Eisenhower, faced numerous allegations of corruption, mainly in the form of gifts given to administration officials that may have derived from tax payments of and money from the federal budget. One person called to account for this was Richard Nixon, who was Eisenhower's Vice-President at the time. He had been accused of taking $18,000 gifts, but he disputed this and said he only received a dog as a gift from anyone during his time in office. After Eisenhower was John F. Kennedy. His scandals involve mainly accusations of affairs he had from the well-known case of Marilyn Monroe to his own personal secretaries. He was mostly able to evade these accusations until his assassination.<ref>For more on the early Cold War presidents and their alleged scandals, see: Klein, W. (2010). <i>The inside stories of modern political scandals: how investigative reporters have changed the course of American history</i>. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger.</ref>
[[File:Teapotdomei13.jpg|thumb|Figure 2. The Tea Pot Dome scandal was perhaps one of the biggest corruption scandals involving a President's administration.]]

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