Word: deaver
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...final disturbing facet of the majority opinion is its vague notion that Administration officials (and their family members, too) should not make outside income, even if it's completely legal and conflicts with nothing in their official lives. Deaver is only the latest in a long line of both executive and legislative leaders in recent years, of all ideological stripes, who have made the perfectly reasonable decision that federal office is not financially viable. (One has to wonder about Geraldine Ferraro's present feelings along this line.) Washington is an expensive city; the long-term consequences for our political leadership...
...occasion for this finger-pointing is the wholesale personnel shuffle in the White House in the past week. With James Baker, the chief of staff, and Donald Regan, the Treasury Secretary, swapping places, and Ed Meese headed for Justice and Mike Deaver out of the Administration, all bets are off on the ideological chemistry of the second Reagan term. But what cries out, largely unsuccessfully, for comment is the new resonance these moves give to the unpleasant principle expressed by too many members of the Administration--that it is okay to use public office for personal gain...
...Deaver and Meese are the immediate cases in point. Nothing the two have done has proven to be illegal, but both men have engaged in practices that, at the very least, betray a lack sensitivity to the ethical requirements of high office. One is hard-pressed to give the two the benefit of the doubt given the long list of sleeze that preceeds them: Hugel, Reed, Donovan, Wick, Allen...
...Ironic twist of fate that Deaver announced his resignation as the White House's deputy chief of staff on the very day a Wall Street Journal article detailed how his financial picture, which he much lamented a few years back, has since "brightened considerably." The article noted somewhat whimsically that Deaver's wife Carolyn had become an "overnight success" in the public relations field despite no previous experience, gaining clients like the Republican National Committee. A friend of Deaver's, it was also reported, had arranged for Deaver to make a $10,000 profit on a money-losing real estate...
...this would probably raise nary an eyebrow were it not for the fact that it follows a wholly unremarked-upon--except through the column of William Safire--incident involving Deaver early on in the Administration. Deaver, it seems, contracted with a book publisher to attach his name to a diet book--a move that could eventually net him several hundred thousand dollars. Thus Deaver became, as Safire pointed out, the first White House official ever to exploit "his public position for substantial commercial gain while still in office...