Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United by Zephyr Teachout (review)

When long-time New York State Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver was led from his home in handcuffs early in 2015, accused of several counts of corruption—of repetitively using his public office for excessive private gain—his perp walk formed a perfect coda to the myriad lessons of Teachout’s exemplary, very readable, book. Andrew Cuomo, Teachout’s winning opponent in the New York Democratic primary race in September 2014 for governor, a previous backer of Silver, quickly redoubled his anti-corruption reform efforts and distanced himself from Silver, as he had from Teachout’s admonitory campaigning.

Nearly all of Corruption in America is a legally focused and organized narrative of how and under what myriad circumstances our Founding Fathers (and occasional mother) tried to prevent and/or control corrupt behavior on the part of this country’s pre-republican, early republican, and, as it turns out, more modern leaders. They stipulated that our ambassadors should not succumb to the blandishments that accompany the acceptance of diamond- and pearl-encrusted gifts from foreign potentates. Nor should any of the members of the new ruling elites be tempted by corruption lest the new nation’s liberty be forfeited (38). As Montesquieu warned, and as all subsequent global research has confirmed, corruption always begins with “gentlemen,” not the common people (42). Indeed, wealth tended then, and tends now, to corrupt the mind and divert rulers from the pursuit of public interest to the quest for private reward (49).

The new republic offered many opportunities to shift the expenditure of public monies to projects—canals and railways, among others—that benefited legislators’ friends. Lobbying became a vigorous calling almost from the start of the republic, and with lobbying at the federal and state levels naturally came bribery through temptation. Presumptively, lobbying was destructive to the republic because it destroyed institutions and public confidence. Contracts for lobbying, as Teachout shows elaborately, became illegal in many jurisdictions and “against public policy and void” (166-167).

Voting by voice was common in this country before adoption of the secret ballot from Australia in the late nineteenth century. But even more prevalent throughout the nineteenth century at almost all levels was vote buying. An Indiana election of 1888 may have been purchased, vote by vote, for the 2015 equivalent of $2.5 million (178). As Teachout describes, everything political had its price. Every permit knew its value. Every railroad had to pay legislators to buy progress.

It took new leadership in the shape of President Theodore Roosevelt to begin altering America’s prevalent political culture—reining in the personal indulgences and political felonies of these United States. Corruption struck, Roosevelt boomed, “at the foundation of all law.” Bribe givers were worse than thieves. Thieves rob individuals, but corrupt officials plunder cities and states. They “assassinate” the commonwealth. Furthermore, corruption obliterates government of the people (185). The Roosevelt administration successfully prosecuted the first federal senators ever to be jailed for corruption, thus leading to a major shift in how the United States as a nation viewed and dealt with corruption.

Roosevelt also promoted the Tillman Act of 1907, which prohibited corporations from contributing to political campaigns. Passage of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, which limited party and candidate spending in all Senate races, followed in 1910. For many subsequent decades, as Teachout magisterially shows, these Progressive-era reforms under Roosevelt’s watch governed the manner in which American elections, and election spending, were run. Teachout examines the new “free speech” jurisprudence that began with Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and has bedeviled Supreme Court pronouncements ever since. She contends that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee (on the heels of McCormick v. U.S. and U.S. v. Sun Diamond Growers), dramatically redefined corruption in a frontal assault: “It actually took that which had been named corrupt for over two hundred years and renamed it...